A new study shows that lifting weights for 3 seconds, five times a week for 4 weeks, results in a measurable increase in muscle strength.
The research study was conducted by Australia’s Edith Cowan University and Japan’s Niigata University and led by Professor Ken Kazunori Nosaka, the director of exercise and sports science at Edith Cowan.
The participants consisted of thirty-nine healthy college students assigned workouts over the span of 4 weeks, and thirteen non-exercising students as a control group.
Focused on the bicep muscle, the study included three different categories of resistance exercise: isometric, concentric, and eccentric. Many common exercises include a combination of these three components as different motions are completed.
The study measured the effects of three different components of the same exercise, the traditional bicep curl. For the isometric exercise, which involves the contraction of a muscle or muscle group without the movement of any surrounding joints, participants in the study held their arm in place with the dumbbell parallel to the floor.
For concentric exercises, which involve tension created by a muscle shortening as it contracts, the study looked at the “curl” movement of the exercise, when the dumbbell is raised toward the shoulder. To study eccentric exercise, which involves the lengthening of a muscle, researchers looked at the movement performed in the bicep curl when the dumbbell is lowered back toward the waist.
Each student focused on their assigned bicep workout and repeated it throughout the study.
Students performing the isometric and concentric exercise showed minimal strength improvement, but those performing the eccentric exercise blew it out of the park with more than a 10% increase in isometric muscle strength and more than a 12% increase for both concentric and eccentric strengths.
According to Insider, to create the eccentric movement like the students in the study, “Choose a weight you can’t lift with one arm, but can lift with two. Use your other arm to help position the weight in the top of a curl, and then slowly lower it down with your working arm to get an intense eccentric contraction.”
This study focused on building strength, not muscle, as it is a slow process to build muscle.
Nosaka stated, “In this particular study, we didn’t find any increase in muscle mass after four weeks of training, however, we saw a large increase in strength and that can be more related to the brain. So, possibly, the brain is stimulated more by doing or performing eccentric contractions.”
According to Neuroscience News, this study shows that every muscle contraction counts, and small exercises are beneficial to the body. “‘No time for exercise’ is the most common excuse not to do exercise regularly, but exercise for 3 seconds may not affect time so much,” Nosaka shared.
The research shows that the eccentric contraction is great for beginning exercisers. Exercising 3 seconds a day for 5 days will prepare you to adapt to workout routines and provide consistency.
Nosaka believes the elderly would benefit from workouts of this nature because it could potentially help slow down the process of losing muscle mass as people age, adding that further study needs to be conducted with different age and muscle groups.
According to Fox 4, Nosaka was inspired by a study from Germany in 1953 that demonstrated a 6-second workout resulted in increased muscle strength.
