Eccentric exercises, where you slowly lower weight rather than quickly lift it, build more muscle for older adults and speed recovery after surgery. A slow, controlled bicep curl descent does more work than the lift itself.
So somebody's struggling to make gains in strength after surgery, what do you tell them? One of the things that I like to tell people is to consider adding eccentric exercises. The data shows that eccentric exercises, especially in older adults, leads to greater muscle gains. And so I like to use this not only just for my general workouts, but also for people recovering from surgery because they don't often think about this, they're often taught that. So that just simply means going the opposite direction. Somebody knows like bicep curls, you know, typically they'll go up, traditionally go up, lift their weight, they go down really easily. And you see simply just go in the opposite direction. So negative, slowly going down, and that eccentric, going the opposite motion, leads to better straight gaits.
