One of the more bizarre phenomena I’ve come across in the world of resistance training is the arbitrary prescription of repetition speeds.
I’m not talking about commonsense prescriptions like “lift and lower the bar in a controlled manner” or “avoid throwing and bouncing the weight.”
Nor am I talking about training specifically aimed at helping athletes improve their rate of force production, using ‘explosive’ exercises like jump squats or modalities like plyometrics.
Nor am I talking about powerlifters who use sets with extended pauses at the bottom of the bench press and squat movements, to build their explosiveness “out of the hole.”
I’m talking about the folks who tell you exactly how many seconds you should spend lifting a weight, how many seconds you should spend lowering a weight, and how many seconds you should spend in between the concentric and eccentric phases of a lift.
The most common of such admonitions seems to be “take 2 seconds to lift a weight, and 4 seconds to lower it.” I’m not sure who invented the 2/4 tempo rule, but it is repeated ad nauseum in the manner of a self-evident truth.
The first time I came across a specific rep tempo recommendation was in an article by Mr Universe winner Mike Mentzer in the mid-1980s. He asserted the 2/4 rule, but when you watch footage of Mike actually training, you can see he takes nowhere near that long to complete a repetition. He uses what looks to be a far more natural, self-selected tempo. On the lateral raise machine, he even begins the movement in an explosive manner - a far cry from the snail pace required to produce a 6-second rep.
The first time I took any real interest in rep tempo was in the early 1990s, when I purchased Ellington Darden’s BIG. The book recommended “super-slow” training, where you take 10 seconds to lift a weight, and 5 seconds to lower it back down again. The cover of BIG claimed it was “The Ultimate Diet and Exercise Plan for Massive Muscles” - but it wasn’t. I talked my training partner into giving it a whirl, but after 4 weeks neither of us had made a whit of progress and we unanimously agreed the experiment had been a waste of time.
Then, in the late 1990s, along came the late Charles Poliquin. Despite his penchant for making absurd claims - or perhaps because of it - Poliquin became a popular author*. Through his articles in the now defunct Muscle Media 2000 magazine, and later the T-Nation website, he popularized the concept of prescribed rep tempos.
His 1997 book The Poliquin Principles, which alternated between giving training advice and hating on Mike Mentzer, featured an entire chapter devoted to rep tempo, as did the 2016 version.
In the latter, he claimed:
“Slow-speed lifting brings about more metabolic adaptations than high-speed lifting. Training at faster speeds does not induce these changes. Also, performing slow reps builds the connection between the mind and the muscle, and they make a great finishing-off set.”
He provided zero evidence to support these fanciful claims.
In the 1997 version, he provided two incomplete, bracketed citations to support his rep tempo claims - “Ungard (1989)” and “Doherty (1989)” - neither of which I have been able to retrieve via PubMed or web searches.
Poliquin claimed: “To achieve the appropriate training stimulus, you must adhere to the precise speed of movement for all aspects of a lift: eccentric, isometric and concentric.”
But what is “the precise speed of movement”? What does that mean, exactly? Who determines this “precise speed”? And upon what scientific or even compelling anecdotal basis do they do so?
No answer.
Lack of scientific references notwithstanding, Poliquin believed that rep speed for every exercise in a training program should be prescribed using a three-digit (1997) and later a four-digit (2016) abbreviation.
He got this idea from Ian King, a strength coach from Australia, who claims to have invented the 3-digit system.
How does it work?
Poliquin gives the example of a “4213” tempo prescription for the bench press. You take 4 seconds to lower the barbell to your chest, pause for 2 seconds when the bar makes contact with your chest, take 1 second to press the weight from your chest to lockout, then rest 3 seconds with the bar hovering above you in the lockout position before performing another repetition.
Again, why you would want a heavily loaded barbell hovering above you for an arbitrary period of 3 seconds, even as you become increasingly fatigued, was never explained.
Apart from garnering odd looks in the gym, frustrating the poor bloke who’s next in line to use the bench, and increasing your likelihood of craniofacial surgery, there is no evidence this will achieve anything a regular tempo won’t.
In the 2016 edition of his book, Poliquin gives examples of hypertrophy routines featuring a bizarre array of rep tempo prescriptions. Parallel bar dips - an exercise many folks would be best avoiding, especially those with preexisting shoulder issues - are to be performed for a “4010” tempo.
Meanwhile, “3010” is prescribed for the incline dumbbell press, “2210” for the standing calf raise, “2012” for the back extension, and “40X0” for the lying leg curl (“X” indicates the concentric portion should be performed as quickly as possible).
While clearly harboring a seething disdain for Mike Mentzer, Poliquin had no problem citing other HIT stalwarts like Arthur Jones, Ken Hutchins and Ellington Darden in support of super-slow training (Chapter 8 of TPP 2016). In the 1997 edition of TPP, he prescribed super-slow flyes and lateral raises (p. 20).
Again, Poliquin provided no scientific rationale for the specific tempos. Why a 4-second eccentric on one exercise, but a 2-second eccentric on another? Why an “X” concentric tempo for leg curls, a 10-second concentric for machine lateral raises, yet a 1-second concentric for “lean-away” lateral raises?
If you’ve ever delved into the research examining rep tempo, and the associated concept of “time under tension” (another farce I will address in due course), it’s not hard to work out the lack of explanation behind these different rep tempos.
There is no science behind them - they are entirely arbitrary.
In fact, not only does the published research indicate the rep tempo phenomenon is largely nonsense, it shows unnaturally slow tempos may in fact impede hypertrophy and strength gains.
So let’s take a look at that research.
