1 Best Lifting Tempo for Strength, Fast or Slow

Nowadays more people are obsessed with getting stronger and wonder which lifting tempo for strength is better. They are concerned with getting the best result possible without struggling with trial and error to reach their fitness goals.

If the purpose of an individual is to enhance strength, here are some useful tips about lifting tempo for strength that can help you decide whether lifting fast or slowly is better to get stronger. This article on rambodfit will provide you with some useful information about this subject.

Lifting Fast or Slowly, Which One Gets You Stronger?

Due to some evidence-based studies, lifting tempo for strength is suggested to be fast during the concentric phase, however, to know exactly what to do we provide you some information about lifting techniques and parts of the movement that can help you perform better in the gym.

3 Phase (part) Of a Movement

Before we talk about proper lifting tempo for strength, we are going to talk about isometric, concentric, and eccentric briefly.

Concentric

It happens when the length of the muscle shortens and also when muscle force is greater than resistance. For example in the biceps curl when you move the dumbbell up toward the shoulder is the concentric phase of movement.

Eccentric

When muscle lengthens during a movement and when muscle force is less than resistance we call it eccentric phase. For instance again in the biceps curl when you lower the dumbbell down is called the eccentric phase.

Isometric

while doing a movement and there is no change in muscle length and muscle force is equal to resistance. Imagine the moment when you are doing a biceps curl and you pause at the top, that specific moment is isometric.

Another good example to fully understand these phases is squat. The isometric part is when you pause at the bottom and you are not changing the length of the muscle, the concentric part is when you move from bottom to top to lift the weight, and eccentric happens when you sit by weighting your shoulder.

The concentric lifting tempo for strength

There was a recent research about this topic which we are going to shortly explain it. First of all, in this research slow tempo was considered more than 2 seconds and fast tempo less than 2 seconds.

In slow concentric, there was a reduction in strength development so it is suggested that you’d better do the concentric phase of movements as fast as possible regardless of the load, however, if you have some kind of injury by doing the concentric phase slower you feel more comfortable then that’s ok.

The eccentric lifting tempo for strength

About the eccentric we don’t know yet that it can cause any difference, however by doing it slowly it may not harm strength.

Consider Safety Before Lifting

Before lifting fast or slow for strength, it is vital to consider safety first. It means that you should observe the proper form for lifting weights by paying attention to the proper range of motion and control during your sets.

Suggested lifting tempo for strength

Benefits a fast concentric, but it will not build you as much muscle so that is ok if you do so. Let’s conclude this essay by analyzing the tempo of squat movement in different phases for an individual to gain strength.

Consider that we start squat from the top so the first phase will be eccentric. Because the purpose is strength so there is no need to go slow, and giving it 1 second will be enough. The second phase when you are down before moving up is isometric.

It is a good time for you to catch your breath and get ready to lift the weight, so again 1 second is ok. Last part when you want to lift a weight up, you should do it as fast as possible except when you are injured.

• Eccentric lifting tempo for strength: 1 second
• Isometric tempo for strength: 1 second (take a breath before going up)
• Concentric lifting tempo for strength: as fast as possible

The biolayne has some useful data about lifting tempo for strength.

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