Time Under Tension (TUT) If you have difficulty growing a lagging muscle group, perhaps the reason for this is that you are not able to sustain tension optimally while lifting. Before my intervention, most of my clients made this mistake for years. They thought that if they kept adding more weight to an exercise, growth would follow. Although tension is higher when you lift a heavier weight than a lighter one, the heavier the weight the less time you will be under it tension. Understood? Micro trauma to muscle tissue (which triggers protein synthesis) will be much more prevalent when a trainee can increase the time under tension for a given set. Dont get me wrong there are athletes that have built tremendous wheels (legs) from high intensity training (heavy load and little time under tension per set). Just think of Olympic weightlifters. However although the volume per session is fairly low, they tend to train very frequently. And the this high weekly volume and high levels of tension caused by extremely heavy lifts equals gargantuan legs. So what should you do? Follow my tips below and youll be growing in no time. 1. Train by the stopwatch and not by reps. Dont stop until you have hit 45-75 seconds. The smaller figure for smaller range exercises and the larger figure for bigger ones. 2. Lift slowly through the concentric (shortening) as well as the eccentric (lengthening) phase to improve your mind muscle connection. 3. Pick machine exercises movements such as leg extensions, leg curls, concentration curls and pressdowns, chest flys and rear delt flys as its harder to keep a muscle group under tension when performing a free weight exercise if you are a beginner. 4. Leave the ego at home. One thing that makes pro bodybuilders such amazing athletes is that they can maintain tension while lifting some mighty heavy weight. If you are learning anything from this post you are not one of these guys. Drop the weight and focus on the quality of each contraction.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 15:42:33 +0000