ENJOY YOUR TEMPO

Wow! It has been such a pleasure witnessing the improvements in people's upper body strength work.  Your tempo training has been exemplary and is it ever paying off.  Why is tempo training so effective? First off, it helps to mitigate against injury.  Even the simple recognition that there is a tempo is going to slow you down and slow equals control.  This is why we don't allow people to do kip until they have a 30 sec eccentric. As I have mentioned before, the shoulder socket is very shallow and it is this shallowness which aids the shoulder to move in such complex ways.  The trade off though, is that the shoulder is prone to injury precisely because the humerus sits in this very shallow socket.  If the scapula isn't anchoring the humerus properly, you are far more prone to an impingement (the head of the humerus rubs against the roof of the acromium).  This is why we are constantly talking about scapular activation and strength.  Too often, we see people rely on momentum rather than strength but the implementation of a tempo aids in providing some quality control in the moment. A tempo also helps students to strengthen their weakest points in a movement.  If I just tell you to do an eccentric chin up I do not get an accurate assessment of your scapular strength.  But with a tempo I can quickly glean whether  you are weak at the top, the bottom, or  the middle of your pull and then use a tempo to address the weakness.

A good teacher will compel the student to adhere to the exact tempo given. If it is 5 seconds, we don't mean 3 seconds, we mean 5 seconds! Tempo training often means taking a step or two back. Try doing a ring or bar dip @ 51x1 for 5 sets as compared to no tempo.  With this tempo, you have 35 sec of time under tension as opposed to zero seconds of time under tension.  When you can do 2-3 extreme range of motion ring dips for 5 sets @ 51x1, I guarantee that the strict muscle up will not seem so daunting.

One more thing about quality control.  I hate to be cynical but when people tell me that they can do x number of chin ups or ring dips or push ups, I rarely believe them.  Don't tell me what you can do. Show me what you can do.  A 31x1 tempo on a chin up or pull-up (where the chest must touch the bar for a full second), and the athlete must be fully extended in the bottom for 1 second, gives me an excellent idea of someone's pulling strength.  Tempo lends itself to accountability.