Everyone is living in temporary immortality however.. not all of us are lifting the correct way to achieve what we want!
If your primary goal is to lose fat and increase or “tone” your lean muscle mass then it doesn’t matter how heavy the weight your lifting is, if you fail to keep tension on the working muscles you might as well leave the weight on the floor. Working to a strict 4010 or 3010 lifting tempo for 10-15 reps is the best way for achieving muscle hypertrophy as we are going to teach you guys in today’s blog.
The priority when wanting to lose fat and increase lean muscle mass is maintaining constant tension on your muscles. Muscles are stubborn, they won’t grow just from you just willing them to or lifting weights without understanding the correct way to do so. We need to tear the muscle fibres in order to require a response and change from the body. The best way to do this is to stress them more than they have been before, hence the term No Pain No Gain! That is why a 4010 tempo works for almost anyone from your seasoned weightlifters to your beginners increasing the eccentric load of an exercise (the lengthening or relaxing of the working muscles) and shortening the concentric movement (contracting or lifting phase) allows both the agonist and antagonist muscles maintain a higher degree of stress for a longer amount of time. This method is so powerful because most people lack the neuromuscular ability to contract and apply tension or stress on the target muscles they are working.
Like a lot of things in life to get the best results we need to just slow it down and focus on what we’re doing. 4010 works so well because of a simple truth, everyone lifts too fast! We are all guilty of this even Coach Corey at times of just going through the motions, rushing our sets and leaving the gym without achieving the outcome or objective we were meant to. So by slowing down your lifts to 4010 that is, four seconds on the eccentric phase (to lower the weight) and 1 second on the concentric (to lift) you expose the working muscles to increased time under tension (TUT). Notice that the tempo shows there is no pause between reps so for the whole set you do not get to pause or rest the muscles at neither the top or the bottom of the rest. Now that you are exposed to tension, because you now know what it feels like, its easier to maintain it. We all need to make a conscious effort with our training to stop taking the easy way out and stop swinging the weights around or lifting to quickly, you need to leave your ego at the door and go lighter when necessary in order to achieve the desired response in the body. So guys and girls lets actually start making sure we’re training the way we’re meant to and lets watch ourselves transform.
Be consistent! Avoid following this tempo on just the exercises you’re really good at, implement the correct tempo on every exercise you do. We guarantee you that the challenge will yield you bigger and better results than ever.
Here is a simple breakdown of the 4010 method:
4 – Eccentric phase: How many seconds in the ‘lowering’ / ‘relaxing’ part of a movement. You can recognise this part because its the easiest phase of the movement. You feel your muscle stretch ready for a snappy contraction.
0 – The bottom of the rep: How long you pause at the bottom of your maximum range. Here the muscle is fully stretched and ready to contract for an explosive and powerful lift.
1 – Concentric Phase: How many seconds in the ‘lifting’ / ‘squeezing’ phase of the exercise. This is the hard part, where it takes a lot more effort and concentration.
0 – The top of the rep: The most hated part of the tempo: how long you get to rest between reps. Zero, get straight back down into the next 4010 rep and feel your body grow and respond. Constant time under tension in your lifting sets guys is what is required for growth and change.
So with this in mind now guys, I want every one of you to make sure you’re focussing and controlling every movement and GRIND!!!!!!! Nothing in life comes easy guys especially body transformations so let’s work hard and start getting better results than ever!
Are you not achieving the results you want? Have always struggled with your nutrition? Training hard but still not losing that stubborn belly fat?
Do you want your personal nutrition and training blueprint to epic results, plus have 1 weeks worth of Personal Training at our Newcastle training studio? Simply fill out the form below and lets get you those awesome results!
Sign Up NOW For Your FREE 7 Day Trial!
