Time under tension (TUT) refers to the amount of time your muscles are in a state of contraction throughout a workout. The set will take 18 seconds if you need 3 seconds for each repetition and want to finish 6 repeats. This means you’ve been under stress for 18 seconds. Even if you just do three sets of three repetitions of six seconds each, you’ll discover that you need 18 seconds. As a result, the amount of time spent under stress is the same for both kinds.

No matter how important the TUT is, you don’t have to pay attention every second of the way. If you don’t mind a shorter TUT, you should be aware that people tend to move too quickly throughout a set, which results in a shorter time under tension (TUT). Because of this, although the TUT is important, it shouldn’t be the entire focus of your preparation. If you want to get the most out of something, you’ll need to utilise it.

What’s the significance of this?

The amount of time your muscles spend under strain is an important factor in determining the kind of stimulus you give them and the training effect you get out of it. The TUT is thus subject to the following rules. A time-under-tension of 4 – 20 seconds is recommended for increasing maximum strength. It is recommended that you lift weights for a duration of 40 to 60 seconds in order to gain muscle mass. Beyond this point, the emphasis shifts to building power and stamina. “But what about the repetitions?” you may wonder.

Do they even matter? There is no doubt about that. According on your knowledge of maximum strength training, 1-6 repetitions are about equivalent to 4-20 seconds of TUT. To build muscle, you’ll need at least 40-60 seconds to complete 6-15 sets of carefully controlled repetitions of an exercise.

How can you stay on track with the deadline?

Cadences

Strength training cadence is the rate at which you perform each of an exercise’s individual movements. As an example, consider the sequence of integers below:

Bench press with a 2-1-2 cadence:

• The bar is dropped upon the chest in 2 seconds.
• Holding the barbell for one second is equivalent to one rep.
• Barbell goes up in two seconds.

As long as you stick to the guidelines, you may expect to spend 50 seconds under tension in a set of 10 repetitions, which is the perfect amount of time for muscle growth.

Reps in half

You may also “artificially” increase the duration under strain by doing additional sets of half reps at the end of a set. Let’s stick with the bench press as an example. Afterward, you will do additional repetitions in which you lower the bar to your chest by a quarter of an inch.

Disapproval of the Time under Tension strategy

According to time-under-tension, you should just stop the time of tension and complete the acts as gently as possible from here on out. The so-called Superslow Training method makes use of this technique. The TUT has been studied extensively, and the aforementioned guideline values were derived from those studies. However, there are still studies that do not support focusing just on time under stress.

Conclusion

It may be difficult to understand how the amount of time spent under stress affects a person’s ability to learn. It’s possible to argue that there’s a suitable range of tension duration for training, depending on the goal.

TUT has not been shown to be superior to traditional training alone in studies comparing the two methods, hence utmost caution should be used when using TUT as the gold standard. Diversifying your instruction under the guise of time pressure is a smart technique.