Tempo Movements and Programming
By: Brandon Wilton
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]Throwing in tempo training for classes
As we go through the year of coaching, making discoveries about what works and what does not for our general population - we learn as coaches and hopefully the athletes learn a little as well. Generally most of the population doesn't ask a ton of questions, although I would say to you, you all should be asking questions if you have them to educate yourselves as athletes. You may have noticed we have been throwing in a lot of tempo over the last 9 week block, and you may see trends that occur from block to block, like pistol or single leg squatting progressions that occur frequently, or olympic weightlifting volume rising or falling, we can only fit so much into a 9 week - 1 hour a day program, so the exercise selection, formats, and concepts have to be put in intelligently to move people toward improving function, health, aesthetics, and performance all relative to the goals of the group.
So how does tempo work, and what does it mean?
What Does 30X0 Mean?
Tempo prescriptions come in a series of four numbers representing the times in which it should take to complete four stages of the lift. In a workout, the tempo prescription will follow the assigned number of reps, such as:
Front Squat x 2-3 reps @ 30X0
The First Number – The first number refers to the lowering (eccentric) phase of the lift. Using our front squat example, the 3 will represent the amount of time (in seconds) that it should take you to descend to the bottom of the squat. (The first number always refers to the lowering/eccentric phase, even if the movement begins with the ascending/concentric phase, such as in a pull-up.)
The Second Number – The second number refers to the amount of time spent in the bottom position of the lift – the point in which the lift transitions from lowering to ascending. In our front squat example, the prescribed 0 means that the athlete should reach the bottom position and immediately begin their ascent. If, however, the prescription was 32X0, the athlete would be expected to pause for 2 seconds at the bottom position.
The Third Number – The third number refers to ascending (concentric) phase of the lift – the amount of time it takes you to get to the top of the lift. Yes, I am aware that X is not a number. The X signifies that the athlete should EXPLODE the weight up as quickly as possible. In many cases, this will not be very fast, but it is the intent that counts – try to accelerate the weight as fast as you can. If the third number is a 2, it should take the athlete 2 seconds to get the lift to the top regardless of whether they are capable of moving it faster.
The Fourth Number – The fourth number refers to how long you should pause at the top of the lift. Take, for example, a weighted pull-up prescription of 20X2, the athlete would be expected to hold his or her chin over the bar for two seconds before beginning to come down.
Counting – It seems silly to even mention how to count seconds, but I have heard many clients audibly count to 4 in less than one second while under a heavy load. So, to ensure that your 4 second count and mine are the same, use “one thousands,” as in: 1-one thousand, 2-one thousand, 3-one thousand, 4-one thousand.
If you need more practice, think about how you would perform the following:
Push-Up x 15 reps @ 2111
Bulgarian Split Squat x 6-8 reps @ 41X1
Pull-Up x 81X2
Why are we doing it?
Improved Quality of Movement
Quality of movement should be your first priority. Intensity comes only after one can consistently demonstrate the proper mechanics of a movement. Proper tempo prescriptions can help athletes develop awareness and body control by giving them an opportunity to “feel” which muscle groups are activating to keep them in proper positions. If you cannot create tension through the range of motion at a particular weight, the answer is not to remove it and travel the the movement at speed.
Especially with kids who think nothing of plunging into the bottom of a squat, secure in their belief that their young, elastic connective tissue will catch and help propel them back to the top. The problem is, as they descend their knees often collapse inward, their chest sinks in and their pelvis rolls into a posterior tilt (the dreaded “butt wink”). By requiring a 53X1 tempo, for example, we can help them learn how to keep their chest up, knees out and lumbar spine neutral by allowing them the time to “feel” those positions throughout the four phases of the lift. If the student is unable to control the descent and perform the movement at the prescribed tempo, we know the load is too great.
In more experienced athletes tempo can be used to emphasize problem areas and shore up weak links in technique. For example, if you struggle in the bottom position of an overhead squat, a prescription forcing you to spend some time in that position will help solidify your technique, create more comfort in that weak position, and permit greater improvements down the line.
What happens if you cannot hold the position we are prescribing under load?
Then you reduce the load so that you can pick on the position properly and with solid mechanics
What happens if you cannot hold the position/tempo or perform the movement even under minimal load
Then you either move backwards to bodyweight, or you really step back and look at this movement in regards to whether you really should be traveling through the full range of motion in the first place - considering changing the joint angles you are moving through until mobility or stability has been improved to the point where the range of motion can increase. Even while including the tempo in a decreased range of motion can allow you to feel those positions and spend more time challenging them slightly under a manageable load.
