Time Under Load, Rep Speeds et cetera

I've been doing the same routine for almost a year now.

Prior to that, I had been doing a very abbreviated workout consisting Chins, Dips and Leg Press.

Then I started working part-time at a personal training facility that had Med X equipment and so my routine changed to this:

1. Lumbar Spine
2. Leg Press
3. Pulldown
4. Chest Press
5. 4 way neck.

Prior to this routine, I was using a 5/5 cadence and TULs were between 30-60 seconds depending on the exercise.

However, with the Med X equipment, I was performing SuperSlow style reps with a 8/8 or 10/10 cadence and TULs of at least 90 seconds, more in some cases.

As I said earlier, I've kept this up for almost a year, training once a week or once every ten days, depending.

Concurrently, I've been following an Intermittent Fasting style diet and have lost a fair amount of body-fat as some of my pictures have demonstrated.

Recently, I've been thinking of rep speeds again and also TULs.

Drew, Fred Hahn and Terry Carter have been particularly vocal about heavier loads and therefore shorter TULs and Drew has said that 5/5 or quicker might even be better for hypertrophy.

Here is a picture taken three or four years ago when I was using 5/5 as rep speed, 45 second TULs and much more volume, upto 8 or 9 exercises on Nautilus Nitro equipment.

Is it just my imagination or did I look bigger then compared to now? Please do note that I am much, much leaner now.

What do you people think?

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well you did look bigger then Ace.However, its difficult to say how much fat you may have lost, since the latest pics.

coomo wrote:well you did look bigger then Ace.However, its difficult to say how much fat you may have lost, since the latest pics.

I thought so.

I'm concerned now that the long TULs have resulted in me losing muscle.

I feel strong(er). Are my eyes playing tricks on me because I've slimmed down?

I'll start changing things from next month onwards and report back.

Look at a more recent picture.

I have definitely lost size.

I now need to figure out what it is?

Did I diet down too quickly?

Lack of volume?

Too much volume?

Too infrequent?

Long TULs?

Rep cadence too slow?

Exercise selection wrong?

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Are you stronger, in the later pics than the earlier? i think its just fat loss.However, perhaps you might want to check your training.I cant see how tul length, will cause muscle loss.Up the calories a touch, say 2/3oo a day.Get back to weekly/twice weekly w/o, check your weight/poundages/measurements, in 6/8 weeks.Use the medx w/o, nothing wrong with that. but go back to 60 second tuls,if your not confident in your routine, your results will not be as good as if you are confident, and expect good results.Personally all my tuls are 90ish seconds except legs which are 120 ish.

coomo wrote:Are you stronger, in the later pics than the earlier? i think its just fat loss.However, perhaps you might want to check your training.I cant see how tul length, will cause muscle loss.Up the calories a touch, say 2/3oo a day.Get back to weekly/twice weekly w/o, check your weight/poundages/measurements, in 6/8 weeks.Use the medx w/o, nothing wrong with that. but go back to 60 second tuls,if your not confident in your routine, your results will not be as good as if you are confident, and expect good results.Personally all my tuls are 90ish seconds except legs which are 120 ish.

I don't know if I'm stronger because I'm using completely different equipment!

I'll have to ''test'' my strength on the Nitro machines I was using 12 months ago.

Drew says longer TULs mean a relatively lighter load has to be utilised and this lack of tension can lead to muscle loss. Its on his blog in an old entry. One of the reasons he left SuperSlow was their insistence of long TULs.

He also said on this forum that Body By Science folk were headed in a similar direction and this was of concern.

FWIW I'm pretty convinced Adnan that I have made greater progress after dropping TUL altogether and reverting to counting reps under a natural, controlled, set to failure. I don't count rep speed off either. Just make sure form is good, no momentum is involved, and when I hit failure on 6-8 reps I up the weight on the next session (slightly higher reps on legs). I'm quite sure this brings me down into the 30-45 second TUL range. Slow negatives and a static hold on the last, failure rep are also employed.

In my opinion, it does look like you've lost a noticeable amount of muscle mass there, but whether that's a bad thing or not is entirely down to your goals. You look perfectly healthy, and if your goal is to get and stay healthy, lean, and strong, then an extra 10lbs of muscle mass isn't really going to make much difference to that goal, and the trade off of the extra training time and food might be more of an inconvenience than sticking with how you are now and getting progressively stronger.

If you do decide you then I'd personally agree with the above suggestion of increasing your calories to 2300 as a start, then increase as necessary. I tend to use 100 calorie increments along with careful monitoring of weight and body composition. Fortnightly usually a good schedule to check. If your weight's not increasing, add 100 calories. If it is, but your skinfold at the abdomen (or body comp depending on what you use to measure), you can keep it the same for another fortnight. If your skinfold or body fat increases noticeably, cut back by 100. At 2300 though, it's incredibly unlikely that will happen, so you should be able to monitor very easily.

Cutting your TUL to 45-60 seconds will be a good start too, 8-10 exercises per session, and I'd also recommend increasing your frequency to twice per week or 5 times per fortnight. Your recovery ability will increase with the increase in energy going in.

