Modern exercise culture has spent years glorifying exhaustion. The harder a workout feels, the more effective people assume it must be. Sore muscles became badges of honor, while gentle movements were often dismissed as ‘not real exercise.’ 

However, according to a new study, some of the most efficient ways to build muscle strength may happen during the slow, controlled moments people usually ignore—walking downstairs, lowering weights, or carefully sitting into a chair. 

Study author Kazunori Nosaka, who is the director of exercise and sports science at Edith Cowan University, argues that eccentric exercise—a type of muscle action that occurs while muscles lengthen under tension, may offer a more practical alternative. Its opposite, concentric exercise, is the shortening (lifting) phase where muscles produce force to overcome resistance.

Instead of demanding maximum effort, these movements appear to train muscles while placing less stress on the body.  

“The idea that exercise must be exhausting or painful is holding people back. Instead, we should be focusing on eccentric exercises which can deliver stronger results with far less effort than traditional exercise – and you don’t even need a gym,” Nosaka said.

Muscles work differently on the way down

The study examines decades of earlier research on eccentric exercise rather than presenting a single laboratory experiment. It focuses on a simple but often overlooked detail of human movement, which is how muscles behave differently depending on whether they are shortening or lengthening.

When someone lifts a dumbbell, climbs stairs, or rises from a chair, muscles shorten as they generate force. Scientists call this a concentric contraction. Eccentric contractions happen during the opposite phase—when the muscle stays active while stretching. 

Examples include lowering the dumbbell back down, descending stairs, or slowly lowering the body into a seated position. According to the review, muscles can tolerate and produce greater force during eccentric actions while using comparatively less energy and oxygen. 

“Eccentric contractions are distinguished by their ability to generate greater force than concentric or isometric contractions, while requiring less metabolic cost,” Nosaka notes.

Researchers believe this happens because muscles act more like controlled braking systems during lengthening movements, resisting gravity rather than directly overpowering it. As a result, people may gain strength without putting the same level of demand on the cardiovascular system. 

This difference could make eccentric exercise especially useful for individuals who find traditional workouts physically overwhelming.

“Eccentric exercise training provides numerous benefits for physical fitness and overall health, making it suitable for a wide range of individuals from children to older adults, clinical populations to athletes, and sedentary to highly active people,” Nosaka added.

Gravity may be doing more training than we realized

To support this argument, the study brings together findings from several earlier research works. For instance, one study from 2017 tracked elderly women with obesity who repeatedly walked either upstairs or downstairs over a 12-week period. 

While climbing stairs is normally considered the tougher workout, the women assigned to walk downstairs showed stronger improvements in measures including blood pressure, heart rate, and physical fitness. The results suggested that resisting gravity during downward movement may provide a surprisingly powerful training effect.

The review also discusses eccentric cycling, where participants resist pedals driven backward by a motor instead of pushing them forward in the usual way. 

Although the movement feels unusual and requires concentration, earlier studies found it improved muscle power, balance, and cardiovascular health while feeling less exhausting than standard cycling workouts.

Another important part of the review addresses muscle soreness, one of the main reasons eccentric exercise never became widely popular outside rehabilitation settings. People often experience delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, after unfamiliar eccentric workouts. 

“Unaccustomed eccentric exercise is often associated with muscle damage characterized by delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and a reduction in muscle force-generating capacity lasting more than a day. However, this effect diminishes or at least is attenuated when the same eccentric exercise is repeated (known as the repeated bout effect),” Nosaka explained

Many eccentric exercises require little or no equipment. Slow squats into a chair, heel-lowering movements, controlled wall push-ups, or even maintaining posture against gravity can activate eccentric muscle work. 

Moreover, some studies referenced in Nosaka’s review suggest that just a few minutes of these exercises each day can still produce measurable improvements in health and strength.

The future of fitness may feel less punishing

The findings challenge the mindset surrounding fitness itself. Many people abandon exercise routines because they associate physical activity with pain, fatigue, or lack of time. Eccentric exercise suggests that effective movement does not always need to feel extreme. 

If future research continues to support these findings, eccentric exercise could influence far more than gym routines. It may reshape physical rehabilitation, elderly care, injury recovery programs, and public-health recommendations aimed at increasing physical activity among sedentary populations. 

These exercises also place lower demands on the heart and lungs while still strengthening muscles. They could help people who are unable or unwilling to follow intense training programs.

Nosaka suggests that “we should establish eccentric exercise as standard practice, and make it common, accessible, and widely accepted as the ‘new normal’ of exercise to improve life performance and high (athletic) performance.”

However, this does not mean eccentric exercise is a universal replacement for all forms of physical activity. The current paper is a review of previous studies, and its findings still need to be validated through experiments and large-scale clinical trials.

Nosaka also notes that “Future studies should investigate mechanisms underpinning the effects of eccentric exercises in comparison to other types of exercises (e.g., isometric exercises, concentric exercises, aerobic exercises),”  

This could help scientists design safer and more personalized exercise programs for different age groups and health conditions.

The study is published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science.