I had a new trainer this past week and he focused on one tiny part of the lift—the half inch at the very bottom of the reps. Basically the goal is about 10 seconds up, 10 seconds back with each rep. On the 10 seconds back he would remind me to milk the last half inch in both directions. No panic, super slow, concentrate. It’s 36 hours after the session and I’m still wiped out. A very cool development after doing this for many months.

That said, I have been off the super slow wagon for a few weeks on vacation and healing a pulled muscle. But I don’t recall this type of muscle exhaustion in a long while. Part of the battle with doing slow weights (perhaps the biggest part) is not getting mentally lazy. That’s what this one detail did for me—forced me back into a highly attentive concentration mode.