How Super Slow Weight Training Can Help You Get Fit Fast

In the past, I treated my weight lifting routine like a race to the finish line. I hated doing it so I would get in the gym and zip through it as fast as possible.

No point in extending the misery.

But in retrospect, I was missing the point.

It’s kind of like the story of the tortoise and the hare. I was the hare, racing through the routine, confident that I was going to end up with ripped arms. But little did I know that slow and steady wins the race.

Say hello to Super Slow
Super slow is a form of weight lifting that involves lowering the amount of weight you lift and doing it very slowly. Its effectiveness revolves around two key principles:

Principle one: No rest
We do not stop in between reps because certain muscle fibers are able to recover quickly when allowed to rest, even momentarily, and the body won’t produce stronger muscle unless provided a stimulus of sufficient intensity. When a muscle is fatigued in the right way, the resulting microscopic tears in the muscle fibers are treated by the body’s immune system as an injury. As with all injuries, these damaged fibers then heal and are replaced with stronger muscle tissue over time.

Principle two: no momentum
The second thing we must do for successful weight training is to do the exercise very slow so that we don’t use the velocity of momentum to push the weights. The faster we move in an exercise, the less our muscles are engaged, instead relying on the force of momentum to lift or push the weights.

So, when it comes to strength training, rest and momentum are negatives. To eliminate them, we must perform an exercise slowly and continuously until “muscle failure” – e.g. when you absolutely positively cannot do it anymore. This is what Super Slow strength training is all about.

Super slow origins & benefits
The Super Slow theory was developed in 1982 from a 50-year-old Texan named Ken Hutchins. While conducting a study at the University of Florida Medical School, Hutchins sought to devise a weight-training regimen that increased bone density of retirement-age women who had developed osteoporosis. Given their physical limitations, he wanted to find a way for them to build muscle and improve circulation without harming joints. On a whim, Hutchins had the women lift relatively heavy weights very slowly for an extended period of time. Long story short: It worked. Some of the women actually outgrew the use of their walkers and took up ballroom dancing!

Works for me
I’ve only been doing Super Slow training for a month or two and have already seen significant results. Unlike regular training, where I rarely increased my load bearing weight, I’ve already increased my leg weights by 15 pounds, easy! I’m also finding that I am stronger in yoga and can hold poses longer than before. I’m excited to see where it will take me!

Super slow breakdown
So how does it work? Well, it depends on your current physical condition, psychology (yes, your psychology) and your exercise equipment but, in a nutshell, it involves:

• 20-40 minute sessions
• 1-2 times a week
• 5-7 different exercises or machines per session
• 15-25 seconds for each rep with no periods of rest inbetween reps
• A total of approximately 120 seconds per weight exercise (equates to about 6 total reps)

Super slow is all about lifting as slowly and steadily as possible until you can’t do any more safely. The muscles should be “under load” the whole time during each exercise, and you should carry on until you can no longer continue.

How much weight to use? Experts say to adjust the amount of weight so that you achieve failure within 90-120 seconds. At this pace, a full body workout consisting of 5-7 exercises can be completed in less than 20 minutes!

Why you gotta chill
Right now, I tend to do more than the 5-7 exercises and it takes me about 40 minutes. You can play with time and exercises but the key is lift slowly, exhaust the muscle, and then let your body rest.

As Kinkead states “muscle fatigue represents a mild physiological trauma which simply requires time to heal, just as a laceration or any other mild injury.” Recovery time is approximately 2-3 days for people new to strength training; it takes more like 7 days once your strength improves and your workouts become more intense.

Most of our Kinkead’s clients train just once each week with significant results. That’s right, just one strength training workout a week.

Click here for a basic Super Slow routine that hits all of the major muscle groups.

Remember, it’s good to be the tortoise!

How about you? What strength training routine works for you?

Tagged as: strength, super slow, training, weights, workout