How to Maximize Muscle Growth Using Tempo

As a personal trainer, your clients trust you to build programs that actually make sense—whether their goal is fat loss, muscle growth, strength, mobility, athleticism, or all of the above.
At some point, you’ve probably told a client to “SLOW DOWN!” during an exercise. Makes sense, right? The slower they move, the more likely they’ll stay in control and respect proper technique.
And yeah, you’re NOT wrong. But have you ever stepped back and asked yourself:
- Is tempo actually helping your client, or could it be holding them back?
- Does slowing down reps really make them more effective?
- Or is strict tempo just another rule that’s getting in the way of real progress?
In this article, we’re breaking down how and why tempo can be a powerful tool for building muscle—AND where it might actually be doing more harm than good.
Please keep in mind that this article will not be exploring an exhaustive list of all types of tempo training.
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WHAT IS TEMPO?
Let’s first define tempo, using the more recently popularized 4-digit notation.
We’ll use the example tempo “3210”, where each digit represents the time in seconds during specific parts of any exercise:
3: The eccentric, or “negative” phase.
2: The lengthened position pause, commonly referred to as the “disadvantageous pause”
1: The concentric, or “positive” phase.
0: The top position pause, commonly referred to as the “advantageous pause”.
As you might imagine, there are almost unlimited variations of tempo you might prescribe for your tempo, but we can simplify some of the more prominent methods.
Stretch for Size – Slow Eccentrics
This will vary on opinion, but a slow tempo can arguably start at around 4 seconds, and can be as slow as 10 seconds or more.
Benefits:
- Improved motor learning: Slow eccentrics help trainees master every angle and inch of the range of motion, allowing them to quickly adjust and correct if their form starts to deviate from the optimal movement path.
- Hypertrophy through the addition of sarcomeres in series: When slow eccentrics are performed through a full range of motion, they promote sarcomere addition in series (lengthwise) rather than in parallel (thickness). Over time, this can improve mobility by increasing strength at longer muscle lengths, which is key for clients struggling with joint stiffness and muscle tightness.
-> In layman’s terms: You’re training your muscles to be stronger and more functional in stretched positions—helping with flexibility, control, and overall movement quality.
- Improved connective tissue strength: Eccentric training strengthens tendons by increasing collagen synthesis and improving their ability to handle load. Since tendons adapt more slowly than muscles, strengthening them reduces the risk of imbalances that could lead to injury.
Limitations
- Increased soreness: Eccentric methods tend to cause greater delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), especially if trained near maximum intensities and high volumes. This can put a bottleneck on recovery.
- Temporary performance drop: Eccentrics can lead to short-term neuromuscular fatigue, making it harder to contract muscles forcefully. Increased metabolite accumulation may also contribute to temporary CNS inhibition, potentially limiting your client’s ability to reach true muscular failure required to signal muscle growth.
The video below demonstrates a 6-8 second eccentric front squat, with the goal of improving body awareness and tidying up technique.
This 2nd video demonstrates what are known as “accentuated eccentrics”, where the eccentric is performed with supramaximal weight (meaning, I am performing the eccentric with more weight than I can lift concentrically).
In summary, long-duration eccentrics have their place, but if the goal is muscle growth, they should be used sparingly. That said, they can be a great tool for helping clients improve stability and dial in their technique on a lift.
Pause to Grow – Paused Reps
There are many ways to integrate pauses into a movement, and this article won’t cover all of them. But let’s focus on two types: disadvantageous pauses and advantageous pauses.
Disadvantageous Pauses:
These pauses increase the difficulty of an exercise by eliminating momentum and stored elastic energy. A classic example would be pausing at the bottom of a squat or dumbbell press, where you can no longer rely on the stretch-shortening cycle to help you out.
Benefits:
- Reduces stored elastic energy: The longer the pause (up to ~4 seconds), the less rebound effect you get from passive tissues, forcing pure muscular effort to drive the movement. This makes each rep more challenging and helps clean up form for clients who tend to rush their lifts.
- Increases time spent in the lengthened position: Like slow eccentrics, paused reps extend time under tension in a stretched position, which can reinforce strength and control at deeper ranges. This is useful for mobility, stability, and injury prevention. In some muscles, this can help promote hypertrophy directly through a mechanism known as “stretch-mediated hypertrophy”.
Limitations:
- Higher energy demand: Since you’re removing momentum and elastic assistance, paused reps require more effort per rep, which can fatigue someone quickly.
- Reduces stretch-shortening cycle efficiency: Pauses dampen the stretch reflex, which is a key component of explosive, athletic movement. That said, this doesn’t mean athletes should never use pauses—they just need to be programmed strategically based on the client’s goal. For hypertrophy, this is less of a concern.
The video below is demonstrating a disadvantageous pause on a back squat, reducing residual muscle elasticity substantially.
Advantageous Pauses:
These pauses make an exercise feel easier in the moment because they happen in positions where your muscles aren’t under as much tension—like the top of a squat or a dumbbell press. But that’s exactly what makes them “advantageous”. By taking a brief pause where you can recover slightly, you set yourself up to push harder on the next rep and get more out of your set.