Reduced Risk of Injury
Improving the quality of the movement obviously helps to reduce the risk of injury for athletes. But in addition, slowing down the tempo of lifts can ease the stress placed on joints and shift that additional stress to the muscles powering the lift. More stress on the muscles and less on the joints is a good thing. Muscles are far better at adapting to increased loads. Connective tissue typically takes longer to strengthen and adapt to the increasing loads, so by slowing down the tempo you can give your connective tissue some rest while still strengthening the surrounding musculature.
Tempo prescriptions also naturally control intensity (and perhaps, rein in egos). Let’s use the bench press as an example. If you excessively load the barbell you might be tempted to speed up the lowering phase and bounce the barbell off your chest – don’t lie, you do this. But if you know that the prescription calls for a 3 second descent and a 2 second pause at the bottom, you’re not going to be tempted to load anywhere close to the same amount.
Control/Validity
This ensures the workout / movement is the same from session to session, not only in testing purposes and training purposes, but also in dose response purposes.
For instance:
If I were to perform a Bench Press under these two conditions
Bench Press x 3 @ 60X1 - Time under tension = 21 seconds
Bench Press x 3 @ 20X1 - Time under tension = 9 seconds
Those are two completely different dose responses for that lift when it comes to CNS, Cellular Growth, and Muscle Endurance.
Improved Strength Gains
This alone should have been sufficient, but I threw in the first two for all of the coaches out there.
Proper tempo prescriptions can lead to vastly improved strength gains. First, different tempo prescriptions permit for greater training variety and stimulus. This means fewer plateaus and more adaptation.
Second, they allow us to shore up weak links by overloading certain areas of movements. For example, how many of you feel more comfortable with your second and third deadlift reps than your first? I am guessing a lot, and it’s because you are using the benefit of either or both the elastic “bounce” of your stretch-shortening cycle or your rubber plates hitting the hard floor. But if your tempo prescription called for a slow descent and a longer pause at the bottom, you might actually have to get stronger through your weak points.
Third, slowing down movements with tempo prescriptions can allow for greater amount of time under tension with less overall stress on an athlete’s central nervous system. This can be particularly important for CrossFit athletes, who are often pushing themselves to the limits with maximal effort lifts and workouts, by creating a way to continue training and making an athlete stronger without overtaxing his or her system.
Fourth, isometric pauses at the top and/or bottom of lifts force you to recruit more muscle fiber, and more muscle fiber recruitment (particularly more fast-twitch fibers) equals greater strength gains.
where this all fits into the grand scheme of programming? Click below to expand and read "The Art Of Programming"
Have thoughts on either? post to comments and create some discussion![/cs_text][x_accordion][x_accordion_item title="The Art Of Programming" open="false"]The Art of Programming
Some say programming is an art and some say that programming is a science. I tend to believe that it is a bit of both. Think about how programs are created. There must always be a sound reasoning for why we prescribe something, at least there better be! But, within that program comes historic experiences of what has worked and what hasn’t, assessment and testing of that specific athlete or group of athletes, consultation with that athlete or athletes that leads you to either include or exclude volume/intensity/specific movements. What happens if we happened to catch you client after a tough day at work and speaking with us - pointed us in a direction that you were over worked? Would we suggest coming in the rest of the week and hitting it hard? Of course not. Without continued learning, over time, around our clients we will not be able to get you moving in the right direction immediately. Sure, sometimes a program just hits the mark spot on right away, but the program should always organically improve as we learn about our client’s tendencies and as our client learns about his/her capacity for the training. So, to be a great programmer you must think scientifically and creatively in unison.
With that programming thought fresh in your mind I propose this question:
Is our program for our gym taking into account who we are trying to help make progress?
Look around the gym….what do you see? If the answer is that you see people of all types then you are like most coaches, normal! In 99 out of 100 situations the gym will NOT be made up of CrossFit Games Athletes. But, are you programming with that understanding or are you trying to take your clients and make them into Games competitors when nothing about their structure or lifestyle point to that route being a successful one?
It’s time that gyms program for their intended audience. If you are marketing to the masses and you succeed you will get, well, the masses. You had better program as smartly for them as you can. There is nothing wrong with going after athletes but that talent pool is small. There is nothing wrong with targeting the masses either. But, in either situation, you owe your group the best training possible and we both know that both of those targets require different help.
Take a moment to reflect on the current audience:
Who are the EXACT people we serve as a coaches
What are their current abilities? Strengths? Weaknesses?
More importantly, what are their current goals?
Often times, unfortunately, coaches will program for clients based on multiple underlying factors outside these considerations, including:
What the coach thinks he or she should do (i.e. ‘Everyone needs to learn how to snatch’, or ‘CrossFit is all about high-intensity and met-cons’ or ‘Never do the same thing twice; always keep it constantly varied’).
What other people and boxes are doing around them (“we’ve got to beat those guys”). Often times this comes from over watching Facebook or Instagram!
