Training Concepts: How To Understand Tempo

This essential training concept simply means timing. 

This part is easy, but where people get lost is knowing which part of the movement is which.

Every exercise has 4 distinct components, even though you might think of it as ‘one rep’.

All exercises have a ‘stretch’ (eccentric), a pause, a ‘contraction’ (concentric) and another pause.

Stretch - pause - contraction - pause.

Stay with me- don’t get thrown off by the lingo because I have a trick up my sleeve to help you remember it without the terminology.

For example, a squat has 

• A stretch (the lowering part)
• Pause at the bottom
• Pushing back up (the contraction part)
• Pause at the top 

A shoulder press has:

• Pushing the DBs up overhead (the contraction part)
• Pause at the top
• Lowering (the lowering part)
• Pause at the bottom

Why is this important?

Knowing how long to spend in each of the 4 phases is essential to carrying out your gym program properly.

If you don’t read the tempo and you’re doing the same speed each time, you’re missing out on a chance to progress and challenge your muscles in different lengths during your exercise program!

Each training block within your program might even have the exact same exercise, but with a different tempo, it completely changes the movement. Think about a fast squat vs. a slow squat with a 3-second pause in the bottom position… ouch!

If you pause at the bottom of the squat for 3 seconds, it’s going to be a lot harder than the other pause at the top, which is super easy. This applies to all of your exercises! Understanding tempo will help you focus on the important parts for your program.

Reading tempo

The way tempo is written is with the stretch first, ALWAYS, (even if the movement itself starts with a contraction)

If I gave an exercise a tempo of 4121, this simply means:

4 seconds in the stretch phase, 1-second pause, 2-second contraction phase, 1-second pause. Simple right?

So let’s look at this with our two different examples so you can make sense of it.

Squat example:

A squat with a tempo of 4121: 

• 4-second squat down (the lowering part, stretch/easy)
• 1-second pause at the bottom
• 2 second pushing back up (the contraction part/hard part)
• 1-second pause at the top 

Shoulder press example:

A shoulder press with a tempo of 4121? 

This one is trickier to wrap your head around because a shoulder press doesn’t actually start with a stretch (the first number), it begins with the hard part (the third number)!

• 4-second lowering dumbbells down from the top position (stretch/easy)
• 1-second pause at the bottom
• 2 seconds pushing the DBs back overhead (the contraction part)
• 1-second pause at the top 

I’ve put in bold the start of the movement with the corresponding number in the tempo. You might have to read this a few times while you pretend to do a shoulder press or a squat, don’t be shy.

The way to remember this all?

The first number in the tempo sequence is always the eccentric or the stretch, as we covered before, and the eccentric always feels like the easiest part of the movement, while the contraction feels the hardest. 

Eccentric = easy. 

So forget the lingo & just remember that the first number in the tempo is always the easiest part of the movement!

Think about which bit feels easiest, associate it with the first number then go from there.

It’s more simple than it sounds, I promise; just get practising!