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By Elena Voropay
 “If it's hard to remember, it'll be difficult to forget” (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Give your muscles a few seconds and they’ll pay back by becoming stronger and bigger. No, you can't sneak away from your hour-long workout and expect better results with a one-minute routine. However, if you focus on a specific range of seconds, you’ll challenge your muscles in an entirely new way. Muscle Tension vs. Contraction
Before I dive into details, let's refresh our Muscles 101 basics. Remember what makes muscles contract? Your mind. Well, not really, but it all starts there. Muscles contract whenever you tell them to do so. The process is long and complicated, but it all begins with an electrical impulse sent from the brain. You get to the weight machine or dumbbell, think about what to do next, take a breath, maybe a couple, and – there you go! Push! Now pull back! Easy!
Once the muscle receives this signal, it knows that something is coming. Oh, it's the weight! Well, your brain knew this long before your muscles did. Now the nervous system activates a muscle cell, then certain chemical changes occur that allow the muscle fibre to contract.
 Muscles are made up of thousands of muscle cells, units called sarcomeres which are laid down in over-lapping positions as thick and thin filaments. Myosin is a think filament made of protein, where as actin is a thin filament, also made of protein. During contraction, the myosin thick filaments grab on to the actin thin filaments by forming cross-bridges. The thick filaments pull the thin filaments past them, making the sarcomere shorter.
Depending on where myosin and actin are in relation to each other, muscles are either relaxed, partially contracted or fully contracted. So, the length of sarcomere or muscle tissue is determined by the relative positions of these thick and thin filaments.
In a muscle fiber, the signal for contraction is synchronised over the entire fiber so that all of the myofibrils that make up the sarcomere shorten simultaneously and then detach and swing back into the original separation. This cross-bridge cycle repeats itself as you continue to train.
Increases in muscle size have largely been attributed to two factors:
- The mechanical load or the amount of tension applied on a muscle.
- The hormonal and growth factor environment that the muscle experiences.
The first factor is directly related to the second. In other words, the amount and type of work your muscles perform dictate what sort of hormones and hormone-like substances are naturally produced in the body.
In order to induce muscle growth, you have to constantly keep increasing the weight used, the number of repetitions with a given weight, the number of sets per exercise, the number of exercises per workout, the number of workouts per week or day, etc. In other words, there are many ways you can make your muscles do more work – this is called progressive overload, an essential component to growth. Most researchers have found that once you get past the beginner stage, you should be lifting a lot more than what you may have started with. In your training log the numbers should be no less than 80% of the maximum you can lift to optimise gains. For an advanced athlete, it's probably even higher than that.
I know you are strong and courageous, inspired and to train to the point where you have to crawl out of the gym. But there comes a point when you reach a plateau or a "rut" – for some mysterious reason the muscles just simply cannot handle any more resistance. That's it. You give it all the energy you've got, but nothing, really nothing happens. So, how would you start and continue to grow if you cannot up the amount of weight? What is your silver bullet? The answer is to either further increase volume or to focus on Time Under Tension.
What is Your Training Volume?
Time Will Tell
Weight training volume is the amount of work you perform during each workout. Each repetition, each set, each exercise and each increasing gram of weight you add to your workout perform adds to the total workout volume. So, once your body adapts to the weight, you should further either increase the load or the number of repetitions and the number of exercises per muscle group and per workout.
The classic very basic formula used to determine weight training volume is to multiply sets x reps x weight.
For example, if you lifted 100 kilos for 10 reps and 3 sets your weight training volume would be 3,000 kilos. If this has become easy for you after a month of regular training and you still want to grow, you would need to increase at least one variable. If you start lifting 110 kilos for 11 reps and 4 sets your weight training volume would be 4,840 kilos.
If you choose to train with 80 kilos for 15 reps for 3 sets your weight training volume would be 3600 kilos. Even though you will be lifting less the weight of the initial set, the volume is still higher. Now you see why high volume is more work.
Multi-joint, compound exercises which move the weight a significant distance, such as bench presses, squats, lat pull-downs, pull ups, clean and press, have a greater effect of training volume because they require more muscle work. So, when your workout consists of these exercises, the exhaustion would obviously be a lot greater than the workouts made up of single-joint, isolation exercises, such as bicep curls, calf raises, tricep extensions, etc. This is the major flaw of using volume as the only determinant of calculating the total work and targeting muscle growth.
