 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coykey. Today we're gonna discuss our fourth piece of the training puzzle that is lifting tempo. Now we kinda talked about that a little bit because I got off topic when talking about the intensity portion of our training. So intensity selects what kinds of adaptations that I'm going to get. Tempo though ties really well into that. So what is lifting tempo? It's kind of just like the timing of your lifts. For most hypertrophy stuff, I don't need to move anything really quickly but I'm stressing myself. I'm getting really, really fatigued and I need to make sure I maintain my technique not only to not hurt myself but also to keep the tension on the muscles that are fatiguing and not, you know, if I'm doing a bench press, my chest gets tired. I don't wanna just shrug up so that I can keep going. It's not about doing more reps. It's about fatiguing the muscle that I am training. Right, so I wanna keep those shoulders down and just keep bench pressing with my pack, not start using my neck. If only it were so easy. So lifting tempo for hypertrophy stuff, I'm moving a little bit slower. What if I'm doing some sort of cardiovascular thing? Well, we talked about in the last video with our rest periods, cardiovascular movements and not necessarily muscular endurance stuff but a little bit muscular endurance stuff requires this repetitive rhythmic kind of motion because that allows extra blood to get in, oxygen to get back into the muscle, carbon dioxide and hydrogen ions and whatever else to get out of the muscle so that it can keep functioning. The name of the game here is continuing to function. So if I'm doing some sort of more conditioning workout, more of a circuit workout, I'm gonna be able to move a little bit more quickly. Not just because I want to for those training adaptations but also because if I'm doing something that is cardiovascular, the weight has to be lower, right? We talked about intensity. Intensity has to be lower so that I can keep going for longer. Lifting tempo for power, how about move really, really fast? Move faster than you think you can, okay? Anything that motivates you to go faster whether I need to literally take a lighter and light a fire under your butt, whatever I need to do, that is what I wanna do if I'm trying to get more power. And then for strength, it's kind of a similar thing. Like you wanna move it with intent but you don't wanna move so fast that you lose your groove of the exercise. So for example, when I'm doing a squat, basically the bar should kind of come straight down, straight up. It shouldn't really flip around too much. And if it does, that means I'm losing my leverage. I don't have good leg drive and I need to kind of regain my balance before I can keep putting force into the bar. So if I move really quickly, here's a great example. So I did this in a powerlifting meet, a really hyped, way overcaffeinated and I hit my opener really, really well because it's light and I selected a good opener. And then I went up 20 pounds or whatever and I was like, yeah, I am amped and I bottomed out really, really hard but I didn't have the stiffness to overcome it. So I lost my balance and I wasn't able to get the weight up. Then I put 10 more pounds on, I went a little bit slower and I got it. So it's not that I wasn't strong enough to do it. It's because I just did it incorrectly. So lifting tempo has a lot to do with your technique as well. But select a lifting tempo that aligns with the goals of your exercise. Again, you know, some things earlier on in your workout, you wanna move pretty fast. I generally prioritize doing things well before doing them fast. But outside of that, it's like just, you know, do what seems to make sense. If I'm doing a hold, I'm gonna hold, right? There is no tempo. It is an isometric. If I'm just trying to do this to fatigue a supplementary muscle after I've done most of my workout then I don't have to go that fast. I can go pretty slow and keep the stress on that muscle. But if I do go faster, I'm gonna put a little bit more stress on type two fibers. So if I wanna train my type two fibers, I gotta move either heavy weights or move them quickly. If I'm just looking for general fatigue and maybe size, then I want type two and type one fibers. I want them all to get bigger. So I can move a little bit slower and still get away with some good gains there. That is more than you ever wanted to know about lifting tempo.