If you don’t exhaust your muscles when resistance training, you won’t grow them stronger or bigger. That’s the science of hypertrophy—youn eed to break down muscle to build it back stronger. And most people don’t do that; they stop at 12 or 15 reps when they still have those critical few more left in them.

But adding reps is hard to do and it lengthens workouts. A more efficient way to push yourself a little harder to break through strength plateaus and build size is to slow your tempo, taking 3, 5, or even more seconds during the last few repsof a set. This is one the many variations of the “super slow” method, a high-intensity training technique designed to eliminate momentum and maximize muscle tension.

So, you might do 12 reps of bench presses at a pace of one second pushing the bar and two seconds lowering it to your chest. Then, for the final three reps, slow itway down, taking 5 or even 10 seconds to press and lower the weight. That’ll guarantee that you are working hard enough to exhaust your muscles. And you’ll feel the difference! (Here I am finishing a set of leg extensions with a few slow negatives.)

You’ll also find that the controlled lowering of the weight, called the “negative” or “eccentric” phase of the lift, is easier than the pressing phase. That’s because muscles are up 20 to 40% stronger during that phase, where muscles lengthen under tension. So, you can do the negative parts of the lift even slower.

I learned the power of negatives while editing books by renowned strength coach and former bodybuilder Ellington Darden, PhD.

“Emphasizing the negative causes deeper inroad of muscle-fiber stimulation,” says Darden, a pioneer of the Nautilus System and author of 50 books including the classic The New High Intensity Training. “It produces a much faster rate of muscular growth.”

Darden used negatives to develop a challenging but effective lifting technique called 30-10-30 that features high reps and slow negatives in one set. For the 30-10-30 method, you need to pick a lighter weight with which you can easily knockout about 10 reps. Take 30 seconds to lower the weight (the eccentric/negative), then complete 10 normal-speed reps (one second down, one second up), finishing with another slow, 30-second lowering phase.

You’ll only need one set of each exercise, which cuts workout time way down. Believe me: you only need one set; it’s hard. After my first 30-10-30 total-body workout under Darden’s coaching, I fell asleep in the shower.

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