☕️ S&C Daily — How Fast You Lower It

October 28, 2026

A study in the October issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research had 24 untrained college-age men train three times a week for eight weeks. Two groups trained only the lowering phase of the squat: one used a slow five-second descent with a load equal to their back squat 1RM, the other a fast descent at 50% of 1RM. A third group did weighted countermovement jumps. It’s a small study, with about eight men per group and no non-training control.

The slow group’s quads grew 10.7%, while the other groups ranged from a 0.3% loss to a 2.5% gain. The fast group’s jump height rose 9.6%, compared with 0.9% for the slow group, and its early rate of force development more than doubled. All three groups got stronger.

In a new essay, Steve Magness argues that under pressure, people default to fear, and athletes are no exception. They avoid the challenge instead of approaching it, get less generous and lose the bigger picture, and a fearful team plays not to lose. His case rests on learned helplessness. In the original Seligman and Maier experiments, dogs that couldn’t escape shocks stopped trying, even once escape was easy.

In 2008, Steven Maier revisited the idea with rats and found that passivity isn’t learned. It’s the default. What the rats that could stop the shocks learned was hope, as the prefrontal cortex calmed the brain’s stress response. Magness writes that hope, meaning a sense of agency plus a path to the goal, predicts persistence in sport and is built through small, repeated actions that show effort matters. “We have to train hope,” he writes.

A new review in Sports Medicine looked at how post-exercise cold and heat affect an athlete’s sleep that night. Cold water immersion or cryotherapy within two hours of bedtime may disrupt sleep, making it take longer to fall asleep and shortening total sleep.

Used more than two hours before bed, cold may actually help sleep. Heat works the other way: the authors say sauna and hot water immersion before sleep may help.

Valdosta State lecturer Rodney Gaines is the first recipient of the NSCA’s ELEVATE Award and was elected to the NSCA Board of Directors. He helped start strength and conditioning programs at Norfolk State and Virginia State.

Columbus’ incoming NWSL team broke ground on the OhioHealth Training Grounds, a 45,000-square-foot training facility and headquarters set to open before the club starts play in 2028. Plans include a locker room with amenities specific to female athletes, a family and mothers room for child care, and space for academy and developmental teams.

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