Tempo - The speed with which you move

The art of Tempo

Tempo is the speed with which you move your weight, this can vary depending on your fitness goals, from slow reps to highly explosive reps.

For example 4 seconds to lower and 2 seconds to raise back up would be one 6 second repetition at your chosen weight.

Next time your going through your resistance program try varying the tempo for the repetition.
For muscle gain and toning work it out so the speed of the rep = 60 seconds / number of repetitions you want to do (normally in the 8-12 repetition range) with a 45 to 60 second rest period between sets.

For more muscle endurance repetitions try 90 seconds / number of repetitions you chose to use (normally in the 15-30 repetition range) with a 30-45 second rest period between sets.

To gain strength I normally approach it in a slightly different way.
I look at more the number of repetitions, ie 4-6 and adjust the tempo based on that, normally when you are training strength the resistance will be getting quite heavy even to a point where trying to move it fast will still result in a slow movement speed, (due to the muscles trying to overcome the inertia and sheer weight that you are using you simply can't move it any faster)

This is okay and will recruit more the fast twitch muscle fibres (those muscle fibre's which are responsive for fast contractions in the muscle itself) which can have a direct effect on your strength due to the body recruiting more of these muscle fibre's to lift the resistance.
Scientifically this can start to get quite complicated and you can go in to a lot more depth on this subject but in this case we will keep it easy to understand, if its heavy vary your rep speed but keep the reps low, and take lots of rest between sets, anywhere from 3minutes up to 6 minutes if its very high intensity and really heavy.

I find when introducing this system of movement to my clients they have to drop the weight they were using for a particular exercise by quite a bit (up to 50% in some cases) as they will probably have been traditionally using a typical gym rep speed of 2sec down 1sec up with whatever reps they are using.

If you want to shock that body and give it some spice try varying you repetition speed, you will be amazed how the intensity of your workout can change and the response of your muscles to this type of training!.