Programming & Periodizing Tempo & Momentum
-: If we look at resistance profiles,
and we kinda make some general statements here
just on how this is gonna overlap, okay,
remember weight is a portion of this.
There has to be significant weight, right?
'Cause a resistance profile isn't gonna have an impact
unless there's enough load.
So it will counteract momentum if that resistance
is gonna be in a place say where it's in the top range.
So this dumbbell lateral race is a good example
for a lot of these.
Right?
So if it's enough weight, right,
that resistance profile being heaviest here,
counteracts the fact that I'm trying to generate momentum.
So a perfect weight with the perfect type of intent
could essentially allow me to be trying
to push the weight up faster, faster, faster.
But because the weight is getting heavier, heavier,
and heavier from a mechanical standpoint
because of the resistance profile,
essentially it could look like the speed is nice and smooth.
And that's when you would have like the perfect intent,
the perfect load, and you have an exercise now that is.
So you're trying to create momentum.
Like your intent is to try and move the weight faster.
But because the weight is essentially getting heavier,
then you don't actually end up moving the weight faster.
But what you are doing is contracting the muscle hard
throughout the entire range of motion.
So there's gonna be that sweet spot where you can
load the muscle really well throughout the entire range.
Again, going back to the previous slide,
we were talking about load.
If it wasn't enough load, I would actually start the,
you know, I would create enough momentum
that it would get too light.
If it was too much load,
I wouldn't even be able to get to the top,
because I wouldn't be able to generate enough momentum
to counteract the mechanics of the exercise.
So there's gonna be that sweet spot where all
of these things tie in together, tempo, load, and intent.
So the resistance when it's hardest at that point,
like the end of the concentric, or I'm sorry,
at the initiation, beginning of the concentric,
when it's hard there.
So this would be like bottom of a squat.
When it's hard there, it's gonna be harder
to generate momentum if those weights are heavy.
But it's gonna be easier to generate momentum
if those are light.
So kinda went outta order there, but so light weights,
when overloaded at the point of initiation,
they get easier, like they're getting lighter as you go up.
Right?
So that if we put the resistance profile heaviest
at the bottom, so like that would be a squat,
that would be a bench press.
Okay?
So those movements, if you explode,
you create a lot of momentum.
They essentially become like zero, goose eggs at the top.
But if we're using heavier weights,
the weight can be so heavy
that we just don't generate enough speed,
that we're not able to generate momentum
until we're almost to the end range.
So if I do a heavy enough squat,
I come out of it so slow,
no matter how hard I try and come up,
I come out of it so slow that I really can't generate
any momentum until I'm like three or four inches
from the top, like there, like maybe that.
And you'll see that like heavy load,
somebody's doing maximal intent.
It'll go slow, and they'll get to a certain point
where all of a sudden they
have a great mechanical advantage,
and then maybe they could speed up.
But like if you ever seen a power lifting competition,
the bottom is where it's at.
Right?
It's a heavy enough load, right,
even though they're trying to generate momentum,
the load is preventing them from doing that.
It's not like all of a sudden they just go fwit
and then fly off after they get two inches outta the squat.
Now what about when we switch that?
So when the resistance is heaviest
in the end of the concentric,
so similar to our dumb bell lateral raise example.
For those, if there's enough of a change,
like the dumb bell lateral is a huge change,
like a ton of resistance here to up the resistance profile,
very little here, right, from a mechanical standpoint.
So that gives a tremendous ability,
if I use appropriate load and appropriate intent,
for that resistance profile to counteract any momentum
that I would generate.
But too light a weight, okay, then it's not gonna matter.
So load does matter.
Right?
It's not always the case, because loads,
or sometimes when you're using like machines
and stuff like that,
the mechanics of the machine,
so say if you have a machine
where the weight is moving a great distance,
the weight itself on the machine
is generating a lot of momentum,
even though like your limbs might not be moving that much.
So sometimes on like a plate-loaded machine,
you can be generating a lot of momentum,
but by the weight itself.
The weight itself,
because it's moving at a greater distance than your body,
right, generates momentum faster than you do
or slower than you do, depending on the machine.
So sometimes a weight stack,
you may be moving through space a lot,
but some of the cable systems are set up
so that the weight stack doesn't move very far
to limit the amount of momentum it generates,
and so then you have the opposite effect, less momentum.
In most cases,
you're going to want to emphasize the resistance profile
with your tempo,
meaning you're gonna wanna spend time where that exercise
is providing the most resistance.
Chances are that's why you put it in your program,
because you want it to load the tissue,
wherever that exercise happens to naturally bias it.
So if it's a squat, you wanna spend time at the bottom,
'cause a squat is going to be mechanically heaviest
at the bottom.
The resistance profile is going to say heavy at the bottom,
gets lighter as it goes up.
You gain all that leverage, all that mechanical advantage,
at the top so it's not much work.
So that's where you spend time.
That dumb bell lateral raise, it's the opposite.
So where would you wanna spend time?
You wanna spend time at the top.
If you spend time at the bottom of the lateral raise,
you're just hanging out there holding the weights.
