TEMPO! TEMPO! TEMPO! Part 1.

Feet planted firm. Thrust with the glutes and while doing so, drag the weight up and allow for total momentum to help carry the bar upwards before finishing off the repetition. Drop the weight back to starting point and repeat again until you can no longer perform anymore Bicep curls – SORRY WHAT? 

You see it in pretty much 99.99999% of big commercial gyms - too much weight being flung around accompanied by the yelling of a one man army. Now that’s all good when you’re doing powerlifting and other explosive work, but I’ve never seen an event for Shoulder Shrugs in the Olympics.

Sadly, at this present time, tempo seems to have taken a seat behind other important things…such as ego.

So now that that is out of the way, let’s take a look at the importance of tempo, how to read tempo and all things related. 

WHAT THE HELL IS A TEMPO OF 302?

Reading tempo isn’t as hard as it sounds. 302 is actually 3 parts to the lift/repetition.

1^st Number: Negative Rep/ Eccentric portion of the exercise – the lowering of the weight
2^nd Number: The pause/ Isometric contraction and holding of the weight

3^rd Number: Positive Rep/ Concentric portion of the exercise – the lifting of the weight

And if you ever see an X in a tempo – EG. 50X – X denotes “Raising As Fast As Possible”

Not that hard is it? 

TEMPO FOR HYPERTROPHY

When the desired result is muscle gain (let’s not get into functional and non-functional hypertrophy here) then Tempo has a direct impact on your results/goals.  Charles Poliquin put it rather simply in his book “The Poliquin Principles” and to sum it up, he states that if you placed two guys next to each other and both were doing the same exercise however, there was one difference: 

• One of them lifted (concentric lift) the weight for 3 seconds, paused (isometric) for 2 seconds and then lowered (eccentric lift) the weight for another 3 seconds

• The other, pounded through the reps like the aforementioned Olympic shoulder shrugger.

Would their methods of training yield different results? Of course they would.

The fact is that Time Under Tension (TUT) is critical for muscular growth/development – Look at it this way.

When working on a body builder-type routine and muscular growth (not strength) is the desired result, then ‘rule of thumb’ is that the amount of time you spend under TUT should be between 20-80 seconds (I would go for 40-80 seconds).  This allows for many different styles of lifting 

• 1 rep of 20-80 seconds
• 10 second reps
• 20 second reps 
•  Whatever...

If you think about it, it should make sense. It’s not exactly the hardest concept to pick up. The longer you stay under tension, the longer your muscles have to work – therefor, the more muscle fibres that have to be recruited (along with helping enhance muscle protein synthesis) – which was backed by this study where they used electrode measurements: J Physiol. 2011 Nov 21.
  
There are many other factors that have to do with hypertrophy - muscle fibre make-up being one of them. But if muscle gain is your goal, then slowing down the reps and increasing that TUT is crucial.

I’m sorry if this blew the ego out of your broboat but slowing down the reps will result in you having to drop weights to properly perform the required repetitions to stay under the chosen amount of time – however, you will pick the strength back up

Besides muscle gain, slow reps has other positives 

• Reduces chances of injury or the reoccurrence of an old one. My shoulder can vouch for it.
• For elderly people, reducing muscle loss through aging can be helped. 

So REMEMBER, what is important to you. RESULTS or hoping along with all the bro’s talking about who bro’d out the most on the bench press? 

Am I saying that you shouldn’t ever lift fast? NO! There is a time and place for everything and faster lifts should be incorporated into a structured periodized training plan – along with power and strength training at some point.

I hope this helps shed some light on training for all the muscle junkies out there. Next up, we’ll talk about Tempo for strength

Until then. Take Care
Tambe “doc” Joesha