[quote]JJP wrote:
Coach,
When training yourself and your athletes, how much emphasis do you place on tempo? Does it change for different athletes/your own changing goals etc.?
Thanks and best wishes.[/quote]
From part II of my ‘‘Thib system’’ series:
''This goes hand-in-hand with the first principle mentioned. There are basically three ways of executing a movement when it comes to the speed of execution/type of contraction.
- Constant tension movement: You never release the contraction of the target muscle group during the execution of the exercise. Basically, the muscle you’re trying to stimulate must be kept maximally flexed for every inch of every rep of every set. Never let it relax, not even between each rep!
The goal of this type of contraction is to prevent blood from entering the muscle during the set. This creates a hypoxic state because oxygen can’t enter the muscle. It also prevents metabolic waste (lactate, hydrogen ions, etc.) from being taken out of the muscle during the set. Both of these factors increase the release of local growth factors like IGF-1, MGF, and growth hormone which will help stimulate growth.
By the way, the use of isometric contractions also falls into this category.
- Accelerative concentric, controlled eccentric: In this type of contraction, you’re trying to accelerate during the actual lifting portion of the movement and lower the weight under control. You go to the exercise’s full range of motion, but you briefly pause (around one second) between the stretch position and the following lifting action. This short pause will negate the contribution of the stretch-shortening cycle to the force production.
You see, three things can contribute to producing force when you’re lifting a weight: the actual contraction of the muscle, the activation of the reflex known as the stretch-shortening cycle (also called the myotatic stretch reflex), and the fact that muscle tissue is elastic, much like a rubber band.
When trying to maximize the amount of actual work the muscle itself must perform, you want to minimize the action of both the stretch reflex and the elastic contribution of the muscle’s structure. By doing a simple one-second pause before lifting the weight, you can accomplish that and thus maximize the amount of force that the muscle must produce.
When you’re lifting the weight, try to contract the muscle as fast as you can. This doesn’t mean focusing on lifting the bar as fast as you can. Rather, it means that you should attempt to tense the muscle as hard as possible right from the start of the lifting motion. This will maximize the recruitment of the highly trainable fast-twitch fibers.
Finally, when you lower the weight, do so under control. The eccentric portion of the movement is where most of the muscle damage occurs (micro-tears of the muscle fibers) and is a powerful growth stimulus.
- Using the stretch reflex: With this type of lifting, you want to involve the stretch reflex and elastic component of the muscle. Thus, you want to lift the load as fast as possible. This explosive lifting will improve the capacity, over time, of the nervous system to recruit the fast-twitch fibers.
It isn’t effective by itself to stimulate maximum growth in those fibers because you can’t fatigue them sufficiently (the time of contraction and duration of the muscle tension per rep is too low). But by lifting this way on some movements, you’ll become better and better at activating the fast-twitch fibers. When you’re more efficient at doing that, every single other exercise becomes more effective.
So, when do you use each technique?
Every time you do an isolation exercise, use constant tension. Every time! The goal of an isolation exercise is to completely focus the stress on the target muscle. You want a maximal local effect, and to do that you need constant tension. Without constant tension, isolation exercises are pointless. This is actually one of the main reasons why isolation movements get a bad rap. People don’t know how to do them properly, and as a result, they end up not being effective at stimulating growth. But when done using constant tension, they’re very effective at it.
Don’t try to use constant tension lifting with compound movements. Not that it’s impossible, but it’s a waste of time. The goal of a compound movement is to overload several muscles. By nature, you can’t isolate a muscle during a multi-joint exercise, and attempting to do so will make the exercise much less effective than it should be.
With regular compound movements, you want to use the second technique: accelerative lifting, short pause in the stretch position, and a controlled eccentric. This will magnify the hypertrophic effect of the big movements by overloading the involved muscles as much as possible.
Finally, the explosive lifting is best kept for exercises such as the Olympic lifts, plyometrics, and various jumping drills and throws. While these movements won’t directly build mass, they’ll improve your capacity to stimulate growth by improving your neural efficiency to recruit muscle fibers.‘’
I rarely use a specific tempo (unless using a speical technique that requires tempo prescriptions) I simply advise one how to execute each phase of the lift… slowly, under control, fast or explosively.
