There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Maximize Your Gym Sessions with Tempo Techniques
What if the key to unlocking your true fitness potential lies not in how much you lift but in how you lift it? Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we unravel the hidden power of workout tempo and its transformative impact on your exercise routine. Discover the art of controlling pace, and learn how it can amplify muscle engagement by up to 20%. This episode promises to shift your perspective on fitness by turning each session into a mindful, meditative experience that maximizes your results.
We dive deep into the principles of concentric and eccentric contractions, exploring how a focus on tempo can elevate your workouts. Drawing on scientific evidence and personal experience, I share practical tips to help you concentrate on your movements and achieve your fitness goals. Whether you're a seasoned gym-goer or just starting your journey, this discussion equips you with the insights needed to optimize your workouts and harness the full potential of mindful exercise. Listen in and see how adjusting your tempo can change the game.
Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell. I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name. There is a method to the madness. I've been going over all the acute program variables the last few podcasts. Hope you're enjoying them. I think they're really important. I'm going to pick up today on tempo All right.
Speaker 1:Before I get to that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They're committed to providing the highest level of customer service and home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home can sell for? 386-451-2412. And you know there really is nothing more important than customer service. I think I mean no matter what organization I go with, or company or restaurant or whatever like, if the customer service isn't good I don't want to deal with them. I'm far more likely no, not far more likely I'm absolutely going to spend more money on good customer service. I just think it matters so much. And hey, that's what they do and that's what my other sponsors Overhead Door do. I mean, I really think customer service cannot be oversold. All right.
Speaker 1:So now let's talk about tempo and pace. It matters so much. It is so underappreciated in the gym. So the tempo means how fast are you doing your repetitions? That's what the tempo is. Most of the time, we trainers end up saying slow down, slow down, slow down, pause, slow down, slow down. We say pause, but we mostly say slow down. People go too fast. They're trying to maybe get it over with. They're trying to get through it. I think that's really really common. Just let's get through it. But man, let's get through it. But man, you're missing out on so much If your mindset is to get through it.
Speaker 1:It's more about meditation, in my opinion. Like I've said it before, and maybe I'm a little kooky when it comes to that, but you know what it works when I work out. It's more meditative. It comes to that, but you know what it works when I work out. It's more meditative. Like, I don't want people talking to me during a set. It's going to really annoy me If any people out there listening that's worked out with me. They know that. Don't give me chatter during a set.
Speaker 1:I'm really focused, I'm very meditative on that, meaning that I'm thinking about each portion of the contraction of the muscle. I'm thinking about the muscle I'm working, I'm thinking about the tempo, I'm thinking about where I need to pause, I'm really focused and look studies back this up. Studies have shown that if you focus on the muscle you're working on, like really paying attention to it, kind of like the good Zen Buddhists tell us when we meditate for real, to focus on the breathing like feel the inhalation coming in and feel the exhale leaving, when we really focus on that, the studies have shown that you get 20% more engagement of that muscle. 20% is quite a bit, ladies and gentlemen. So when we are working out, we need to pay attention to the tempo. The tempo is really the first thing that we need to pay attention to in regards to momentum and that meditative state that you can get into with that. It begins with tempo. Tempo gives you a number to focus on. So I want you to think about this when you're contracting a muscle, you're actually contracting the muscle both during the positive and the negative. You're just contracting it differently. But when you're lifting the load, so when you're at the hardest point of the repetition when you're actually lifting the load. That's called the concentric contraction. That's when the muscle fibers shorten to contract the muscle, all right. So that is on your way up, so to say, like on a squat when you're pushing up, that's on the concentric portion of the contraction, or the shortening of the muscle.
