I wish I could listen to music all the time. I mean everywhere I go. Never turn it off. I would jam all the time.

I’d have to change up what I listen to and all (you ever listen to one too many dance beats and want to hit yourself over the head with an anvil?), I don’t want to get sick of genre or anything. But I do want to be submerged in music. It has energy…fun…optimism…wreaks of creativity and most importantly, rhythm (aka tempo).

Everything in life has a rhythm. I know what you thinking right now and I just laughed out loud thinking it too, “Oh no, I don’t and you do NOT want to see me dance.” That may be true but you do have a natural rhythm about you. When you get up, when you go to bed, when you eat and etc. It’s inbred into your system and can take an act of God to get you to change and at times it is necessary to change. If I sent you to the weight room right now without thinking about what your goal was and I handed you a weight and said, “Go”, you would most like lift at a certain rhythm/pace that you have been forever. There is no reason to change. The move will feel familiar to you; the speed will feel familiar. You could trace your movements in the dark.

Now on the one hand, that’s good stuff. Who wouldn’t want to be that confident in the weight room? On the other hand, that’s a huge problem. Your body is tired of you. Bored with you. Knows all about you and has moved on. You are like John and Kate to your body—so yesterday’s news.

I promise I won’t start on my ‘you need to lift heavy rant’; instead I will help you to gain more out of your lifts than you may be now.

A simple weight lifting tool that can make an exercise go from bearable to pukeable is Tempo. It is one of my favorite things to play with and can give you the most gains. Here is a perfect example of when tempo is a gift from Heaven:

Side raises. Love them or hate them they are a great burn. If you are lifting a weight that is nearly impossible to go up from (say you can do raises with 15’s, 20’s would KILL you) then you need to find a way to make them harder. Tempo will do this for you. So what is it exactly?

Typically written as 3 numbers, but can be written as 4, tempo will show up on a program like this: 301, 211, 3111, etc. What does it mean? The amount of seconds you are to lower the weight, pause at the bottom, lift it and then pause at the top. This is great stuff when you want to convey to someone that the lift should be powerful—not slow. You would have them perform it at a pace of 201 or 211. If you wanted it done explosively, then you would denote that as 20X or 31X.

Why would you ever want to do this? Well, to beat your own arse obviously! Take a walking lunge. Feel free to just aimlessly walk around the gym for a while with some weights in your hand and call it effective. The first time you did it, it was. Now, a year later and in the middle of your plateau—not so much. How can you take an effective move like that and make it fresh again? Start the walking lunge with a BB on your shoulders and in the standing position. Step out and *quickly* sink into the lunge (you almost look like you thought there was a step there or something and missed it—but don’t fall;). PAUSE for 1 full second. In fact, say the word pause. Shift all of your weight to the forward leg. Push your heel into the floor and lift yourself up on a count of 3. Your tempo for this move is now 311. I call these Moonwalks and they hurt like heck. Go heavy while doing it and you cannot walk the whole gym like you used to. You should be able to do 6 to 8 of them. Walk on only one side at a time and you’ll really hate me.

So here it is again: 2210

Lowering the weight 2
Pause 2
Lifting the weight 1
Pause 0—this one is often left off of the count

To give you an idea of how fast you are lifting now, you most likely are lifting at a tempo of 101 right now if not very heavy, 102 if heavier. Adding a second onto the lowering and a pause at the bottom will change how many reps you can do and will most likely shorten it. Try it next time you lift.

Tempo has been around for a long time. I, myself, have been writing programs with tempo for ages and during that time I have gotten a good amount of feedback about it. There are 2 common threads that you will hear about tempo: it’s complicated and it’s hard to think about speed, form, etc. all at the same time. In other words, it detracts from the lift. I beg to differ on the first one, can understand on the second one. This is just another tool in your toolbox. It shouldn’t define you any more than it should limit you. Try it and see how much it changes your lifts but don’t get all wigged out about it and throw a weight across the gym. That could get you in jail and then you’ll have nothing but time on your hands to learn tempo there. Use some common sense and ease into it slowly by just trying to vary the speed at which you lift. When you feel good about it, begin counting. Soon you will be kicking your own behind and thinking you are the mack. Hey, whatever gets you going, you know?

Tempo really is an easy way to increase demand without having to add more weight or cut out any more cals. If you are signed up on my blog, I will be sending out a program this week with ways for you to try this out (sure, when I learn how to use the function…bwahahaha). You’ll get to see how tempo really feels and you’ll have a great template to follow when you want to add it in on your programs. I am going to use all basic exercises so you won’t need a glossary to figure out the moves. Feel free to email me at jodiojo@comcast.net if you have any questions or just reply off of the blog blast. Looking forward to hearing how you do…