The second downfall is that it doesn't take into account Time Under Tension. Most beginning trainees have been trained to lift and lower the weights with moderate speed on a count of 2 and 4 respectively. A classic. This approximates to 6 seconds per repetition. In a 10-rep sequence, it would take you 60 seconds to complete a set. Practice shows, though, that regardless of weight load, most lifters practice a steady cadence with each repetition usually taking 1–2 seconds on the positive and 1–2 seconds on the negative.
When you speed up your reps and take you only 3 seconds to complete each of the 10-rep sequence, the total TUT comes down from 60 seconds to 30 seconds – that's only half the time. You may call this as partial tissue stimulus. Partial trigger leads to partial muscle growth, even though the reps and the weight are in the proper range. This might not increase your muscle mass to the same level as could have happened if you followed the advice of professionals – slow controlled movements with proper form.
To explain this, let's get back to the physiology of muscles. Within a muscle fibre the myosin can only attach to adjacent actin filaments so quickly. As the muscles are signalled to contract faster, such as when you start running faster to catch the train, the number of cross bridges formed inevitably drops. The faster a muscle cell shortens - the less force it can generate.
On the other hand, when you slow down your movements your muscles lose that momentum, you take more time to complete each motion. At slow muscle action speeds, a higher number of cross-bridges can be formed leading to a maximum amount of tension for a given workload. This is called the force-velocity relationship.
This is one reason you are always recommended to lift and lower weights in a slow, deliberate manner – this increases the amount of tension, integrates more fibres and essentially makes your body grow.
As you can see, calculating weight training volume is probably better suited for a supercomputer or biomechanical genius. Of course, you can make your program as complicated or as easy as you want and spend some time planning every workout, which should be done in the best case scenario anyway. But if you want to simplify the idea of training volume, look no further than Time Under Tension (TUT).
What Is Time Under Tension (TUT)
 Time Under Tension (TUT) is exactly what it sounds like - the amount of time your muscles are working.
Total TUT refers to the amount of time per rep (or set, or exercise, or workout) that the muscle has to endure resistance. But let's narrow it down to how long the muscle resists weight during each set. For example, if you did the barbell curl and it took you 2 seconds to curl the weight up and another 4 seconds to lower it, that’s 6 seconds of tension per rep. Performing 10 reps at this pace would take a total of 60 seconds. Therefore, the TUT for that set is 60 seconds.
In regards to structural strength, there are many professional opinions that state that increasing TUT is more effective then increasing resistance or the number of repetitions. Muscle tension is undoubtedly one of the most important factors in muscle growth. The National Strength Training Association believes that increased Time Under Tension recruits more muscle fibres so the muscles have to work harder.
The best TUT ranges are:
- 4–24 seconds for strength and power
- 32–48 seconds for size
- 60–120 seconds for tone endurance
Don’t abandon set and rep ranges just yet, though — you have good reason to focus on them.
First thing to make sure is that the sets last long enough to stimulate muscle growth. Arthur Jones recommended everyone to do a set of 8-12 reps with the positive lasting for 2 seconds and negative lasting for 4 seconds. This would make each rep last for 6 seconds. The reason why I am highlighting this is to show how much time your muscle must be under tension to stimulate growth. But most of us complete one rep within 2-3 seconds. So a set of 8 lasts for 16-24 seconds, which is not even half of what Arthur Jones recommends – 48 seconds total. Imagine how much potential Time Under Tension is wasted when you rush through your training! Do this for every set and every exercise in every workout, and you would half the amount of potential muscle gain you could achieve only by slowing down a bit. This might be the mistake that most of the bodybuilders do and then complain about their poor genetics and blame the “worthless supplements” that don't help them grow.
Depending on the goal of your training, you can manipulate within these ranges and tailor each set of exercise to your exact specific needs. Time Under Tension is widely used in the periodization Model where the cycles of training are interchanged. The reason for varying both the weight and number of repetitions for each set is that you are trying to train two sets of muscle fibres, generally called Fast-twitch and Slow-twitch.
Now let's put it all together and extrapolate those figures.
Strength and Power
The strength phase in the periodization model includes low volume. This means less repetitions per exercise and/or less sets. Here you will be primary targeting Type II Fast-Twitch muscle fibres which have more force and size and are the ones that have the greatest potential for growth. You train them with low-rep, high-weight sets.