Speaker 1:Now a second part on most exercises not all, but most you're going to have an isometric contraction. That's the pause. Now we pause on all upper body flexion exercises. We don't pause where the joint helps us out. So for example, on a chest press or an overhead press if we're locking out, because that would be where the pause is technically. If we're locking out, stopping there, well we're using a hinge joint of the elbows, so really the bones are locked out. That's holding load. So basically it's unnecessary, not necessarily bad, but unnecessary. But on many exercises and really it's hard to describe that in the podcast, but on many exercises, for example, again upper body flexion exercises like rows or pull downs or bicep curls, lower body flexion exercises like leg curls and actually some plantar flexion exercises like calf raises there is going to be a pause. So that's the second part of the contraction. The third part is the E-center contraction. So they're contracting in all three parts. But in the E-center contraction the muscle is actually lengthening as it's contracting, all right. So there's still contraction, in other words, it's still involved.
Speaker 1:You're not just supposed to let it fly down. As a matter of fact, the eccentric should take longer than the concentric, in other words the lowering phase, because the eccentric contraction is 50% stronger than the concentric contraction. So if you want to get more out of it, you're going to fight the load down, not just let it fly down. Tempo really really matters. All right, now let me give you some common tempos.
Speaker 1:Early on we try to teach the six second repetition somewhere in the ballpark of the six second repetition and that can be a two second contraction. So you're lifting the load. Let's say you're on an arm curl, so you're curling the load up for two seconds 1,001, 1,002, pause for a second and then fight it down for three, three, two, one. Up one, two, hold one, fight down three, two, one. Now that's a six second rep. All right, that's a good rep. Some people do four reps, some people do two second reps. I mean, there isn't a perfect tempo. There really isn't. But we should always have a controlled tempo and we need to figure out what tempo works for us. So you might think, well, if a six second or a four to six second is considered ideal for most people, why shouldn't everybody do that? Here's the deal. We're not all the same, and I said most people. We have to tell them to slow down. But there are some people that go too slow, and, yes, you can go too slow.
Speaker 1:We do want to move the concentric a little bit quicker than the eccentric, not only because the eccentric is 50% stronger, as I already said, but also because there's something called the forced velocity curve and what that means is you are going to recruit more fast twitch muscle fibers if you move a load, and when I mean move, I mean move concentrically faster. So think about it this way it's harder to move a load on the lift portion quicker, right, I mean it's pretty easy to move the load quickly. On the negative, on the eccentric, you just let it down, like if you're bench pressing. You just let the load come down with no resistance. So obviously it's hard, you know. It's easier to let that happen quickly. So that's a no-brainer. We don't want to do that. It's harder to push up quicker. The force velocity curve states that the heavier the load, the harder it is to push it fast. And if we are pushing it fast we're recruiting more fast twitch muscle fibers. And when we strength train, ideally we're trying to utilize the fast twitch muscle fibers. They're the ones that make us stronger, where the slow twitch muscle fibers are more based on muscular endurance. So we don't always want to go slower in all cases.
Speaker 1:How do we know if we are under control? That's the biggest key. Pay attention to the tempo in that. Go as fast as you can on the concentric, on the shortening, on the lifting, but in control, meaning don't use momentum. I'm going to go back to curls again.
Speaker 1:Curls is kind of a good one for everybody to think about. Let's say you're doing standing dumbbell curls, so you're trying to shorten or lift the dumbbells into you on a curl. But if you kind of do that little knee bend and hip thrust, well, yeah, that speeds it up, but you're not using the right muscles. We never want to use that. We never want to use momentum and we never want to use other muscle groups to help us lift unnecessarily. But we want to try to move it quickly, but under control. Remember that on the concentric, quickly, but under control. Squeeze and pause at the top, just briefly. So catch it at the top, squeeze it, don't just let it fly up, fly down. Don't do that and then lower two. One.
Speaker 1:To me that's the ideal tempo for most people. All right, I can't say everybody, because everybody's different. I mean there are some people that they just go too slow naturally and so we don't ever want to tell them to slow down. Some people we try to speed up and then when we try to speed them up, sometimes they're using momentum. So tempo can be very difficult for a lot of people. And look, I get it. It can be hard.
