What Is Tempo?

Person X

I have heard some people in my gym talk about tempo when they are lifting weights, but I don’t know what it means!

Helder

The tempo of an exercise is the speed that we choose to move when lifting and lowering the weight. It basically describes the duration of time that each part of the repetition takes to perform.

There are 4 parts to each rep we perform, the lowering of the weight, the pause between the lowering of the weight, lifting of the weight and the pause between the lifting of the weight again.

Person X

So what tempo do you recommend?

Helder

The most standardised tempo would be a 4 second lowering of the weight, 1 second pause, 2 second lifting of the weight, 1 second pause and repeat, on paper it would look like this: 4.1.2.1

Person X

Why do you think 2 seconds is a good number when lifting the weight?

Helder

If we lift the weight deliberately slowly, this will reduce motor unit activation, which in turn means we fail to recruit high-threshold motor units. if we lift the weight to quickly we fail to load the fibres with sufficient high force, so a 2 second tempo is ideal.

Person X

What about the 4 seconds lowering of the weight, why so long?

Helder

A slower lowering tempo increases the amount of active force production and the total time the muscle is exposed to a given level of tension.

It is a lot more fatiguing when we lift the weight than when we lower the weight and for that reason, slower lowering of the weight is an ideal way to increase time under tension without reducing the amount of reps we need to do to stimulate muscle growth.