Substituting Weights For Tempo

[faz]

by kelly bagget

Training Principles

Growth is stimulated from a combination of tension, total work, and fatigue. As we’ll see in a minute, outside the boundaries of extremely low volume programs, progressively increasing tension at a given level of work is the primary stimulus for ongoing gains in growth. Factors related to fatigue might add around 10% to that.

1. Tension

To get maximal tension on all available muscle fibers in a given muscle requires full motor unit recruitment in that muscle. This can occur 2 ways:

A: Lifting a heavy load (80%+) so that all the muscle cells are firing from the first rep. (example: Lifting an 80% load for 5 reps)

B: Lifting a light load in a fatigued state so that your muscles “think” the load is heavy. (example: Lifting: a 50% load with short rest intervals and having the weight feel heavier then your *** after a 5 mile run.)

Anytime you put forth a maximal effort and have to really strain to move the weight, regardless of the weight on the bar, all the muscle fibers in the working muscle turn on and “tense up.” This is tension. Get a muscle fiber to “tense up” often enough in a workout and it gets damaged. Your muscles don’t know how much weight they’re lifting, they only know they’re working. It's not necessarily the weight that induces hypertrophy but what the muscles "go through" while lifting a weight.

2. What's the difference between heavy vs light loads for tension?

Having said that, there is a difference between lifting a light load in a state of fatigue that "feels" heavy, and a load that “is” heavy. The main difference between the 2 is the heavy load will induce earlier recruitment of the fast twitch fibers and more eccentric microtrauma during the lowering phase of a movement, which is the primary stimulus for growth of muscle protein myofibrills, while the lighter load lifted in a state of fatigue, often associated with more repetitions, will tend to induce more growth through increased “energy and water storage” mechanisms.

3. Making strength increases and getting stronger over time is all about increasing tension, while getting a “pump” is more about total work and fatigue. Suffice to say, the heavier weight you lift with a muscle or muscle group, the more tension you create in that muscle. Your muscles become damaged under tension and repair themselves by getting a little bigger so that they can better resist the load.

 

[Alek]

Ok guys, been testing it for the past 2 workouts, and you were right. This thing is BRUTAL.

Slowing down the positives I can barely complete a set that's easy when slowing down negatives.

I can feel the tension increase, and it truly is brutal, and this is whilst using baby weights. Without taxing the joints.

Thanks guys.

 

[Alek]

<div>
(Fausto @ Feb. 13 2009,4:22)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">From what I have read so far, you are way too worried about curls whereas I'd simply dump them if they are hurting me, for chest exercises, there are alternatives like Flyes and Peck deck although some called them peck wrecks, I would not do cable cross overs because the wrists work too much there!

Don't know what else to suggest, but you seem to know your way around! Just streamline what matters in terms of most productive exercises.

</div>
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"> I trained them once this month, and they instantly grew 2 inches (no bull).

Alec, I don't buy that! Nothing grows instant, except of course, one other part of the anatomy!

</div>

My legs do after a layoff. I train them 4-5 times a year. They lose about an inch in the months I don't train them, and when I train them I gain an instant 2 inches.

I call myself a mini tom-platz lol. Seriously freaky leg genetics. My father has never done an exercise in his life, and has the legs of a natural pro BB.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I would not do cable cross overs because the wrists work too much there!</div>

I guess it depends on the angle of the injury. In my case cable flyes don't seem to bring me any pain, at all.
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">From what I have read so far, you are way too worried about curls whereas I'd simply dump them if they are hurting me</div>

Nah, its just that I exercise at home with dumb-bells, and most DB exercises are curls. I'm not &quot;obsessed with curls&quot;. Its what I am limited to. And its precisely what I have to play with.

Basically I don't have a &quot;dayjob&quot; but a business, so my schedule is all over the map. So something has to go.

- Either I go to the gym and don't do HST (since I can never guarantee sticking to the precisness of the HST schedule (gym allows a few parts to be exercised without pain, like cable biceps and cable triceps and cable shoulders and back, no pain)

- I give up my business and personal life, lol, and do HST in the gym (there are no 24 hour gyms in my country, they have very limited work hours)

- Or I exercise at home with HST, but find a way to make HST work with smaller weights. So far this tempo solution is proving to be a possible solution





But I found A SNEAKY little trick in the gym the other day. If I manage to fit the gym into my HST schedule, ill use this, but basically....


You can attach the cable pulley to the pull down machine, and the row back machine.

That way you get ALOT MORE weight to play with

I had to do this with an empty gym in the morning and the owner not watching, but it effin works pretty swell.