The best TUT ranges are 4–24 seconds and your ideal rep range should be the lowest number of repetitions with the most weight you can conquer - around 80% or more of your 1 Rep Max (1RM). Ideally, the load should be heavy enough that you can not lift the weight after 1- 6 repetitions. That's right, even 1 single utmost rep with an eye-popping intensity can be sufficient enough to stimulate growth, but you have to be experienced enough before you try this power-lifting technique without killing yourself.
Using extremely heavy weights you may be better off performing a few explosive repetitions, but this may not provide enough tension for muscle growth, especially if you are like most of us – relatively strong. Therefore, if muscle mass is your goal, sets lasting only 5-10 seconds are probably not going to be optimal for gains.
So, with an average of 6-reps and TUT taken together, this works out to roughly 4 seconds per rep on average. You can do explosive-type fast-rep techniques taking 1 second per rep, or go super-slow on exercises and harness the pain of weight load, especially on the eccentric portion and take the full 15 seconds per rep.
Muscle Strength and Size
In the periodization model the period of high volume is called the hypertrophy phase which means the muscle cells grow larger. If your goal is to create a stimulus to gain muscle you should perform high volume training.
The set would last for about 48 - 72 seconds. When you’re training for muscle mass, continue to shoot for 8–12 reps at all times. Incorporating TUT training into your routine can allow you to widen that rep range to about 6–15 per set, as long as you stay within the TUT range of 48 - 72 seconds.
For example, if you decide to perform 6 reps of barbell curls, you would need to slow down your reps to about 8 seconds per rep for a total of 48 seconds of TUT. If you did 15 reps of barbell curls, you’d need to keep the reps to about 3 – 4 seconds for a total of 45–60 seconds of TUT.
Muscle Tone and Endurance
Muscle endurance refers to how well the muscles can exert and hold maximum force over and over and over again. When you train for endurance and tone, the major work comes from the Slow-Twitch muscle fibres which are smaller in size and don't grow as well as the Fast-Twitchers. They are the fat burners which rely on a different energy system. You train those with high-rep, lower-weight sets, where Time Under Tension is about 60–120 seconds with light weights and repetition range over 15.
At moderate speed, you can choose the weight sufficient enough to provide fatigue with each set. For example, 20 repetitions of leg curls with 2 seconds in the concentric and 4 seconds in the eccentric phase will occupy the 2 minutes of your valuable time. Here you are also incorporating the extended time on the negative part of the repetition which has a profound effect on muscle growth. This way, your TUT is kept within range recommended just for endurance, but you get the Hypertrophy effect from the long eccentric contraction as a bonus.
So, that's it. Now you know how to waste your time counting it.
How To TUT:
Tensing Muscles With The Right Volume
1.Identify your 1RM.
The formula for calculating 1 repetition maximum is:
Weight × ( 1 + ( 0.033 × Number of repetitions )
For example, you know you can bench press 100 kilos around 10 times. Your 1 Repetition Maximum or 1RM is 133 kilograms.
2.Determine what you want to get from your training: strength, size or endurance.
3.Choose the correct weight and the number of repetitions you need to accomplish.
Using the Time Under Tension parameters and the traditional model with each repetition lasting 6 seconds – 2 seconds on the concentric and 4 seconds on the eccentric phase – here is what you get in terms of training volume.
At 85% of intensity used for strength and power you should be able to lift 113kg for 6 repetitions. The training volume for this set would be 600 kg and the work performed would last for 36 seconds.
At 75% of intensity applied for muscle size growth you are lifting 100kg 10 times. Here, your muscles would need to work for around 60 seconds.
At 65% of intensity needed for muscle tone and endurance you need to lower the weight to 86 kilograms in order to handle it for 15-20 repetitions per set. The total amount of Time Under Tension in each set would be approximately 90 – 120 seconds.
So, which one of these three is the way to train for growth?
Provided the resistance is appropriately chosen, the answer is in the volume – the middle ground, where the volume is not too large and not too little. Using extremely heavy weights that allow only 1-2 repetitions per set or performing a few explosive repetitions may not provide enough tension for muscle growth. Therefore, if muscle mass is your goal, sets lasting only 5-10 seconds are probably not going to be optimal for gains. On the other hand, you don't want to go too light, because performing 100 reps with the 5 kg dumbbells is not likely to prove effective either, even though this represents a huge TUT.