What their personal biases or goals are (“Everyone wants to be a better athlete right?”).
Far too often, coaches ‘spin their wheels’ by trying to write programs with no real end goal or gains in mind or by designing programs based on their personal, one-track minded goals…that they miss the boat on actually doing what it is their job title reads:
A coach (noun) is:
: a person who teaches and trains an athlete or performer
: a person who teaches and trains the members of a sports team and makes decisions about how the team plays during games
: a private teacher who gives someone lessons in a particular subject
Are you really teaching, leading and guiding your ‘players’ (i.e. gym members, class members, trainees) in how to make progress…in fitness, with their personal goals, in their lives and health (outside the gym)?
For instance, take the workout “The Murph”—a classic Memorial Day favorite at affiliates across the globe, entailing a:
1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 squats
1 mile rune
Murph, no doubt, is a challenging workout—one of those workouts that makes you dig deep and find your ‘inner athlete’ or ‘inner strength’ when the going gets tough. While it is a wonderful idea to honor our fallen soldiers this specific workout simply isn’t a smart idea for a “normal” client. At a minimum they aren’t improving their fitness.
Instead, for your average gym member, your common clients could get so much more out of a workout such as:
Row 250 meters
15 incline pushups
20 ring rows
25 air squats
x 4 rounds
Is this workout perfect? Of course not. But, it is similar in aerobic nature, it takes the eccentric component off of people who have no business running a mile (especially in a weight vest), it reduces the total rep count, and it allows for better technique in the push ups.
“But my workouts are scale-able,” said most coaches who program most of their workouts in any group affiliate model.
However, the level of ‘scaling’ most commonly taught is to ‘Build a workout to crush an Olympic athlete and then make a version for the normal clients that is the hardest version that they can do.’
In reality though, your clients’ workouts should not be the ‘hardest versions they can do.’
Your best, most resilient clients may not get hurt or risk injury…but what about the others?
Maybe they can’t do 100 pull-ups…heck they can’t do one pull-up on their own…so the next best, ‘hardest’ option is strapping them in a band and having them go for it?
Yet…without the ability to even get the chin over the bar in a band…or full lockout position at the bottom of the pull-up…or the ability to do more than 5 at a time…those 100 pull ups are going to go south fast.
Scaling at the ‘hardest level possible’ is probably not the best choice for them.
Instead, coaches should base their program designs around meeting their clients where they currently are, and no matter what, keeping form, stability, strength and progression at the foundation of it all.
Progress workouts based on the adaptation of your clients (rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with poorly executed versions of the ‘substitute’ or scale you’ve been told is the ‘next best option’ in the first place).
This could look like, for someone who is unable to complete pull-ups efficiently…
Taking out the pull-ups altogether for a time…and working a strength piece of over-the-bar chin holds for short bursts x 4-5 rounds.
In a conditioning workout, this could be 10-15 ring rows, with a 2-second pause at the top and strong, neutral core and spine throughout the movement (driving home an ‘impeccable form’ philosophy), followed by 10 negative push-ups and a 60 second Air Dyne sprint x 5 rounds
Recognize what your program, as well as your client’s outside lifestyle factors, are doing (and can be doing) to affect the people you are working with…and then work with these to truly impact those clients and allow them to make progress.
Most people really don’t need you to break them down.
These programs should allow for you to get to your priorities.
If someone isn't sure of what their gym's priorities (or true abilities, baselines, strengths and weaknesses are)?
Well, that is exactly where assessment and testing comes into play.
We Collect data.
The only way we can understand what your priorities are, is if you are tracking your results, whether by paper or by other means, if you are showing up consistently, if you are communicating with us, or if you are working with us as an individual client. If you show up, you don't communicate, don't really have the want to set clear cut goals, its hard to program for you.
Every 9 weeks or so we perform a comprehensive series of baseline fitness assessments.
From about 2 years ago we began really sitting down and asking what your goals are…and the why behind those goals. That way we can let you know if what the majority of the programming is here, is in line with that.
Chances are…’look good naked’ and ‘get stronger’ will come up more than once (i.e. lose weight, improve body composition, drop body fat, gain muscle).
Of course there are outliers, people with goals that are in a different direction than what our programming is headed. In which case, just shoot us an email and you can become an individual client, that way we can definitely make sure we are meeting your needs. We have everyone in ranges from Competitive athletes, distance biking, solely gymnastics programming, etc. Click here to drop us a line.
We have to make sure our program is aligned and allowing progression towards improvement?
Or is it a random, varied melting pot of various movements, occasional strength (no real system or method to the madness), benchmarks and ‘intense’ workouts thrown together. Dig a little deeper folks.
Program Design is where the true secret sauce, the magic, lies.
Adapted From Original Source - Jim Crowell[/x_accordion_item][/x_accordion][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]
