The First Rep Happens Before You Touch the Bar: How Con-Ecc Reps Redefine Real Strength
Developed in collaboration with Dr. William J. Kraemer
If you’re still treating the concentric rep like it’s just “the up part,” you’re coaching like it’s 1995. But the truth is, most of the industry is still asleep on this one. If you care about performance, resilience, and building athletes that last, it’s time to rethink not just how you lift—but when the lift actually begins.
The first rep doesn’t start when the bar leaves the ground.
It starts long before that.
It starts the second the nervous system flips the literal and physiological switch from stabilizing to overcoming. From managing gravity to actively defeating it. From preparation to propulsion.
The concentric phase isn’t just movement.
It’s ignition. It’s the purest expression of organized human force. And it doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens inside what the best in the world now recognize as the Con-Ecc rep: a repetition that demands both deliberate eccentric control and explosive concentric action. The moment you transition from resisting load to overcoming it—that razor-thin neurological inflection point—that’s where real strength lives.
Most lifters miss it. Most coaches don’t teach it.
And that invisible gap becomes the difference between building tissue that survives stress—or tissue that collapses under it.
The science couldn’t be clearer.
NASA-funded research studying muscle retention in microgravity conditions found that athletes who trained only concentric actions lost strength rapidly. Eccentric-only training preserved more tissue integrity. But the true breakthrough came from Con-Ecc training—repetitions that required the body to control load, transition, and reaccelerate with focus and intent. Athletes who trained through Con-Ecc protocols didn’t just gain strength—they held onto it longer. They resisted the decay that even gravity couldn’t save.
If that’s true in space, imagine what it means for your athletes on the ground.
The athlete who controls the descent and launches the reversal—wins.
The sprint.
The rebound.
The shot.
The tackle.
Force generation without control is chaos.
Control without reversal is survival.
Only the full Con-Ecc cycle builds athletes who can dominate.
But the mistake happens even earlier than that.
Before the rep, readiness.
Watch any serious weight room closely. You’ll see who understands and who doesn’t. The serious athlete prepares before every rep—not just physically, but mentally, tactically, neurologically. Before touching the bar, they check their stance, grip, alignment, intention. They align their setup to the mechanics of the lift, not the aesthetics. They run the checklist not because they’re cautious—but because they respect the system.
Every casual setup, every lazy warm-up, every rushed grip teaches the wrong lesson.
Every deliberate setup teaches the right one.
Details matter. Always.
Grip isn’t casual.
It begins at the pinky inward—securing stability at the outermost point of force transmission. A “false grip” might look flashy but instantly increases risk. True readiness builds from the smallest decisions, long before load is applied.
Range of motion? Same principle.
Full range training—whether squatting to depth, pressing to full extension, or pulling through complete flexion—remains the backbone of functional strength.
Arbitrarily shortening the range compromises strength across the joint, disrupts kinetic chain resilience, and creates vulnerabilities that won’t reveal themselves until the athlete needs them most.
Partial range has its place—used strategically to target sticking points or develop explosive force at critical angles—but it is never the foundation.
Full range must come first.
Always.
It trains not just the muscles, but the tendons, the connective tissue, the proprioceptive maps that allow an athlete to move through chaos with control.
Anything less is not adaptation.
It’s distortion.
True warm-ups aren’t optional.
They’re priming sequences.
Circulatory readiness.
Dynamic activation.
Light technical sets that allow the nervous system to check for dysfunction before load masks it.
In elite settings, it’s often during warm-ups that hidden injuries surface—not because the room is dangerous, but because it’s honest.
Load selection isn’t bravado. It’s dialogue.
That’s where sliding sets—a method championed by coaches like Jerry Martin at UConn—prove invaluable.
Start moderate.
Feel the bar speed.
Adjust based on technical precision and neurological sharpness, not just “how it feels.”
Build into work sets with escalating attention, not mindless aggression.
The best strength is intelligent strength. It’s earned rep by rep—not forced.
In working sets: RM zones > Percentages.
Olympic lifts may use percentages to manage technical thresholds.
But in the bread-and-butter of heavy training—squats, pulls, presses—the RM zone method reigns supreme.
Stay within 3–5 RM working zones, stopping short of failure, monitoring quality and readiness every set.
True spotting is an active partnership.
It’s not just hovering nearby.
It’s knowing how to intervene, when to assist, how to physically position yourself to act instantly.
For heavy squats: multiple trained spotters.
For benches: alternating pronated and supinated grips.
Not “just in case”—but because preparation is a show of respect to the lifter, to the weight, to the moment.
Even breathing becomes diagnostic.
Controlled breathing (exhaling during concentric effort, inhaling during eccentric control) stabilizes intra-abdominal pressure, reinforces spinal integrity, and protects the system.
Breath holding at maximal efforts may happen instinctively—but mindless breath holding across sets invites dizziness, unconsciousness, and unnecessary risk.
Because lifting right programs adaptation.
Every single lift either teaches the body to function better—or function worse.
There is no neutral ground.
Lifting weight is easy.
Lifting right means lifting with your future in mind.
It means lifting in a way that sharpens joint mechanics, movement patterns, tendon health, neurological transitions, and full-system resilience. It means each rep doesn’t just get you through today’s workout—it sets the stage for what your body can survive and achieve a year, five years, ten years down the line.
That’s the difference between chasing numbers and building capability into the system itself.
The Con-Ecc Rep is the foundation.
It teaches the nervous system when and how to flip the switch—from controlled descent to explosive acceleration.
It trains the athlete to find stability through transitions, not just positions.
It wires them to survive the chaos that sport and life inevitably bring.
Lifting right builds athletes that don’t just lift heavier—they move better, recover faster, and last longer.
At the center of it all?
The Con-Ecc Rep.
The intelligent rep that integrates both the control of descent and the explosive launch of ascent into a single, seamless, biological event.
The Con-Ecc rep is how you teach athletes not just to move, but to transition.
Not just to survive load, but to attack it.
Not just to train, but to evolve.
This is not about being careful.
It’s about being ready.
It’s about coaching with biological clarity, not just mechanical obsession.
It’s about lifting right—because lifting right is what separates those who break from those who bend but endure.
Want to stop wasting reps?
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Because lifting weight is easy.
Lifting right changes everything.
Resources
Hather, B. M., Tesch, P. A., Buchanan, P., & Dudley, G. A. (1991). Influence of eccentric actions on skeletal muscle adaptations to resistance training. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 143(2), 177–185.
