DeadStop Reps for Extra Gains?

This is a trend going around at the moment.

You always have to be cautious and understand things like this on a deep level before pursuing it.

• It’s explanation seems logical.

• Eccentric phase gone means less fatigue.

• Removing the stretch reflex means more motor unit recruitment.

If you looked at these two points and assumed they were true, you might think deadstops make sense.

So here’s what I’ll do before opening up on how influential those true reasons actually are.

Let’s investigate the benefits of keeping that eccentric in.

1. In muscles that experience sarcomerogenesis you’re going to see some extra growth

2. You’re going to have muscles and joints that aren’t prone to injury

3. You won’t have “show muscles” everyone makes fun of you for

This is a little long so here’s a contents page to skip around.

Everything about Deadstops and Stretch Reflex

• 1. Training eccentrics allow the muscle lengthenin …

• 2. You’re going to have muscles and joints that ar …

• 3. Training the eccentric portion makes sure you c …

• What are the actual benefits to deadstop training?

  • Cutting off the eccentric phase means less fatigue …

  • Removing the SCC means you’re increasing motor uni …

• What do I think then?

  • When to Use Deadstops

1. Training eccentrics allow the muscle lengthening adaptation sarcomerogenesis to occur.

You’ve probably heard me yap on about this topic more times than you can count.

It’s a big part of my article on the stimulus for growth.

In case you’re new.

The leg muscles and the chest can operate in super stretched positions.

When these muscles’ building blocks are super stretched a mechanoreceptor detects this and signals a muscle lengthening adaptation called sarcomerogenesis.

As the insertion and origin are fixed of a muscle, this lengthening makes the muscle look bigger as it will bulge in the middle.

Now at the end of the day I’ll admit…

I’ll do a little thought experiment with you.

Motor unit recruitment is very very important.

You guys know I’m a motor unit recruitment glazer.

I’ve wrote all about how increasing this means more growth, and how fatigue reduces it.

For this benefit to be worthwhile you’d need the extra growth you gain to be more than the cost.

Keep that in mind as you go through the other benefits and then I might debunk some of the deadstop “benefits”.

2. You’re going to have muscles and joints that aren’t prone to injury

Immediately coming off of the previous point.

Sarcomerogenesis is an adaptation that exists to make you less prone to injury.

I’m not going to get too nerdy here so I’ll just list a few things that are good about eccentrics and how it relates to injury.

• Training your muscles and joints how to safely absorb force is something concentrics aren’t too good at.

• Training your CNS how to act at different movement lengths, how to balance, how to position a body helps everywhere.

A lot of the time the reason you get injured just because you’re doing something you haven’t done before.

3. Training the eccentric portion makes sure you can use this range in your daily life

Imagine a friend calls you over to help them move.

You pick up a lot of heavy boxes with ease because you’re used to that.

Then something bad happens…

• You really struggle with the lowering of a heavy box because you aren’t used to eccentrics, you break something important.

• On one of the really heavy boxes you end up tweaking something in your back because you skip eccentrics…

• The next day you’re super sore and have a ton of muscle damage because you have no protective adaptations against an eccentric.

Yeah that’s not fun 😬 

I’m not saying this is guaranteed but this is very much so the can of worms you start to open up.

You’ll be great at pushing things away or pulling them to you, but that’s about it.

Considering deadstop training is mainly going to be on machines, skipping an eccentric and leaving yourself in that valuable position, is even more questionable. i’ll admit this may be a little bit of a strawman 🙄 

What are the actual benefits to deadstop training?

Of course there are people out there who care about one thing.

They want to look as big as possible.

They want to get there as quickly as possible.

So let’s explore whether or not the benefits are real.

I’ll start with the easier to understand “benefit”.

Cutting off the eccentric phase means less fatigue.

I’ll plead the fifth here.

Just kidding… 🙄

Eccentrics will cause fatigue, especially if they’re overloaded eccentrics.

However, in your sets themselves so long as you’re not bringing a long eccentric (Dr Mike Style 6 second minimum reps), this won’t be a problem.

Fact is, the eccentric is largely controlled by type 1 fibres. These are built to be not very prone to fatigue. Not much is happening here.

Odds are a session of cardio is going to give you more fatigue from the eccentrics than your strength training will because of total work done.

This is a big part of why people are doing deadstops in the first place. again not to strawman, this is just my understanding based on how it’s been explained.

The fatigue minimising has got out of control…

Removing the SCC means you’re increasing motor unit recruitment.

What’s the SCC (Stretch Shortening Cycle) you ask?

This is where your elastic parts of your tendons/muscle store energy (elastic) and then when you enter the concentric, the energy (kinetic) increases force production.

This is where it gets clunky…

Some people mention the stretch reflex as a benefit counterargument.

The stretch reflex is complicated so skip to the bold below if you don’t want to read about it…

• Mechanoreceptors (muscle spindles) detect the stretch of a muscle and it fires action potentials

• These signals go to the spinal cord

• They then go directly to the motor units that govern that muscle

• This is superfast and reflexive as there’s only one synapse

• The motor neurons help your muscle contract and increase motor unit recruitment locally

Sounds good right 😁 

Well this mechanism is probably to protect a muscle from overstretching, let’s dig a little deeper…

Take a look with a training context 😳 

• If a is stretched and then goes back to normal, it remembers the stretch (short-term)

  • This leads to a smaller reflexive response in the next rep

• The longer the muscle is stretched the smaller the reflexive response is

• If you spend too long paused in the stretch (longer than ~50ms lol) you lose the reflexive possibility

So yeah… end of the day pretty useless.

The stretch reflex won’t matter too much unless you’re completely removing a pause in a stretch, doing short ranges of motion, and barely doing any reps.

End of the day the stretch reflex just doesn’t matter.

There will remain some stretch help through the tendons which is a big part of why you’re stronger even if paused compared to a complete deadstop.

This doesn’t really matter though…

It’s not going to decrease motor unit recruitment or anything like that. It’s just a part of the movement.

What do I think then?

I think you should just forget deadstops man.

If for whatever reason you really want to do an deadstops, keep in a controlled eccentric.

If for whatever reason you want to remove the eccentric for “fatigue”, have at least one way of training a similar motion/that muscle with a proper eccentric.

When to Use Deadstops

Let’s talk about some practical cases when you might want to use them.

But first, let’s go over some cases where you definitely should not be using them.

• You’re new to a movement/haven’t mastered form

• You feel a bit uncomfortable doing them

• You feel a lot more motivated and locked in without a deadstop

• The resistance curve will be changed with a deadstop and cause you to bias unintended muscles

So now I’ll put together some situations where you can maybe use them or try it out.

• You like the exercise more with a deadstop

• You’d like to standardise the ROM

So that’s deadstops. Hope you learnt a thing or two.

If this changed your mind on deadstops subscribe to the newsletter, channel, anything you want. 🙏 

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher