Changing Up Your Tempos

Changing up your lifting tempos can be a great and simple way to add more variety to your lifting program. You can achieve this by adjusting the time of your eccentric, concentric, and isometric muscle contractions during an exercise. 

First, a quick recap of the three types of muscle contractions listed above:

Concentric: Muscle shortening. For example, the initial motion of a bicep curl.

Isometric: A static muscle contraction. For example, if you were to hold your elbow at 90 degrees of flexion during a bicep curl.

Eccentric: A muscle lengthening contraction. For example, the lowering of the weight during a bicep curl.

I apologize for using the bicep curl as an example, because it is the most standard and boring one, but it is also the easiest to do while sitting down and reading this. Now back to the point of this article… tempos.

The tempo of a lift is the duration of each contraction during an exercise. For a squat, the first movement comprises the eccentric phase. This could range from 1-6 seconds depending on the results you desire. The bottom position of a squat, before you start standing up, is the isometric portion. An isometric contraction can be performed at the bottom of the squat, halfway down when descending, or halfway up when ascending. You can add in an isometric wherever you want during the movement. 

Lastly, we now have the concentric phase, seen when you stand back up from the squat. These contractions can be adjusted a variety of ways for different exercises. This way, you can add more variety to your exercise program without the need for more equipment. Change up some of your tempos and spice it up. A little more variety will probably do you some good and get you some more of them gains!

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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