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Time Under Tension Changes

I have made some good progress so far as my strength and weight goals are concerned. Although I did not reach any of my strength goals I am very close to achieving them. Almost a week into December and I already reached my weight goal of 125 lbs. That means I gained a whopping 6 lbs in 3 months (for an ectomorph that is a big deal believe me). However along the road I gained a huge amount of fat too. A full 3.5% to be precise.

In the past 2 months and 1 week I have only concentrated on increasing the strength. Always performed the exercises with quick bursts of energy when lifting and quickly bringing the weight down in the negatives. So the time under tension was very low. Perhaps around 2 to 3 seconds per rep. Total time under tension for a set was around 10 to 30 seconds depending on the reps. As a result I could keep adding weights more often and kept going. Now that I have reached a certain point in my strength I want to concentrate more on form and letting my central nervous system cope up with the increased stress. For this reason and also to help me burn more calories I am planning to switch over to longer time under tension and using lower weights.

That means I will not be getting any stronger, but I am prepping myself for the next bout of strength training. I am planning to do this for a month and a half. But I may go longer or shorter depending on how my body responds. For now that is the plan. The new tempo will be 3 seconds on negative contraction, 1 seconds at the lowest point, 1-2 seconds for the positive contraction and then one more second at the highest point. This will give me around 6 to 7 seconds of time under tension per rep. The total time under tension will be anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds depending on how many reps I can do.

I also believe that more time under stress means that more time for the blood to rush into various parts of the muscles and increases capillarity. Of course like almost all research in body building, no one knows for sure if the capillarity truly improves with increased time under tension, but from my experience it does work for me. I have seen more vascularity with more time under tension when I performed it before. More vascularity means more blood to muscles and more endurance.

So off to my new regimen. I perhaps will not be able to reach my strength goals because of this change, but I may be able to reduce the fat %. Who knows. Only time will tell...
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