Slow it down a bit
Over my years of training, I’ve found that my workouts mirror my life in a lot of ways. It feels funny getting philosophical about lifting weights, after all, it seems like a pretty 1-dimensional activity at first glance. You lift more weight, you build more muscle, you get stronger, simple right?
Well yes, but no.
Life has a certain tempo to it, as does the gym. Normally my days consist of running from place to place, meeting to meeting, client to client, office to office (coffee shop to coffee shop), all in an attempt to get the most I can done. I follow a plan, but taking my time getting from place to place just seems like a waste of time more than anything.
But now I’m in Maui, and my pace has definitely slowed a bit. Yah I’m on vacation, and when you’re on vacation you should be on vacation. Although I still have work to get done, and I’ve set aside some time to do it during the week, there isn’t the rush like there is in Vancouver. I’m relaxed, enjoying my surroundings, enjoying the people around me and getting the most out of my day in a totally different way.
I’m bringing, “being in the moment,” to a whole other level. There isn’t the stress of, “crap I’ve got 5 minutes before I have to train this next client, there’s no way I’m going to finish this article.” It’s more of a, “okay, I’ve worked for the 45 minutes I said I was going to, the article isn’t done, but let’s go to the beach and I’ll get back to it in my next work period.”
So how does this tie in to workouts?
Well it does in a very important and direct way.
Workouts have a tempo to them as well, and just like changing your reps and sets is important, changing the tempo of the lift is just as important.
By tempo I mean the ‘pace’ of the lift. Let’s use the bench press as an example.
In the bench press there are 3 stages of the lift, there’s the press, the top of the lift and the way down. Changing up the pace of these 3 stages is very important.
Different tempo’s:
1,1,3
Explosive press, hold for a second at the top, then count to three and go slow on the way down.
All out
No counting involved, just go all out for every rep, explode on the press, get the weight back down and explode again.
3,1,3
Slow press counting to 3 on the way up, hold for a second at the top, then slow again on the way down.
I normally do the first two tempos, mixing it up for various exercises during various 3-week splits. But every now and then I’ll do the third one and you can feel a difference.
