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-: All right.
So we've talked about adding sets, adding reps.
We've talked about the limitation of only having
a limited amount of weight or,
you can only progress by a certain amount of weight.
Now, let's look at how Tempo would fit
into this whole volume of work equation.
So, the nice thing about Tempo is
it allows one for just us,
another variable in there that we can manipulate
to be able to progress, work out, right?
And that is time.
We can also look at that as a proxy for distance.
When we'd look at an exercise
that maybe has a small range of motion.
So for instance, if we're looking at like a calf raise,
you're probably not going to do a very long Tempo
for a calf raise,
but you may for a squat have a longer Tempo.
So, if we're looking at different exercises,
using Tempo can be a way of kind of including
distance as well as time.
Because obviously, you're going to be,
if you're covering less distance,
you're probably going to do it in less time.
And so it kind of serves as a proxy to kind of put
both of those in the equation when looking at tonnage.
And now we're looking at tonnage times time,
which is a better equation of work
because we're not just holding a load for an instant,
we're moving a load over a distance, doing that.
And being under that load for a certain amount of time.
So in terms of muscular work,
these are definitely important factors
beyond just the pounds beyond just the total tonnage, okay?
The next thing I put on here in the bottom is
you can take Tempo,
and you can make this a much more advanced calculation,
if you take into consideration the resistance profiles,
resistance curves, the physics of the exercise.
And that's a much more nuanced variable.
You have to understand those things,
which is why I really emphasize people learning,
biomechanics and the basic physics of exercise.
I mean, 'cause then you can understand that well,
if I'm gonna apply Tempo,
I can look at it as is like, okay,
what if I added time to a specific portion of that exercise
where my body was actually under more load?
The load was acting on my muscular system more.
So, for instance, if you take a squat, right?
The load on the quads,
when you're just standing here
holding the bar on your back is very little.
But at the bottom,
it may be a lot where the glutes or whatever,
depending on how you're squatting, right?
So, basically the thing you need to take away from that is
exercises load the tissues to varying degrees
throughout the range of motion.
And so that means the amount of muscular work
at those positions is not the same.
So if we spend a certain amount of time
in a challenging area versus the not challenging area,
that's gonna change the amount of muscular work.
So that really, really impacts the volume.
So if you were to take somebody
that kind of avoided the hard points
versus somebody that marinated their muscles
in those hard points,
the volume of work that they would be doing,
even if they were doing the same load,
for the same reps, in the same number of sets,
is gonna be very different.
So, Tempo, one, can just help us understand
the total time they're working.
But if you want to,
you could take it even to a whole other level.
And you could say, all right,
where are you spending that time, right?
Because what we would do in that case
is we would weight the value of that position
more than another position.
And that's a much more complex mathematical equation.
So we're gonna start with a simple one,
which is just Tempo, first.
Other things to just note about Tempo is that
Tempo can alter the training stimulus.
Again, this requires the exercise,
the mechanics and biomechanics knowledge.
But, spending time in different positions
also taxes the muscle differently.
So it's not just the amount of load,
but where you're challenging that muscle,
whether it be a shortened position,
lengthened position, et cetera,
is going to have different attributes
in terms of the stimulus and the stress on the tissues.
It can be used to manipulate loads.
So for instance, using a more explosive intent,
or using a pause somewhere
can allow you to be able to say
okay, if you wanted somebody
to be able to maintain a certain mechanics
in a compound movement or whatever,
and at a certain load, they started to lose those mechanics.
You could use pauses or something
to increase the muscular work,
but not overloading their structures per se.
So there's lots of ways that you could use Tempo
to kind of restrict the amount of loads
that you didn't need or to progress in between loads.
And it could also be used as a skill component, right?
So, using different Tempos can help train
different qualities from being able to resist force
versus being able to accelerate, et cetera.
Especially when you get into
neurological or athletic training-based things.
So, when we look at this,
there's a lot that can go into it.
There's a difference in energy demand
between the concentric and the eccentric.
Lots of stuff, motor skill wise, between those two things.
So, when you're deciding to incorporate Tempo,
if you wanna take it to that level, that's awesome.
But just make sure that you actually understand
what those things mean.
If you don't, just understanding it in a way
that we can use it as a proxy for time and distance
is still gonna be an improvement on the tonnage method.
So, if you don't really agree
with any of the things that we teach you,
then one, in terms of the stimulus
and the way that we can use different exercises
and Tempo and resistance profiles, et cetera,
to challenge muscles differently,
then just use it as time and a distance proxy.
That's completely up to you.
The thing that I will add on top of that
in terms of looking at that argument is,
time under tension gives us that duration.
So it's time under tension,
which has been one of the things
that's talked about in "Her" poetry forever.
You have some people think,
oh, it's very significant and it's not significant.
Well, I think if you exclude all of the other variables
and you're just, look at time under tension,
without standardizing for things,
it's gonna seem like it's irrelevant.
But if you understand that time under tension
needs to be qualified further,
you're gonna see that it's important.
But, just time under tension by itself,
it's this duration times reps and sets.
And so that duration is the sum of
the amount of time that you spend on the concentric,
the shortened position,
the eccentric and the lengthened position.
What we focus on at N1 is what I call TUST.
So it's Time Under Significant Tension.
So, rather than just using it for a proxy
of just distance and time,
to make it essentially more accurate,
we focus on the time spent
in the more challenging portion of a rep
where the muscular work was high.
