Understanding 2-0-1 Tempo
Hey everyone, in part 4 I gave you a few pointers on the TT for Meatheads program where you’re not repeatedly training the same muscle areas reducing the chance of injury and giving your body adequate time to rest.
Now if you are new to the Turbulence Training programs or have used them in your routines you will find my programs are unlike the others that are out there. Today we’ll take a look at some of the added values that you will get with Turbulence Training besides those ripped abs.
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Patrick McGuire: Craig, you’ve put in a chart with your programs for working out. It’s an awesome bonus, you’ve got your workout guidelines. Its very simple – anyone can print this off, take it to the gym. So you earlier in this series you were mentioning how you went around with your notebook. A lot of our audience and anyone getting this bonus or getting the TT for Meatheads program from you is actually getting their journal right here in front of them. Why did you throw that in even though you tell people to carry a notebook around?
Craig Ballantyne: Well, I think it’s just really important for people to keep track of this stuff. So I didn’t want to have them rely on putting together their own notebooks. It’s like when you’re preparing for a meal plan, you don’t just tell a person, “Okay, here’s a good protein source and a good carbohydrate source.” People really want to be told exactly what to do.
So I put this chart, in so they won’t have to go and make their own. It’s not perfect, but it certainly will be a good place for somebody to start and put the information in for their training and that way they can just print that out and go rather than have to write it down. I mean I write my own stuff down and then come home and insert it back into the Excel spreadsheet. And I got tons of those. However, this is a nice easy way for people to do it.
Patrick McGuire: Great. So, sort of keeping with the exercise protocol that you have – of what is a 2-0-1 tempo? What are you talking about?
Craig Ballantyne: So 2-0-1 tempo simply means 2 is – the first number is the eccentric or lowering phase of the exercise. So, in the squat, two seconds on the way down. And then zero, no pause, and then one second on the way back up. And that’s the standard way of lifting in my programs. It’s just nice and controlled decent and then a strong, concentric or that’s where you exert the force one second.
We’re not doing too many really slow lifting phases. We’re not back in ‘98 and ‘99 were you saw people doing eight second eccentric and four second concentric. I just thought that back then was ridiculous. And so really what it comes down to is putting tension on the muscle. So just by doing a nice two second lowering reduces a lot of momentum in the motion.
Its controlled but a very powerful concentric where you are lifting the weight, and that’s all we’re looking for. That’s nothing too fancy. We can get into some three or four second eccentrics, maybe a two second concentric once and awhile. However, really what the research shows is that when you forcefully contract when you do it pretty much as fast as possible or under control – that’s the best for strength.
So that’s why you don’t see too much slow concentric phases in my program.
Patrick McGuire: That’s really great. I am a big believer who there is a time and place for positives and negatives; as Craig refers to them here in their proper terminology. I want to make sure that everybody is very aware that the Turbulence Training is not for everyone. It’s not for the pure meatheads that think that they can do everything. It’s not for the people that can do cardio for days on end. And yet at the same time, it is for both those groups. So you really gotta try out Turbulence Training, especially Turbulence Training for Meatheads if you’re doing any type of mass training.
You’re going to get phenomenal results. And Craig hits it on the head with a lot of this stuff. It’s not just about taking the old school mentalities or just giving you a series of exercises that hopefully you keep doing for the rest of your life. He’s really trying to challenge your thinking, and he’s really trying to progress you through it. For those of you that love the weights and just love to get into the power exercise, a great way to bring them two together is to do the TT for Meatheads program for four weeks and then jump into your power training cycle for four weeks and then jump back and forth between both programs.
It’s going to do wonders for you, especially if you’ve incorporated your mass building meal plan. Craig, in the back of your TT for Meatheads there is a nice little piece here where you give people a link where they can get more advanced fat burning and muscle building with workouts. I want to just say this is an awesome piece of material.
Most companies or most products that are out there or most professionals will put together a book that just lays out the workouts and they sort of put them in a chart. All they do is take a picture of the exercises and give a short description, and then they say “here are the exercises”.
Now, with your programs you’ve done all of that and so much more. What I really like about your TT for Meatheads, is that you show the pictures in the sequence of the exercises. So if you’re on workout A, you’ll see all the pictures and descriptions for the workout A, the same thing for B, C and D. That’s a very intelligent way to present the exercise protocols and the actual program for the day.
It makes it easy if you do print this out, and you take it to the gym with you, or if you are reviewing it online before you go to the gym, you just jump over to workout A, or B, and visually take a look at how to perform the exercise.
That’s all we have for today. Join us in part 6 where we start to wrap this up by my final tip.