I don't know if it'll work on an I.F. schedule as I've never used it with anyone, so that will be a bit of an experiment on your part! I'd be interested to see how it goes though if you do.

You are most certainly a lot leaner Ace , but my preference of bodyfat levels would be your look in the first pic. Your front deltoid development is huge there and you look at a healthy level that could/would accomodate gain quite readily.

However , If you are witnessing progress in your training by way of resistance used then I would keep doing as you are doing , as the increases in strength most certainly will manifest in the form of lean tissue gain.
As for TUL , I have found around 40 sec to be best for me , or indeed a very low rep range. At present I am enjoying great success with rest pause training.

Best wishes , T.

Adnan,

well, I have to agree with the crew. Looks like you lost some of your impressive delts (most obvious area).
From my (limited) experience I would say that rep-speed doesn't matter at all. TUL does and I believe 40-70sec. to be what works for most.
And if you get stuck with that, try R/P (aka single reps with ~10sec. inbetween from the start). I now believe that for some people (me beeing one), especially if they work with machines and use slow perfect form, the fatigue by-products disable reaching true muscular faluire. R/P does prevent this or at least enable a higher tension for a given TUL.

Franco

Hey T.,

would like to hear more about your R/P-experiment.
I saw (and still see) good results with R/P myself.

Franco

Oh, and I do not agree with Fantombe on the volume thing. I can't for the hell of it put high effort into more then 5 exercises max. But I can up the frequency for one (or two small) muscle group at a time. Ultimately I believe frequency to rule over volume for hypertrophy.
But increased frequency for the whole body leads to overtraining rather quickly for me. I settled for 1 weekly fullbody plus one weekly bodypart-specialization. 5 ex. Fullbody on saturday or sundays and 3-4ex. for a given bodypart on tuesday or wednesday.

Hi Adnan,

I agree with the guys here. You looked more muscular and front delts looked really great.
Like you said there are lots of variables to check.
The most basic one is for me strength and diet.
What strength you had then and now?
What was your average rate of losing fat?
What kind of diet did you follow?
I'm on IF and am also tracking my progress. It can be that IF is not for everyone.
I also stopped counting rep speed but go roughly on 4/2/4 cadence. On some specific exercises higher speed.

At any rate you are lean already. Now you can focus on gaining but slowly.

Blessings

J

Thank you all for the comments!

Yes, I have lost thickness.

I worked out yesterday, using much heavier weights, TULs were no longer than 80 seconds.

I'll continue in this fashion and post pictures in 8 weeks.

I shall for now, conyinue eating as I have been so that I don't introduce too many variables into the equation.

Franco had some interesting comments about metabolic by-products preventing some people from reaching true failure...

To get this straight:
I'm not speaking of stopping do to discomfort/pain/burn/whatever before reaching failure but to reach failure from the "wrong" reasons, so to speak.

Admin wrote:FWIW I'm pretty convinced Adnan that I have made greater progress after dropping TUL altogether and reverting to counting reps under a natural, controlled, set to failure. I don't count rep speed off either. Just make sure form is good, no momentum is involved, and when I hit failure on 6-8 reps I up the weight on the next session (slightly higher reps on legs). I'm quite sure this brings me down into the 30-45 second TUL range. Slow negatives and a static hold on the last, failure rep are also employed.

I actually (over the past month) started doing this myself. My strength is up, focus is up during workouts & Im actually fuller as well. But in most cases any change in direction of training will do this.

Craig

cmurway wrote:

Admin wrote:FWIW I'm pretty convinced Adnan that I have made greater progress after dropping TUL altogether and reverting to counting reps under a natural, controlled, set to failure. I don't count rep speed off either. Just make sure form is good, no momentum is involved, and when I hit failure on 6-8 reps I up the weight on the next session (slightly higher reps on legs). I'm quite sure this brings me down into the 30-45 second TUL range. Slow negatives and a static hold on the last, failure rep are also employed.

I actually (over the past month) started doing this myself. My strength is up, focus is up during workouts & Im actually fuller as well. But in most cases any change in direction of training will do this.

Craig

Looking good in the avatar Coach!

Whats Wrong With Super Slow Speed-of-Movements?

By Fitness Scientist

From my perspective, using a slow speed of movement during the Negative portion of
a repetition goes against the absolute negative requirements of a proper resistance
needed to get maximum results. Its really quite simple!

It is well established that the negative strength of muscles is much greater than the
positive strength of muscles. In simple terms, this means: the strength of the muscles
during a contraction (when lifting the resistance), is much less than the strength of
the same muscles, when unlifting of the resistance happens (meaning, when lowering
the resistance). I think we all would agree with that perception.

So, as many HIT warriors know this, they also know that during lowering of the resistance
the muscles are capable of handling much more resistance - usually mentioned as 40%
more resistance that during the lifting\contraction of the muscles.

