Im gonna start lifting for time not reps, Im gonna buy that little gym buddie that has been shown on here and just go till the time I set is up, I will add weight once the weight im using feels light.
I think the volume should be a nice shock.
Dave Tate did this. He did 30-45 seconds. I guess it might work. I’ve always thought either try it or don’t descredit it, but that’s also how I wound up doing HIT one time.
Tried this once, didn’t really work as I hoped it would. I think if you are the type of person that has alot of volume anyway it doesn’t do too much.
How are you going to keep track of time while under the neurological distress of a working set? Pre-set watch?
I’m not sure but I was guessing that the OP’s idea was to work with a given exercise for a pre-set period of time. E.g., spend 10 minutes doing Exercise X, and stop doing further sets once the time is up.
I know he said reps, but he could have meant total reps, as some programs call for accomplishing, for example, 25 total reps for a given exercise.
There would be something to be said for this. I’d rather for the most part make the judgment to be done with a given exercise in a different manner, but there are applications for this. I would never structure an entire workout this way, myself. I have sometimes done individual exercises this way.
On the other hand, it might be that he meant he plans to terminate sets when his device beeps at him.
Personally, I’m not a fan of that idea.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I’m not sure but I was guessing that the OP’s idea was to work with a given exercise for a pre-set period of time. E.g., spend 10 minutes doing Exercise X, and stop doing further sets once the time is up.
I know he said reps, but he could have meant total reps, as some programs call for accomplishing, for example, 25 total reps for a given exercise.
There would be something to be said for this. I’d rather for the most part make the judgment to be done with a given exercise in a different manner, but there are applications for this. I would never structure an entire workout this way, myself. I have sometimes done individual exercises this way.
On the other hand, it might be that he meant he plans to terminate sets when his device beeps at him.
Personally, I’m not a fan of that idea.
[/quote]
Maybe, but most people who refer to this time under tension lark tend to refer to sets that last 30-45 seconds. Dr. Clay was talking about it in his recent article so perhaps that is where the idea came from.
I think we all know that time under tension has an effect on growth but narrowing it down to time per set doesn’t really do the notion justice. Muscle growth is really a product of time under tension over the course of your life, not a set or a workout. You can throw in fancy techniques every now and then - milking any muscle growth benefits there is to be had from a ‘new stimulus,’ even if it is only fleeting, but anyone who has been doing this shit for a while will know that the key to long term growth is intelligent application of intensity/hard work.
Ive done it in the past, and didn’t like it too much THEN…
One other factor that matters when you are doing this is your tempo. You’ll quickly find out that time spend in the concentric portion is the hardest. If you do long eccentrics of something like 5 seconds, your endurance will be much better than if you do shorter ones, or even 5 second concentrics.
CT had a program called superman sets which was timed sets but ballistic reps. This was pretty fun and challenging.
But ya, the rep speed will matter. Cause you might be able to do something like 40 seconds with 200lbs with fast reps, but if you go slower reps you might be able to do the same time with 220lbs. So its hard to keep track of progress if you dont keep your cadence constant.
Also if I were to do this again, I would still keep some form of heavy lifting for REPS in my program to at least maintain strength.
Also, I see everyone is bringing up TUT, and im not sure if its ever been “proven” in the real world that there is an optimal length for each set. IMO, its the OVERALL TUT that matters the most. Ie: sets of 40 seconds might be good, but a bunch of sets of 10 seconds may be just as good.
Agreed.
As I am not an exercise scientist and don’t play at being one, I have never gone to the trouble of going through the literature to see what the flaw, which I guess likely exists, is in this business of concluding that sets need to be 30-45 seconds or whatever similar figure for best hypertrophy.
There are plenty of successful bb’ers, and rather huge PL’ers, that at least for some muscle groups basically never do sets that last this long.
I never timed a Yates set off of a video, but in an article Yates once estimated his sets as typically being 15 seconds. Not that a single case proves anything, but as an illustration.
One area where exercise science is difficult is that in many fields it’s completely valid to hold all else equal and change only one parameter, evaluating the effect of that change. But in exercise, this generally is not very revealing or can actually even be deceptive. If you change one parameter, there may well be another that you ought to change, and if you don’t then you will come to a wrong conclusion about the best value for the parameter you are changing.
I do not know, but rather doubt that it is the case that any study reporting that 30-45 second sets are best for hypertrophy actually employed optimization in study of briefer sets, and also may not have been looking at suitable populations.
At any rate I don’t know the basis for the conclusion, but I suspect that it is suspect, no play on words intended.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Agreed.
As I am not an exercise scientist and don’t play at being one, I have never gone to the trouble of going through the literature to see what the flaw, which I guess likely exists, is in this business of concluding that sets need to be 30-45 seconds or whatever similar figure for best hypertrophy.
There are plenty of successful bb’ers, and rather huge PL’ers, that at least for some muscle groups basically never do sets that last this long.
I never timed a Yates set off of a video, but in an article Yates once estimated his sets as typically being 15 seconds. Not that a single case proves anything, but as an illustration.
One area where exercise science is difficult is that in many fields it’s completely valid to hold all else equal and change only one parameter, evaluating the effect of that change. But in exercise, this generally is not very revealing or can actually even be deceptive. If you change one parameter, there may well be another that you ought to change, and if you don’t then you will come to a wrong conclusion about the best value for the parameter you are changing.
I do not know, but rather doubt that it is the case that any study reporting that 30-45 second sets are best for hypertrophy actually employed optimization in study of briefer sets, and also may not have been looking at suitable populations.