Which of the previous examples do you think would be higher volume?
If you lifted the weight 6 seconds per rep and only performed 6 reps of 113 kgs the classic training volume formula would say your volume was 678 kilos.
Lifting 100 kgs for 10 reps equals 1000 kgs.
Using 86 kgs in a 15-rep set gives you 1290 kgs in volume.
Not only the volume is lowest in the first set, but the Time Under Tension is also minimal. However, the muscles have to lift the weight which is a lot heavier. Using high weights and low reps does not put the muscle under tension long enough to cause much of the micro-damage that leads to muscle growth, but it does improve neural co-ordination, recruit more motor units, build power and strength in general which in the long run will be helpful by allowing you to lift heavier in your other sets. Training with high reps and easy weights is not effective in terms of size because the load is not heavy enough to target the Fast-Twitch muscle fibres. At the end, this may give at least one explanation why the classic formula of 8 – 12 reps with 75% weight of your 1RM is the best one for muscle size.
To monitor your rep speed and total TUT for every set, you need to watch the clock and count off reps at the right speed. Having a trainer or a partner close who can help you count seconds is great. But if you train alone, timing gets trickier. Try positioning yourself in view of a wall clock or use a watch with a second hand or timer. I know it all sounds daunting, but with practice and experience this all would become your second nature and you wouldn't need to pay as much attention to the way you train.
Is TUT The Answer to Faster Muscle Growth?
No one, not even the most experienced exercise physiologist truly can prove what is the optimal promising method for muscle growth. It doesn't exist. If anyone would try to tell you so, ask them to prove the exact mechanism that controls why we get sick, happy, or hungry. Should you training to failure always? No. Should you always use a set resistance? No. What is the best number of reps at a optimal TUT? Depends.
 Muscle growth is merely an adaptation to the correct intensity and volume of work. Your muscles care less of what you do, they simply respond to the demands of training by adapting with compensation, super-compensation and overcompensation when the environment is fertile. Remember, your muscles don't care about Time Under Tension. They simply carry as many loads as they can handle.
The major confusion regarding TUT stems from the assertion that for optimal muscle growth, a muscle should be under tension for a particular number of seconds on any given set to produce the most anabolic ground. However, it doesn't take into account other variables, the number of reps or the weight lifted in particular. For example, you may keep within the optimal range of seconds needed for size, but if the number of reps is best suited for endurance and these reps are performed with light weight, your muscles will respond to the training routine by developing red Slow-Twitch muscle fibres which don't add much to size.
It should also be kept in mind that the total TUT for the workout may be far more telling than the TUT for any given set. While TUT of each set is important when talking about Hypertrophy, I think that the total Time Under Tension which includes time spent on each individual repetition, number of these reps performed before resting, how long it takes to complete the set, plus the number of sets per workout are not of any lesser value. Therefore, one might rack up only 10 seconds of TUT for each set, but if numerous sets are performed, the TUT for the workout remains high.
You can increase TUT either not just by increasing the length of each rep, but by increasing the number of repetitions per set, or adding more sets per exercise, or by using more exercises in a workout per muscle group which is the basis of complete TUT training. So, to make sure you ocus on both – the number of exercises per muscle group, sets per exercise, repetitions per set, the amount of time it takes to complete each repetition, the weight lifted, plus recovery times based on your training goals. If you want to be even more precise and specific, you may want to check how different muscle groups respond to different techniques best, see where you are lacking and blast those lagging parts with greater intensity and volume. Then, there are hundreds of different advance training techniques and principles, not to mention the very basic Periodization, which help you break through those nasty stagnant points in your optimal growth.
Do not to look at TUT as an isolated factor in growth. You can train in the perfect rep range with the perfect intensity, but if you don't eat well and don't recover properly, your body will neglect any potential growth no matter how you train. Train, eat, rest so that the next time you ask your muscle to lift that same weight, it will have an easier time doing so. Almost all programs will work provided it has some common sense behind. Regardless of the workout techniques and periodization models you use, once they've grown bigger and stronger, they will be able to push and pull heavier weights...week in and week out...
Regardless of your training goals, it’s important to vary your exercises and repetition speeds focusing on your goal so you don’t get stuck in a rut. Change the number of reps you perform per set and the time it takes to complete each rep.
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