Benefits:
- Micro-rest between reps: A short pause gives just enough recovery to squeeze out more reps overall, increasing total work done in the set.
- Sustains Type 2A fiber recruitment: Since fatigue doesn’t build up as fast, these fast-twitch fibers stay active longer, which is key for hypertrophy.
- Reinforces bracing and control: Pausing before the next rep helps reset position, posture, and intent, leading to better execution and more effective training.
Limitations:
- Reduces constant tension in the muscle: Taking rests between reps breaks up the time under tension, which can limit fatigue accumulation—a key factor for muscle growth. If the goal is to push a muscle closer to failure, excessive pausing could work against you rather than for you.
- Adds extra time to the set: If pauses are overused, a significant portion of the set ends up being spent not actually lifting. This can drag out workouts unnecessarily without adding meaningful benefits.
Quick note: For exercises like rows and leg curls, the advantageous and disadvantageous pauses switch places. In some exercises, the distinction between the two depends on factors like body position, resistance profile, and where peak tension occurs.
In the video below, I use advantageous pauses in the final reps of the set to help me squeeze out two more reps than I could have without them.
In summary, adding pauses can create a novel training stimulus that can favor the development of muscle tissue. As with most specialty techniques and tempos, use these on occasion and don’t program pauses into every single lift.
I am a big proponent of disadvantageous pauses myself and with my clients, specifically for the reason of reinforcing quality technique, and getting my clients accustomed to longer length muscle positions. To further help you improve your client’s range of motion, [check out this article]
Own the Movement – Slow Concentrics
Admittedly, slow concentrics are my least favorite tempo variation because their practical use is quite limited, but they can still have a use case in specific cases.
Benefits:
- Stability and control: Slow concentrics can be used to help improve body positioning and awareness during lifts your client struggles with.
- Mind-muscle connection: While not critically important, improving mind muscle connection for hypertrophy reasons can serve your clients well. And by slowing down the concentric, it’s easier to <feel> a muscle contracting and working.
- Motor learning: Slow concentrics may allow for your client to better integrate proper mechanics to lifts that are more comprehensive in nature. Therefore can be great to improve positional awareness. As the saying goes “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”.
Limitations:
- Reduced motor unit recruitment: At the start of a set, when fatigue is low, intentionally slowing down the concentric phase limits high-threshold motor unit activation. While this becomes less of an issue as fatigue builds, by that point, your client will be forced to push harder anyway, making the deliberate slow concentric redundant.
- Feels unnatural: Our muscles are designed to generate force quickly when overcoming resistance. Forcing a slow concentric can feel awkward and counterintuitive, making it harder for clients to execute reps efficiently.
- More effective alternatives: In most cases, a slow eccentric combined with a naturally controlled concentric is a better approach. This allows clients to maximize tension where it matters (eccentric phase) while still generating force efficiently on the way up.
In the video below, I use slow concentrics to fine-tune my technique on a technical deadlift variation: the deficit snatch-grip deadlift.
In summary, slow concentrics can have a place in a hypertrophy phase, but they’re especially useful when learning more complex movements that require greater motor control and precision.
As you can, there are many permutations when it comes to prescribing tempo, and it all boils down to two things:
- What’s the goal? Both the exercise itself and the overall program should dictate tempo, considering the broader context of the macrophase.
- Where is your client in terms of skill level? A beginner may benefit from more controlled tempos for motor learning, while an advanced lifter might need a more natural, force-driven execution.
When it comes to hypertrophy, tempo always takes a backseat to the most important factor—creating high levels of intramuscular tension. Click here to learn more about the importance of muscular tension!
That said, if you take a big-picture approach to your client’s progression, there may be entire programs or phases where prescribed tempos don’t immediately seem ideal for pure muscle growth. But in the long run, strategic use of tempo adjustments can enhance movement quality, control, and functional range of motion.
As an example, slow eccentrics and pauses in lengthened positions may not seem like the most direct way to maximize hypertrophy, but they reinforce movement efficiency and positional strength. Over time, this means your client will be better equipped to push harder in future programs with less risk, executing the same movements more efficiently, allowing tempo to be a tool rather than a requirement for progress.
In conclusion, don’t get too caught up in tempo. It’s just one tool, not the goal itself. Your clients aren’t coming to you asking to ‘improve their tempo’—they want to build muscle, lose fat, move better, and perform at a higher level. Tempo can help them get there, but being too rigid about it will only slow their progress.
References:
Vogt, M., & Hoppeler, H. H. (2014). Eccentric exercise: Mechanisms and effects when used as training regime or training adjunct. Journal of Applied Physiology. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00146.2013
Triboli, M. (2024). The effects of neuromuscular electrical stimulation on muscle inhibition in patients undergoing surgical reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). University of Padua. Retrieved from https://thesis.unipd.it/handle/20.500.12608/77300
Suchomel, T. J., Wagle, J. P., Douglas, J., Taber, C. B., Harden, M., Haff, G. G., & Stone, M. H. (2019). Implementing eccentric resistance training—Part 1: A brief review of existing methods. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 4(2), 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk4020038
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