Your delts, especially your medial delts,
are not going to be doing a lot of work there.
So in general, we're going to bias the tempo in one position
when we're talking about where we would pause
or where we would focus on a stretch or a squeeze position.
Notice I say squeeze, not a pause.
So like if I'm up here, I'm not.
There's a difference between holding this position
versus squeezing my delt while I'm there.
And if you're gonna emphasize a position,
most of the time you wanna be squeezing it, right,
regardless like, it doesn't matter
if it's five pounds or 50 pounds,
if you're in the short position,
you should be squeezing it pretty darn hard,
when you're doing your working sets anyway.
So the only exception when we probably don't want to bias
our tempo to spending time where the exercise is loaded
would be an example of when we're doing dynamic movements
or athletic movements where really what we're doing
is we're setting up the resistance to just kinda
counteract the momentum we're generating.
So this would be like doing like speed work,
so speed squats or like fast bench press or something,
putting like bands on that type of a movement
where the resistance is gonna get harder in the top.
We're not gonna focus on that,
'cause we're trying to explode into that and just have
that accommodating resistance be something
that kinda slows us down.
So there are cases where we're simply using
that resistance as kinda like a brake pad, if you will.
Right?
So that like when we're throwing the weight up
on like a speed bench press,
like if we're throwing the weight up,
that weight's just gonna pull our shoulders
right outta socket.
So having bands, chains, you know, something like that
to accommodate that is gonna make the exercise
a lot more beneficial, a lot more safe.
So we will in athletic plangs or dynamic movements
do the opposite.
We won't focus on where the resistance profile is heaviest
in terms of our tempo.
We wouldn't spend time at the end of there,
'cause we're not doing any work there.
In general, faster tempo means you're
gonna need more skill in terms of the exercise,
which means I'm gonna require greater execution
in terms of determining what tissue I'm using,
how I'm stabilizing that,
and making sure that I'm understanding the mechanics
of the exercise, and I'm using what I want to use,
or doing the movements safely or correctly.
So the faster it goes, the more room there is for error,
because the weight's generating more momentum,
your brain's having to process things faster,
change stabilizer, change length tension relationships
between the agonist antagonist.
All that stuff is happening faster with a weight
that is probably varying in resistance greater
because of the amount of momentum you're generating.
So execution needs to be better
if we're gonna use faster reps.
Neurological coordination and efficiency
also need to be better.
When I say neurological coordination,
that means my body's ability to control all of the muscles
that are stabilizing that joint,
the agonist and antagonist around that joint.
Because if I'm doing a bicep curl,
it's important that I contract my bicep,
but it's also important that I reflexively let my tricep
go through the eccentric at the appropriate rate.
Like I need the tricep to be able
to provide stability to the elbow,
but not too much resistance,
because then it'll make the bicep contraction harder.
So that's one of the things my body learns
when I first start training,
is it learns to coordinate those two things
to essentially make exercises less work for me.
And then the other thing is what else does it need
to stabilize that movement.
Or if my bicep is contracting, it attaches on the scapula,
so that means my lower traps,
my rhomboids also need to be stabilized.
They need to be working first.
They almost actually need to fire before the bicep does
so that the bicep has something to pull on.
Otherwise, it would pull the scapula out,
and then my stabilizer would be trying
to pull my shoulder back into place.
What really needs to happen, what my brain does,
is it should say stabilizer first, prime mover second,
and then that's how we get an appropriate contraction.
If it works the other way around,
usually we end up in a position where we're
not gonna get good output, not gonna get good efficiency.
Faster eccentrics by themselves, that tends to be,
we'll say, the most unsafe thing to do is fast eccentrics.
So that should be the last thing that you do faster
in terms of tempo would be the eccentric portion.
That's gonna be safest when we actually load,
we use a resistance profile
where it's not loaded in the stretch position.
So say a squat, heaviest at the bottom.
So doing like dropping down in the bottom of a squat
is not safe.
Whereas dropping down fast into a lateral raise
is a lot more safe.
Because at the end here, the weight,
the mechanical resistance is becoming less,
and then it's just the momentum that I have to reduce.
Whereas with the squat,
mechanically the weight is getting heavier,
and because the momentum, it's getting heavier.
So there's gonna be an exponential increase in what
that load is doing to my body at the point where like
I need to come to a sudden stop,
like 'cause I'm gonna run out of range of motion.
I'm not gonna stop because my muscle's done contracting.
I'm gonna stop because I'm at its terminal length,
or I'm at the end of range of some of those joints
in terms of where they can stabilize,
where I can maintain appropriate spinal position
or what not.
And so there's a high chance of me getting
outside of my active range of motion,
getting in an unsafe position,
or putting stress on some of my passive tissues
where I don't want it.
So most injuries occur during dynamic or fast eccentrics
or having to quickly decelerate,
like in changing directions and stuff like that.
That's where most injuries occur.
So if you do this in training, one,
you wanna make sure that's one of the later variables
that you add to tempo is to actually
increase the speed of the eccentric.
And you would start by doing it in exercises
that are inverse to the momentum so that they actually
get lighter mechanically in that point
where the muscle is stretched.