Negative vs Positive: Which Actually Matters Most For Gains?

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 muscl