Anyone who frequents a gym will know its common knowledge that to build muscle and size we need to lift heavy. A smaller set range with a heavier weight is an age old, tried and tested method of building mass but there are other ways. Anyone can swing a heavy weight around like the hulk and think they are achieving. It feels good to lift a personal best and feel the pump but are they lifting with enough technique and timing to optimise growth and strength versus the time and effort (and money) spent in the gym hammering away at each muscle group? Most of the time they are not. Technique, Timing and Form are all crucial to building muscle and size. This month I’ll be covering the notion of “Time Under Tension” and Muscle “Hypertrophy”.
Time Under Tension for Muscle Hypertrophy
Most people base their training around the emphasis of weight and number of reps. But what’s crucially important for muscle growth is time under tension (TUT), but just how much attention does this muscle building factor really need?
What Does Time Under Tension Mean?
Sounds complex right? Don’t leave yet coz although it sounds technical, it’s really the most simple thing you will learn.
Time under tension (TUT) is simply the length of time a muscle is contracting to resist the force of a weight. For example, if someone were performing a set of bicep curls and it took them 30 seconds to complete the set, they have a total TUT of 30 seconds.
Time – Is the period during a set where the working muscle is contracting.
Tension – Is the force a muscle is producing to contract and move/hold the weight. Put simply stop swinging and rushing your lifts.
Charles Poliquin author of the strength and mass development book “The Poliquin Principles” states that different training objectives such as muscular strength, hypertrophy (growth) and endurance are achieved optimally by different time under tension ranges.
To insure you’re always working in the time under tension zone optimum for muscle growth, stick to:
Reps: 8 – 12 per set
Tempo: 2 sec Concentric (Positive/Lift)
3 sec Eccentric (Negative/Release).
You want to hold for 1 second at the top and bottom of the exercise this means it will take you roughly 40 – 60 seconds to perform a set and put you in the middle of the recommended hypertrophy TUT range.
Peet’s Tip: Keep rest between sets to 60 seconds or less during the workout. This will not allow the full recovery of muscle groups, thus causing the muscle to utilise deeper fibres to deal with the weight load. It may also eliminate time-wasting activities in the gym, making your workouts more efficient. Lastly, it insures a constant pump in the targeted muscle group, allowing proper expansion—and eventually, repair—in the right places.
If you start to get tired as you progress through your workout from set to set, people will do one of two things. Keep trying to push the same weight but with less reps, or reduce the weight and keep working in the same rep range.
If this happens, you should always choose to reduce the weight slightly and maintain your rep range. The reason for this is simple, if you start lowering reps you will be reducing your time under tension and start moving away from the optimum range for muscle hypertrophy. Also, if you keep struggling with the same weight while dropping reps your form will become sloppy. This will result in the recruitment of other muscles to compensate and takes tension off the target muscle.
As three-time Mr. O (1977-1979) and one of my biggest inspirations Frank Zane instructs, “Always be sure the negative motion is slower than the positive. By putting more focus on a slower negative, amazing gains can be realised.” Also to bring on growth and put height on your muscularity, contract hard at the peak of the movement. This delivers dimension to your muscles and sends a message into the muscle that spurs further growth. So squeeze hard at the top, and release nice and slow.
Below is a workout from my Bicep session, after warm up I will hit a compound movement with 8 sets of 8 with a 30 second rest.
Exercise: Cable Bicep Curl
Form: Set the bricks to a weight that you feel you can perform another 3 reps comfortably after your first set. Stand square on to the cable machine set from the lowest position with a straight or V bar (I have a wrist injury so I tend to use the V). Lock out stance with toes around shoulder width, slightly bend your knees but lock them with chest out. I lean back slightly as to add a fuller range of motion; this also eliminates “Swing!”
Sets: 8
Reps: 8
Concentric: 1sec
Eccentric 3 sec
Rest 30 sec
Peet’s Tip: Always explode on the positive part of the movement for maximum activation of fast twitch muscle fibres. Squeeze and hold the contraction at the top of the movement for one second. Control the negative (lowering) and maintain tension on the muscle throughout the entire exercise. I can’t stress these points enough.
Control the weight… don’t let the weight control you!
Bottom line
While “Time Under Tension” is a notion all lifters should be weary and mindful of, don’t occupy too much time worrying about it. It’s fundamental like walking, we don’t think about walking we just do it. The trick is to cement FORM and TIMING as a fundamental part of your everyday training technique. Add this mentality to your workouts and it should set you on a good course to solid GAINZ and decrease the chance of injury. Oh and don’t forget to lift like there’s a loved one under a car!
Peet’s Progress
This August I prepped and entered my first “Mens Physique Fitness” competition at the Malaga Summer Muscle Festival. It was a great experience and chance to make all my mistakes and learn what it takes to step onstage. Diet, Training, Carb depletion, Water/Sodium manipulation and even hair removal and Tanning were all a fascinating experience. I helped train and competed with 18 year old Ali Blight and the oldest competitor was 47. Never too young or too old! I recommend for anyone who is thinking of getting into fitness to visit an event like this, it really gives you some motivation seeing what is achievable.
