Time under tension is the key to bodybuilding muscle growth. The longer you can hold an exercise in a muscle, the more muscle fibers you'll activate and the larger your gains will be.
The trick is to lift heavy enough weight with enough speed so that it allows you to use more than one muscle group at a time — which allows for more stimulation of growth hormone production and greater fat burning.
Time under tension exercises can include any type of resistance training that uses multiple muscles at once. These are usually considered compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups and dips.
There's no way around it — if you want to build muscle, you need to lift heavy weights with high intensity for long periods of time (at least eight minutes). This means that all types of exercises will work well as long as they allow you to fatigue your muscles enough to stimulate growth hormone release.
Bodybuilders get so big because they are keeping their muscles under stress for longer periods of time when lifting.
The goal of this type of workout is to work the target muscle group for at least 30 seconds, or until you can't hold the weight up any longer. If you start with a light weight and move up gradually, you should be able to do this for 60-90 seconds (or longer if you're strong enough).
The motor units in the muscle being worked are recruited from smallest to largest. The more time you keep a muscle under tension, the greater chance you have of recruiting fast twitch muscle fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers produce more force and are larger than slow twitch muscle fibers, so more hypertrophy.
Once at the top of the rep, create maximal tension by pausing for a full second at the peak of the rep. Putting all of this together results in about 5-6 seconds per rep—a perfect combination for performing 8-12 reps and keeping your muscles under tension for 30-70 seconds per set.
Time under tension workouts are best done with a barbell or dumbbells so that there's no need to change grips or use stabilizing equipment like straps or hand weights. You can also use bodyweight exercises such as pushups and pullups if that's all that's available in your gym.
When you lift weights the body produces a buildup of metabolites.
- As this occurs muscular contractions cause blood vessels to condense.
- This leads to a restriction of blood flow to the muscles that are working.
- Without proper blood flow oxygen is not present, which creates a hypoxic environment.
Research has shown that hypoxic muscle environments actually enhance muscle strength and hypertrophy. Blood flow must be obstructed while time under tension is stressed to create a more anabolic response.