| Quick Search | |
 |
|
|---|---|
“How many reps for each set should I do if I want to make my chest bigger?”
“How fast should I lift the weight?”
These are questions I have heard many times over the years. I’d like to try and help here with a general explanation of how reps and tempo work. The assumption I am making is that you’ve been training a little while now, maybe a few years, and your initial “respond to anything” period has now leveled off. You’re now looking for efficient results with the time you have available.
Reps
The general rule for people looking to put on size and strength is to lower your rep range to one to six. The lower you get the more of a power-lifting exercise it becomes, focusing purely on strength. As you go up from one to six, moving toward ten reps we are looking more at the size building aspects rather so much than strength, and then moving to 12 and beyond it becomes a muscle endurance building approach.
Of course, there will be exceptions to the rule. I know of people who can pretty much do any rep range and they will begin to grow in size. For them, volume is what counts rather than a specific rep range – the more they do the bigger and stronger they get. For the vast majority of us lower rep ranges tend to lead to increases in strength and size, whereas higher rep ranges give us more of a tonality and endurance performance.
As I said though, one glove doesn’t fit all and if you have some training experience you will know more about how your body works than someone else. The key thing is to take into account your body type – i.e do you put on size relatively quickly or are naturally quite lean? – your age, your ethnic background (your genes), and the nutrition you are using to complement your training strategy.
Tempo
What is tempo then? Quite simply, it is the rate at which you move the weights and directly relates to the time your muscle is under tension for the duration of a particular rep. Tempo is the controller of time under tension and tension causes the muscle to have to work, hence the more tension it is under the more it will be forced to adapt. The different tempos will lead to different training effects of strength, endurance and explosiveness.
Examples of this in written form would be:
1-0-1
4-0-2
2-2-4
The first number represents the negative or eccentric phase - in other words, when you are lowering the weight or when you are moving in a direction opposite to the muscle contraction. For a squat, bench press, or bicep curl this would be when you lower the weight. The second number is the pause after the lowering motion. The majority of the time people don’t hold the weight at the bottom of the motion, hence making the number of seconds “0”, but as in the example above of “2-2-4”, this means one second lowering and a two second pause at the bottom.
The third number refers to the upward or concentric motion. Again, with a bench press this would be pushing the bar up. Although not typical for many weight trainers, pushing up for a longer period than when coming down can affect the workout significantly. Try a “2-0-4” tempo and you’ll see what I mean.
The key to achieving a certain result is to follow the above guidelines and experiment with a combination of the general rules and what your body responds to. A shock to the system will always encourage training adaption so try doing things you haven’t done before if you find yourself stuck on a plateau.
Good luck and stay consistent!
Sheraz
Take a look at Sheraz's Back & Chest workout by clicking here, and make sure you take a look at the technical video first.
