People have a hard time counting reps and simultaneously keeping a tempo that puts them under a tension time. Everyone’s interpretation of a second seems to be different. One simple and very effective way around this is to simply prescribe timed sets. This way nothing has to be counted, you merely have to focus on what you’re doing.

Just like most things, this isn’t a solution for everything. Prescribing tempo lifts do change things and often times are very critical. For instance, if someone was performing a barbell bench press with a tempo of 3-seconds to lower the bar (the eccentric portion of the lift), a 2-second hold at the bottom position, and an explosive push to drive the bar back up to the top position (the concentric portion of the lift), and they did that for 10 repetitions, that would put someone under tension for roughly 50 seconds. That would be a lot different than just benching as fast as possible for 50 seconds with no regard for a tempo.

But there are some exercises that can be performed for speed where you can disregard a controlled tempo and just measure the time as opposed to the reps. One observation I’ve recently made when it comes to training grapplers (jiu-jitsu practitioners, mma athletes, wrestlers, etc.) is that when you get them stronger they sometimes will move slower in their sport. I believe they’re not slower from the training, but have more control over their opponent since they’re stronger, and therefore subconsciously slow themselves down because they don’t have to rely on speed as much. Essentially, they’re counting on they’re new and improved strength to compensate what wasn’t there before.

It’s great that they’re stronger, but not really a good thing that they might move slower. Speeding up their game so they’re faster (and of course still stronger) than their opponent is the key.

One obvious yet somewhat ignored training concept is actually having them move fast to get them used to moving fast. I say somewhat ignored because a lot of people are told that it’s the concentric portion of the lift that needs to be explosive, and that it’s the brains intent to move the weight fast that matters. I do see excellent results with this and when training for relative strength it is the brains intent that matters. Meaning, the speed of the lift doesn’t have to be fast based off of your observation (what you actually see), but when training for real speed and attempting to improve reaction, it’s what you actually see that matters. You must actually move fast.

The video below was performed within a conditioning circuit to improve anaerobic power and the guy in the video is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Purple Belt Henry Castro. This is just one example of training an exercise with no consideration for the number of reps or the tempo, just moving it fast for a designated time.