Negative vs Positive: Which Actually Matters Most For Gains?

By Jeff Nippard

Community Score: 50% | 26.2K views | 4w

0 community ratings: null thumbs up, null thumbs down

Which matters more for muscle growth: the positive, where you lift the weight up, or the negative, where you lower the weight back down? For years, most lifters assumed that the negative was more important because that’s when the muscle is lengthening. And you’ve probably heard science-based lifters say that it’s really important to “control the negative.” But what does the latest science say about negatives and muscle growth? Does the negative actually cause more growth than the positive? Well, a brand new meta-analysis of 26 studies and over 600 subjects (da Silva et al, 2025) compared muscle growth from emphasizing the positive to muscle growth from emphasizing the negative and they found that for the upper body, there was a small but significant advantage, showing more muscle growth when you emphasize the … negative! But, for the lower body both the positive and negative led to similar growth and overall, both built similar amounts of muscle. So if your goal is to maximize gains

Tags: how to build muscle, jeff nippard, jeff nipard, negatives for muscle growth, positive vs negative for muscle growth, eccentrics, jeff nippard negatives, jeff nippard slow negatives, eccentric training, jeff nippard rep, jeff nippard rep range, how to gain muscle, weight training, strength training, build muscle fast, muscle growth, jeff nippard new video, jeff nippard repetitions, slow negatives