And we're looking at stimulus.
Time under significant tension is gonna be
a stronger measure of stimulus than just time under tension,
because then we can use the pause squat again,
as an example, right?
So if you take somebody,
and you have one person that pauses at the top
and another person that pauses at the bottom,
it's the same time under tension.
So therefore it would be the same, whatever,
or one person that's just going slower up and down
versus a person that's pausing at the bottom.
That was maybe the same time under tension,
but the person that pauses at the bottom
may have more actual muscular work,
doing more volume, et cetera.
So, that's just gonna be a more accurate measure, right?
But, how accurate do you need to be
for your individual client?
You may need to get to a relatively advanced point
before you need to start calculating for that.
But, if you understand the principle,
you can probably intuitively take it into account
with your exercise selection.
So, when looking at incorporating Tempo.
Tempo is gonna follow the same logic,
the shorter the Tempo,
the greater a progression in that will be,
the longer the Tempo,
the smaller the progression in that will be.
So, in this instance,
since now, we are technically doing tonnage with time,
I just removed the tonnage number altogether,
'cause it would technically be pound seconds
or something like that.
So now, if we look at these top three rows,
we're essentially looking at a variety
of standardized rep schemes
with weights that correlate to these sets and reps schemes.
And what you will see is that
if we were to add one second to the Tempo, anywhere,
it's gonna net the same increase, regardless,
because this is four seconds, this is three zero one zero.
So, adding one second is gonna be a 25% increase period.
Now, if we were to compare that then to adding 5% load
versus adding a rep versus adding a set, okay?
So, this is four, all right.
Well, that's gonna be kind of close to do that.
So we'll probably see, is that, okay?
Yeah, it's about the same as adding a rep in that case.
So, if you're doing four reps
and you're doing them for four seconds,
if we were to weight Tempo the same,
and there's different ways that you could do this,
if you wanted to do it mathematically.
For this particular model, we've weighted the same.
You could choose to change a formula
and weight it at a 50% mark or something like that.
If you're just like, yeah,
I wanna include Tempo, but don't like it that much,
believe it that much.
But I kind of listened to Kassem a little bit and like,
I don't know, whatever you wanna do.
You could choose to weight it at a smaller amount.
This is stuff we're currently researching right now.
And as we learn, as we get more accurate with it,
we're gonna try and come out with apps and resources
to make this stuff easier for you guys to calculate.
Some of it will be available as examples for you
towards the end of the course.
But, anyway, so, in this case,
adding a set is a smaller increase.
Adding load is a smaller increase
than adding a rep or Tempo, right?
In this case where we're doing three sets of 15, right?
Well now adding a set is bigger,
adding a rep is much smaller,
adding a Tempo is this adding any more to the Tempo,
is the second biggest increase that you can make, okay?
So, the next principle for the Tempos that's,
just to include that is the smaller, the Tempo.
So if I was doing a two zero one zero Tempo,
which is now, it was three seconds.
And then I add a second to that is 33%.
So now that's a bigger jump in total volume.
So going from a two zero one zero,
to a three zero one zero, or two zero two zero,
or two one one zero, whatever it would be.
'Cause we're just looking at time under tension,
not under significant tension,
we're not attaching any exercises at this point,
that's all gonna be a 33% increase
because you're doing it 33% longer
as we get to longer Tempo.
So for this bottom one here is a seven-second rep, right?
Adding a second to a seven-second rep,
which that's just seven seconds is already brutal.
But, for the sake of the principle,
understanding that adding a second
to that is a small increase.
Versus if you were doing a one zero one zero Tempo,
adding a second is a big increase,
like a 50% increase, right?
So, if you are doing a very fast rep speed
and all of a sudden you started slowing that down,
that's a big difference.
And, for people that have never used Tempo in training,
that's why all of a sudden, when they start using Tempo,
they usually have to decrease their loads a ton.
But, they may actually be doing more muscular work
if they went from doing a bunch of one zero one zero Tempos
to a bunch of four zero one zero Tempos.
And so there's a lot of people that have sneakily
put that into a program or whatever,
and then all of a sudden people started doing that program
like, oh, this is so hard upon us!
And really all it is is you just started using Tempo,
and then people think that's magic.
Not saying Tempo isn't magic.
I mean, it's important.
But it's no more important than any of the other variables.
But it would be like,
if you just weren't counting reps before
and you just kinda did some reps and stop,
and all of a sudden you had to
track and progress those reps,
all of a sudden you'd be like, wow,
this is working better and I'm getting results.
So Tempo is just one of those things where
if you go from not tracking into tracking,
it's gonna make a big difference.
And hopefully this illustrates where
if we actually use this as a proxy
as for both time and distance,
and we look at how much muscular work we're doing is that
it is an important part in there.
Whether or not it is exactly on a one to one ratio,
with sets and reps that something that we just,
it's right now, that's the easiest way to calculate this.
But you could easily say I wanted to weight.
In terms of weight, I wanted to qualify Tempo
as only having half the impact as these other things.
And essentially what we would do is then
all of these numbers would then just be cut in half,
because there would be 50% impact in the formula
compared to what they currently are, right.
'Cause right now, if we were to pull this formula apart,
we went from sets times reps, times load for total tonnage,
and then we're extrapolating a percentage increase in that
by either adding a set-rep-load.
So now it's sets, reps, load times four seconds, okay?
And then using a percentage increase off of that
to give you an idea what's happening
behind the spreadsheet here.
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