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Why You Must Change Your Workout Tempo

5. Match Resistance Curves to the Human Force Curves with Chains and Bands. An excellent way for more advanced lifters to overcome plateaus and vary tempo is to train with chains or bands attached to the barbells. This strategy is particularly effective in working the extensor muscles because attaching chains to a barbell will vary the amount of resistance your muscles have to contract against. For example, if you put chains on the ends of the barbell when squatting, the chains will pile up on the floor during the eccentric or down portion of the lift, decreasing the weight. As you come up from the squat during the concentric phase, the weight will increase as the chains come off the floor and contribute to your load. This is effective because it increases the weight during the weaker movement (you have less force capability concentrically), requiring you to train through the sticking or most challenging point of the lift.

A study of college football players found that the athletes significantly improved maximal strength and peak power from training with chains and bands. The players who trained with chains and bands improved their 1RM bench press by 10 kg versus players who did a traditional bench press and improved by only 7 kg after a seven-week training program. Researchers also noted that weighted chains supply the added benefit of training the stabilizer muscles because they swing and oscillate throughout the range of motion of a lift.

You can use variable resistance on exercises such as deadlifts, squats and bench presses or any exercise in which your progress has stagnated and in which you can reasonably attach chains or bands to the barbell. Eccentric hooks (weights with hooks that hang off the sides of a barbell and drop off once the bottom of the dangling hooks hit the ground) load the lift in the opposite way, making the lift heavier during the eccentric down portion of the lift, where you are naturally stronger. The hooks come off and you can then explode up with less resistance in the concentric motion. Be sure to limit variable resistance training to only one workout out of two, at the most, because it is very taxing to the neuromuscular system.

If you don’t carefully manipulate all the loading parameters of training such as tempo, you cannot know exactly what type of training stimulus you are applying to the body. Take control of your workouts, and you will achieve your goals faster than you ever thought possible.

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