Does slowing down your squat make your legs bigger and stronger?
The effects of eccentric phase tempo in squats on hypertrophy, strength, and contractile properties of the quadriceps femoris muscle
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Overall quadriceps size increased equally in both groups, but only the slow-eccentric group saw significantly greater growth in the vastus lateralis.
Most people assume total muscle growth is uniform — this shows that tempo can selectively target one muscle within a group, which contradicts the idea that ‘volume equals growth’ across the entire muscle.
Practical Takeaways
If you're a beginner doing squats, try lowering yourself for 4 seconds on the way down — keep the same weight and reps — to maximize outer thigh growth and strength gains.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Overall quadriceps size increased equally in both groups, but only the slow-eccentric group saw significantly greater growth in the vastus lateralis.
Most people assume total muscle growth is uniform — this shows that tempo can selectively target one muscle within a group, which contradicts the idea that ‘volume equals growth’ across the entire muscle.
Practical Takeaways
If you're a beginner doing squats, try lowering yourself for 4 seconds on the way down — keep the same weight and reps — to maximize outer thigh growth and strength gains.
Publication
Journal
Frontiers in Physiology
Year
2025
Authors
Filip Kojić, Danimir Mandić, Sasa Duric
Related Content
Claims (10)
How fast or slow you lift and lower weights doesn’t matter as much for building muscle as how much weight you lift, how many reps you do, or how close you push yourself to failure.
To figure out whether speeding up or slowing down the lifting vs. lowering part of a weight workout makes your muscles grow more, scientists need to test each part separately—not at the same time.
If you're new to lifting and do squats slowly on the way down (4 seconds) for 7 weeks, you'll get stronger than if you do it quickly (1 second)—slowing down the downward part might help your muscles and nerves adapt better to lift heavier weights.
If young people who don’t normally lift weights do squats slowly on the way down for 7 weeks, their thigh muscles might start working more like endurance muscles—slower but more tired-resistant.
If you're a young adult who hasn't trained much before and you do squats slowly or quickly on the way down for 7 weeks, your thigh muscle gets stiffer either way — and how slow or fast you go doesn't matter.