This being an absolute fact. What "authority" could claim that a weight that is 40% less
that what the negative strength of the muscles can possibly be productive? Would anyone
with a brain in their head claim that lifting a resistance that is 40% to light could possibly
produce maximum results? I don't think so!

Therefore, those preaching slow negative movements (with 40% too little weight) is the right way to train may be misleading HIT believers.

The 40% I mentioned is during "single joint movements." I believe that when mult-joint are used, such as lowering a bench press (shoulder joints, elbow joints, meaning more than one joint) the multi-joints, are only 40% stronger. It is obvious that most of us can, when lowering the resistance during a bench press, we could slowly lower more than 40% than we lifted.

So, if we agree that we could lower more resistance during a bench press than during a curling motion, how can we be bamboozeled to believe that all movements, both single joints and multi-joints are of the same negative strength potential.

If you were ever willing to learn this absolute bio-mechanical, anatomical, physiological, physics,
and exercise science absolute fact, just test your self on a two-arm curl, and bench press.
You will quickly learn that single joint and multi-joint movements have different percents of
negative strength potentials than positive strength potentials.

Here's what I am claiming (having done much research around what I've said)

1. To get maximum results with negative movements you must train hard, using the resistance maxim of the negative movement. Forget about the positive movement. Train negative only.

2. You can train the standard way, meaning: use max weight during the positive\lifting phase, but you can basically forget about very slow negative control. The weight is too light; however, you must control the lowering movement. About 2 to 3 seconds is safe.

3. I guarantee you, that if you do nothing else during the way you train now, if you lessen the lowering speed of movement, you will not get as many reps as you do when you are lowering the weight in a super slow fashion.

That tells you that you are contracting more muscle fibers during the contraction than you were before. The reason is: you and your muscle fibers were getting a rest when lowering a 40% (example) too light weight.

Does this make any sense to you?

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Ace,

any update on using heavier weights?

Greg

Extremely interesting reply from Joe Mullen on the advantages of a slightly "quicker" negative when training an exercise in "positive" fashion. I have to admit, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the post.

It is indeed. I remember a study even showing that both, negative only and positive only cause better adaption (gains) then standard pos/neg with equal speed. Makes perfect sense as in both instances the muscles are loaded properly according their capabilities.
The only "problem" left is then the unequal loading (think sticking points) along the ROM. This may be lessend with camed machines or congruent exercise (ala MAEx).
Or with no ROM at all...

Franco

Right, it seems like it's all about getting the loading set up appropriately. It seems like the Ultimate Rep protocol also fits into this as well. (I believe that this is basically 1 RM positive, hold the static as long as possible, then finish off negative strength.) I've yet to attempt this protocol but the concept makes a ton of sense to me.

Tension Under Load
by Joe Mullen


In reference to "Time\Tension under load in regard to the following:

"Recently, I've been thinking of rep speeds again and also TULs.

Drew, Fred Hahn and Terry Carter have been particularly vocal about heavier loads and therefore shorter TULs and Drew has said that 5/5 or quicker might even be better for hypertrophy."

Terry Carter and I have been associated with Arthur Jones, and have worked for Arthur Jones, the intellect behind Nautilus exercise equipment and MedX equipment. But, I have not seen Terry Carter train. But I am aware of Terrys' incredible insight and I am aware of his knowledge of Nautilus Exercise Principles.

It is true that Drew is aware of "Super Slow." If I recall correctly.

I am aware of the folks mention above and I have seen Drew train and I respect his knowledge and experience, and I was responsible for him being hired at one of his jobs, which was with former pro wrestler Marc Mero. At the time I was a consultant for Mero, had an office in his club and therefore, I am aware of the quality of which Drew trains clients. I consider him a friend.

Because I have been fortunate enough to have worked with Arthur Jones at Nautilus Headquarters, and having owned a total of 8 fully equipped Nautilus\MedX fitness\physical therapy\back to work conditioning centers, and being the Author of a number of books, it is fair to say I have a clue about the kind of training that truly produces Maximum Fitness in Minimum Time.

Hands down, the best results are obtained with a relatively slow contraction, meaning about three seconds on the way up, do not pause in the "position of contraction" and when lowering the resistance\negative movement, it should be in a controlled manner but only in about a 2 second lowering speed.

Lowering in a 5 second or more is contradictory because the strength of the muscles in a single joint movement is at least 40% stronger than the amount of resistance being used which is usually used during the contraction\positive movement. The negative strength of muscles during a multi-joint movement is typically more than 40% greater than it is in a single-joint negative movement. At least thats what my research has proven over the years.

I am well aware of what I call "Pure Negative Training," meaning: just performing the Negative Only portion of the movement. If you are lucky enough to train that way, you will be startled about the positive results you get. The only problem, you will run out of training partners. I am not saying that Pure Negative Training resistance should be lowered in 2 seconds. When the resistance is loaded appropriately it will be at least 40% or more that your usual weights.

Please understand that I am not trying to be a jerk, it is just that I have been blessed by knowing very intelligent people, having witnessed many, many thousands of workouts, and I am just sharing what I have learned during my many years (some say too many years), in exercise.

Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist
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