Article regarding TUT in Men's Health

[ianack4life]

Alright, I just wanted to hear your opinions on this letter in Men's Health. Personally I feel that its weak.


The question that was posed was;
I always use heavy weights, but my muscles aren't growing. Isn't heavy lifting supposed to build muscle?

Response;
Not exactly. To stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40 to 60 seconds, but a typical set of six to eight repetitions lasts only 12 to 20seconds. Using the same lifting tempo for a set of 15 repetitions with moderate weight would yield more results in terms of muscle growth. Or try taking 6 seconds to lift the weight and 1 second to lower it.


Now Men's Health normally has quite a few good articles IMO, and normally promotes at the very least lifting 60% of your 1rm for muscle gains. This letter seems to dispute that.

Hopefully you guys find this article to be bunk regarding the TUT, considering I've never based my lifting on TUT but only on weight.

[Max-Mex]

Men's Health = teh suck

[SDhick]

Men's Health = teh suck

absolutley

[Saint Patrick]

Response;
Not exactly. To stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40 to 60 seconds, but a typical set of six to eight repetitions lasts only 12 to 20seconds. Using the same lifting tempo for a set of 15 repetitions with moderate weight would yield more results in terms of muscle growth. Or try taking 6 seconds to lift the weight and 1 second to lower it.

I've never had a set last 40-60 seconds, and I've grown plenty of muscle. This seems like bad advice.

[Bravo]

I've never had a set last 40-60 seconds, and I've grown plenty of muscle. This seems like bad advice.

Are you natural? Not that it has anything to do with this post. Just curious.

[PowerManDL]

The question that was posed was;
I always use heavy weights, but my muscles aren't growing. Isn't heavy lifting supposed to build muscle?

Response;
Not exactly. To stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40 to 60 seconds, but a typical set of six to eight repetitions lasts only 12 to 20seconds. Using the same lifting tempo for a set of 15 repetitions with moderate weight would yield more results in terms of muscle growth. Or try taking 6 seconds to lift the weight and 1 second to lower it.

This might hold true if the weight being used weren't a bigger factor than the TUT. Oopsie!

[Geeper]

I used to look through Men's Health a few years ago, and found some good advice and some bad, but my wife picked one up for me a couple of weeks ago and holy crap how it has changed. I though she had bought some type of gay maxim magazine by mistake. It's all fashion tips, which colors are "in", what shoes go with what tie, how many shoes should I own, what belt is in, greased up anorexic male models in underwear, here's the coolest cell phone to make your yuppie buddies jealous.
The magazine has gone to crap. It's for gay fashion concious yuppies. Besides everything you need to know is all on the net for free. Eat right, lift hard, rest, repeat

[Bravo]

I used to look through Men's Health a few years ago, and found some good advice and some bad, but my wife picked one up for me a couple of weeks ago and holy crap how it has changed. I though she had bought some type of gay maxim magazine by mistake. It's all fashion tips, which colors are "in", what shoes go with what tie, how many shoes should I own, what belt is in, greased up anorexic male models in underwear, here's the coolest cell phone to make your yuppie buddies jealous.
The magazine has gone to crap. It's for gay fashion concious yuppies. Besides everything you need to know is all on the net for free. Eat right, lift hard, rest, repeat

What!!?? You mean you're not a metrosexual??!!

[Machher]

Response;
[i]Not exactly. To stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40 to 60 seconds

Bull

[ianack4life]

but then what effect does time under tension have on muscle growth? Some would argue none, and others would argue than it has a significant effect.

[body]

but then what effect does time under tension have on muscle growth? Some would argue none, and others would argue than it has a significant effect.

No one would say none.
Its just that people often find total worload and weight used a better guide.

[GMCtrk]

Lol

[The Real TO]

I think what Men's Health is trying to get across is that strength training is supposed to be anaerboic in nature. With that being said, I think they are saying to keep your sets below 2 minutes on legs, and somewhere between 1-1:30 on upper body.

We only use the HIT protocol in our gym which means one set to failure. So we want the set to last between 1-2 minutes on everything we do. I understand them talking about going 6 seconds on the positive, or lifting phase, but only 1 second on the negative, or lowering phase. Worthless. The Negative portion of the movement is just as important if not more important than the Positive. Why not go 3-6 seconds up, and 3-6 seconds down? Keep it smooth, and simple.

Time under tension, or load as we call it, is important and should be something to keep track of. You muscles can't count, so why put a specific number of reps on a exercise. Now I also understand that your muscles don't just shut off after 2 minutes of being exerted, but this HIT workout is all based on science, and what we have found is that under 2 minutes is ideal for 1 set to failure. It stays in the anaerobic category, and fulls exhausts your muscles in a short period of time.

Now this isn't the only way to workout. Far from the true, but this is something that works for us. I personally use some negative only workouts for myself and my clients. I also do some forms of HIT that include forced reps, and decline or incline pyramids. There are different ways to train HIT than just one set to failure. So as far as Time Under Load goes try to time your sets sometime to see where you are at.

[Paul Stagg]

HIT isn't based on science. You would be well served to read something by Dr Siff.

Read Powerman's post.

[MixmasterNash]

Anything under 2 minutes is anaerobic? Bwuhahahahah.

[ryuage]

the only time i actually went for a tut of 40-60 seconds was when I completed depletion workouts ala ud2 style.

[NaturalBuilder]

Speed of the lift and load are more important than time under tension.

[ianack4life]

Speed of the lift and load are more important than time under tension.

I know speed = power + strength but speed is also a reference to time, so thats time under tension...

[Relentless]

Their suggestion of fast eccentric and slow concentric is silly. Personally I am enjoying a style of lifting right now that is built around slow negatives (the exact opposite of what they suggest).

There may be some value to the idea of TUT, in my opinion, only so far as it increases the potential to generate microtearing in the muscle fibres, thereby promoting hypertrophy. Slow negatives are a great way to do this, IMHO.

Generally speaking, I think that you can successfully train with a lot of variation from the 'ideal', depending on your diet, genetics and lots of other factors. Is there one single 'ideal' way to train for everyone? Maybe. Lots of argument to that effect on the boards and in the literature. Bottom line in my book is that you must test and experiment with your own body as laboratory to find out what works for YOU.