Understanding Muscle Strength Dynamics

Your body is actively preventing you from using your full strength. If you ever recruited

100% of your muscle fibers at once, you would literally tear your muscles and tendons apart.

It’s a built-in safety feature. This is also why you’re significantly stronger when lowering

a weight compared to lifting it. Lifting a weight is a concentric contraction,

and it's actually your weakest move. But lowering it, the eccentric phase, is your strongest.

Your muscle fibers are actively braking against the load, and this resistance adds a ton of passive

force. So that shaky feeling on the way down? That’s your peak strength.