Dear Andrew: I read your article on "The Right Timing" in the newest Lifetime Fitness Mag [link provided by editor, ed.s note] with great interest. I have become a big fan of HIT-- the "superslow" approach to strength training. Yet I can't really infer, from the info that's in your article, how such training fits in to the range of benefits one might seek in doing regular strength training.Thanks--Mike.

Thanks for writing, Mike.

First and foremost, I appreciate your proper use of the word "infer."

The acronym "HIT" must be the most overused three letters in the fitness world: in addition to being appropriated (apparently) by the "Superslow" crowd, I've heard it used by the Nautilus-Dorian Yates-Mike Mentzer school of single-set-to-and-beyond-failure contingent, and even fans of sprinting who don't see that "HIIT" (high-intensity-interval-training) has two "I's".

Forgive my pedantry as I've been proofreading all morning.

Anyway: "superslow" training, which I fooled around with maybe 10 years ago, is a system in which each rep can take as long as 60 seconds. It's tough and painful. But is it effective?

The article I wrote on tempo training, for which I interviewed such luminaries as Lou Schuler, Alwyn Cosgrove, Chad Waterbury, and a badass female strength coach named Julia Ladewski, had nothing on "superslow" training because these folks didn't advocate it.

Lifting slowly removes the elastic component from a lift--meaning that your muscles, rather than the force of your tendons snapping back into a shortened state--pretty much do all the lifting. This is useful for a couple of reasons: you'll focus all the work on the muscles, and you'll spare the tendons, which is great for injury recovery and, to some extent, for muscular strength and hypertrophy.

But of all the people I spoke to, none of them could think of a decent reason for taking more than about five seconds per rep. Four seconds of lowering and one second of lifting pretty much eliminates elasticity from the equation. Any more and the experts I consulted didn't have much use for it. The consensus seemed to be that going slower than that didn't really provide any additional benefit.

And, practically speaking, though lowering at weight slowly helps to focus your efforts on the muscles, a slow lift--or concentric contraction--isn't particularly productive. The experts pretty much agreed that if you're not a rank beginner or recovering from an injury, lifting a weight slowly doesn't make much sense. In fact, they all agreed, more or less, that lifting a weight with maximal explosive force whenever you strength train is generally the best protocol (this has to do with motor-unit recruitment and all that stuff I discussed in the article).

Moreover, since you'll probably have to use about half of what you'd typically lift to do a superslow set, you probably won't gain a whole lot of strength or muscle size on such a program. On the other hand, you're unlikely to hurt yourself lifting slowly, and you might gain some coordination and muscle control as well, as I wrote about here. So, depending on your goals, it might be something to sprinkle into a program from time to time.

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Got this from Mike Boyle today. Worth a read:

An exercise program must be approached over a period of weeks and months, not
days. The reality is that there is no quick fix, no easy way, no magic weight
loss plan, no secret cellulite formula. There is only the law of the farm. You
will reap what you sow. In reality, you will reap what you sow and care for. If
you are consistent and diligent with both diet and exercise, you will eventually
see results. However, remember, much like fertilizer and water, diet and
exercise go together.

Try to grow crops or a lawn without water. No amount of effort will overcome the
lack of vital nutrients.

The law of the farm.

Plant the seeds.

Feed and water properly.