At any rate I don’t know the basis for the conclusion, but I suspect that it is suspect, no play on words intended.[/quote]
Another thing to consider, is shorter sets, with shorter rest. 15 second hard sets with 30 seconds rest MAY be better than 45 second sets (which will likely be less weight) with the same amount of rest or longer.
I think it depends on the person, and what you want to do. I know others will argue that it doesn’t matter, but I strongly feel that in addition to intentiy and further force production, total TUT for a workout is an important factor.
Its not an end all be all, because total TUT (like volume) is inversely related to intensity (force). This is why ramping seems to work well, as well as just getting in TUT with heavier weights in the 85-90% range. Many ways to skin a cat.
I seem to rememer though that Dave Tate mentioned that he didn’t like having to look at the clock, because he felt it took away from the intensity.
Also I hope everone knows that pretty much all rep recommendations for “hypertrophy range” are based on old research involving TUT and Tempo. Because the two are related, it is very well possible that someone doing sets of 12, is really training similar to another guy that is using sets of 5. There are slight differences, but typically people would say the one guy is training for size or endurance and the other is training for strength, which is not 100% true.
All in all, lifting for time CAN work, as long as you are able to progress consistantly.
Ive tried the tut and must say going 30 to 45 seconds is much longer than i thought it would be…i had to strip wieghts to maintain the 30 second to 45 seconds or go with a wieght that seemed way to light (and that i could go beyond 12 reps with). Of course i could of slowed down my reps as far as speed; but this seemed “extremely” slow.
I was not impressed with the gains i made using this principal…it also seemed i was more “endurance” training than wieght training for strengh as i had very limited gains in strengh when using this principal…and strengh is something you need to gain in size.
This is not to say that i do not do longer times with sets as i do like doing strip sets or running the dumbbell rack from time to time; however, with strip sets you are starting at a much higher wieght…where if you just used a wieght that you could do to 30 to 45 seconds you would be going lighter wieght
…i must say for most sets i am done in less than 30 seconds even if doing 8 or 10 reps; and im not one who is simply swinging the wieghts wildly or dropping the wieght on the negative.
@silverhydra, because many people have this problem (looking on the watch while doing the bench press isn’t easy) we made a training software for mobile phones and smartphones.
Here you’ll find some screencasts about the “time-based training” (time under tension method):
http://www.minute-training.com/node/6
The idea is to use the mobile phone as a timer and Workout Log. As I’m one of the developers, I’m also an early user. For me the tut training works very well, I use 60 sec. to build up muscles and 30 sec. for maximal strength training, changing the method every 4-6 weeks.
[quote]horsepuss wrote:
Im gonna start lifting for time not reps, Im gonna buy that little gym buddie that has been shown on here and just go till the time I set is up, I will add weight once the weight im using feels light.
I think the volume should be a nice shock.[/quote]
Horsepuss, Did you wind up lifting for time? If so, do you have anything to report from your experiment? What kind of routine did you follow (eg: a couple ramping warm-up sets followed by X % of max for Y seconds)?
I tried this for about two weeks and ended up getting weaker :/. That’s just my experience, of course. There may have been a problem in xyz that I don’t care to think about, but that’s my two cents. Best of luck!
I think Christian made a comment recently that it’s not necessarily ‘time under tension’, but time under MAXIMUM tension. Which makes me think about how years ago a training partner and myself tried Static Contraction training, whereby you essentially time how long you can hold a weight at the point of maximum tension (it was developed after Power Factor training, where you did a similar approach, but actually involved some degree of movement through the strongest ROM for a muscle).
All we really ended up with was some seriously sore joints, and some strength increases in out static holds. Still, I’m sure my diet wasn’t the best back then,… just a few things for thought I guess.
S
I know that EDT/circuits/ whatever they are called work very well as a ‘finisher’, coming after main workout, to achieve a pump, and be like cardio as well. I’m talking about very quick reps of submaximal weight, 10-20 rep range, alternating between two exercises until the time’s up.
Since it’s S.A.I.D. though, i’d not drop proper sets (measured by repetitions performed) altogether, unless I wanted to get worse at lifting weights in a conventional style.
We could also add the obligatory, No bodybuilder ever got big by timing his sets and ending them because he reached so-many seconds.
I thought about trying this, I suspect if you use low set’s,relatively heavy weights and relatively low/medium volume then the change (additional time under tension) will be a welcome change and build some new muscle.
I remember reading in one of t nations articles a coach saying just change one thing in your workouts, be it rep’s rest periods or swap exercises to stimulate new muscle growth/strength gains, in this case the ramp up of volume will produce the ‘surprise’ that your muscles need to grow.
I’d guess that this will work for around 3-6 weeks before your body adapts and progress stagnates. i doubt Dave Tate used time sets for longer.
As usual try it, and if it produces results that take you closer to your goals then do it for as long as it work’s for you.
[quote]dankid wrote:
Ive done it in the past, and didn’t like it too much THEN…
One other factor that matters when you are doing this is your tempo. You’ll quickly find out that time spend in the concentric portion is the hardest. If you do long eccentrics of something like 5 seconds, your endurance will be much better than if you do shorter ones, or even 5 second concentrics.
CT had a program called superman sets which was timed sets but ballistic reps. This was pretty fun and challenging.
But ya, the rep speed will matter. Cause you might be able to do something like 40 seconds with 200lbs with fast reps, but if you go slower reps you might be able to do the same time with 220lbs. So its hard to keep track of progress if you dont keep your cadence constant.
Also if I were to do this again, I would still keep some form of heavy lifting for REPS in my program to at least maintain strength.[/quote]