Speaker 1:Now, in the gym tempo isn't hard for me. It kind of comes for me pretty naturally. I don't know if that's because I've been lifting weights since I was 16 or 15 or 14 years old, I don't know, but it doesn't always come naturally to me and everything I mean. I literally just finished a piano lesson with my remote piano instructor, natalie Wright, who is phenomenal and man. I battle tempo all the time when it comes to music. I just, you know, I don't know. I just don't know that I have a lot of rhythm. I'm not sure what it is. But I know that she's always saying Rob, you know, it's a two, four count. It's a three, four count, it's a four, four count, you know. And she makes me count and it's really hard for me because I get kind of shy when I'm counting out loud or whatever, but it's good for me. I mean, it's good for me.
Speaker 1:So I can relate to people that might struggle with tempo in the gym, because I struggle with it musically. I just know that we want to try to get it and it is so, again, overlooked. People are always asking me, you know. So how many sets is ideal for my chest? You know, should I be doing? You know, six sets, three sets, two sets, you know whatever. How much load should I use? Important how many reps should I be doing? I'm trying to get bigger. Should I be doing like higher reps with lighter loads or heavier loads with lighter, less reps? I'm talking too fast here, I'm out of tempo. So you know, yeah, all that's important. But rarely do they say what about the quality of the rep? Like why didn't that ever come up? I mean, we don't think of quality in so many things in life these days and man, it's all about that.
Speaker 1:In strength training it is so much quality over quantity. I mean people will go to the gym and they'll say, you know, I'm doing three sets of 10 on this, and I'm doing two sets of 10 on this, and I'm doing four sets of 12 on this, and I'm going, okay, okay, okay, you know. And then you look at some of their sets and they're like they're talking or they're throwing the weight around, they're swinging their hips. I'm like, man, you didn't do any sets, those sets sucked. I mean, you didn't get much out of that.
Speaker 1:And then you'll see this one person zeroed in and they're just squeezing it and they're controlling it and they're paying attention to it, and they either have their AirPods in or their music on or they're tuning everybody out and they're just really focused. I mean, man, I will bet the farm that that person's getting more muscle activation than the person that just has their little check sheet going through the motions. I mean, look, it's better to be there. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you're wasting your time if you're not putting your mental energy into it. That's not true. You're getting something out of it. You're going to the gym, which is a positive place. It's a good place, you know. Maybe if you don't go there with 100% quality, you'll learn it, you'll catch it, as they say, you'll see more quality people around doing it, you know. Hopefully a place that has good role models for that I mean. So, yeah, it's great that you're there, but when you're there, why not put in 100% quality?
Speaker 1:And it begins with tempo and form. I mean, I just can't stress it enough. I worked out this morning. I typically do my strength training Monday, wednesday and Friday. For me, this is Wednesday You're probably going to hear this, or at least it's going to launch on Thursday but I was zeroed in, you know. I mean I set the weight and if the weight feels off that day, maybe I'm feeling a little weaker and it's a little heavy. I changed the weights lower so I can get quality repetitions, because that's what it comes down to. If I can get you to just put your mind on the set, you know. I mean I'm not telling you to forget about your reps, I'm not telling you forget about your load, I'm telling you that make tempo, form equal, okay.
Speaker 1:So remember, move the lifting portion, the concentric. All right, the lifting portion. Lifting portion, the concentric all right, the lifting portion, the concentric shortening of the muscle. Move it quick. Move it as quick as you can, without throwing it, without using it momentum Pause when appropriate. If you don't know, then just pause and then lower slowly. Three, two, one, that's your tempo. Lift, pause, three, two, one, lift, pause, three, two, one, that's your tempo. And keep it consistent. As people start to get tired, they change their tempo. Don't do that. It's harder to keep a good tempo, just like in music, for me. If it's getting a little faster, it's harder for me to stay in the right timing. Well, yeah, then I got to practice. I got to practice doing that, all right. So you practice that. And practice going to Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, because they are the premier garage door company in the state of Florida and we're fortunate enough to have one here in Daytona Beach, owned, owned by my good friends Jeff and Zach Hawk. So check them out at overheaddoordaytonacom.
