Stop Pausing On Every Rep

“Employing continuous tension is a must for great development and overload. Continuous tension means no stopping at the top or bottom of a rep. Your mind has to be focused on maintaining a continuous tension on your muscles, which means a purposeful control during eccentric and concentric contractions. That’s very different from the way most people train.

Let’s say I tell someone to do 15 reps per set. Most of the time, that person will pause at the bottom or top of each rep depending on the exercise— you see this especially with exercises like Squats, leg press, DB press, barbell curls, seated lateral raises, etc.. — which means the set is really one repetition completed 15 different times. That same set performed with continuous tension would be something else entirely. Once you take out the pauses, it’s really one continuous repetition, rather than 15. This will increase lactic acid and “true” time under tension, which are both major components of development.

So next time you do a set of squats or lateral raises force yourself not to pause until the reps are complete. Also when you do this the body is always going to want to do things that make the movement easier and most of the time that will be increased lifting speed (tempo) so make sure to keep the tempo nice and controlled and force the muscle to work that much harder and yes you will have to check your ego at the door and use less weight than you would typically use. We are here to train your muscle not your ego.”

– Allen Cress