I just wanted to get some info on TUT(time under tension) I get what TUT is but my question would be...is TUT really a good form of muscle building? What I mean is I decided to to give myself, joints, CSN and muscle a break from heavy lifting which is what I've been doing for the last few years. I have found TUT using 60%-70% of your 1 RM keeping your reps 4-5 seconds long doing 3x8 so my sets last 30-40 secs is good for muscle building even though not so much for strength so I just wanted everyones opinion on it. I started today and it felt pretty good. I've seen other sites say making each set last 40-60 secs is better.

Aaron,

Most definitely! Muscle grow after we cause micro-tears in the muscle fibers, as you already know. The 3 most effective ways to tear the most muscle fibers are:

1) Progressive overload

2) Controlled negatives

3) Time under tension (TUT)

The first makes sense - the more weight you make the muscle lift over time, the more continuous tears you will cause.

The second is somewhat obvious but most people don't realize that the eccentric (negative) contraction tears more fibers than the concentric (contraction) because the muscle is being elongated.

The last combines both which is why you don't need massive amounts of weight to make growth gains. Not only are you increasing the weight over time but also you are making both the concentric and eccentric actions longer in duration. When you quickly move a weight, you won't tear as many fibers because the concentric and eccentric motions were too fast. Also, many people don't control the eccentric motion they let gravity do that - which can lead to injuries when using too much weight. TUT has you consciously control both motions and forces the muscle to perform the movement over a longer period of time. The result - lots of micro-tears and therefore lots of muscle adaptation i.e. growth :-)

John

Nice! Thanks for the info! That's pretty much what I was wondering and hoping for. I heard it's good to give everything a try so I am going to stick with this for a while and see what kind of results I can get.

I think its way overrated and you will see less results if u stick with TUT too much. Of course the must be some TUT to build muscle, meaning you cant possibly gain optimum muscle mass by doing 1 fast rep. Having said that, exaggerated TUT will build less muscle than normal TUT. If you manage to combine it with progressive overload though, thats another story. If you manage to increase your total TUT every time you step in the gym, you might see great results. If your joints and CNS have taken a beating I would just advise a simple deload week or even an off week. I experimented with TUT 2 years a go and it did nothing for me, it just fried the hell out of me for some reason, without providing any results.

John is right. I often will do a few sets that way just to confuse the muscle and i find it very helpful for me building muscle.

I am a huge advocate of utilising TUT. Its by far the more effective method of inducing hypertrophy due to its ability to create conditions by which hypertrophy occurs. As a pure physique athlete I don't strive for strength and TUT really allows me to progressive with my physique. I have been using TUT for a while now and I really do put the majority of my gains down to successfully utilising this method. What a lot of people don't understand that to gain true, unenhanced, muscle mass lifting weights from A to B in an uncontrolled manner just won't suffice. This is where you have to implement advanced techniques.

Thanks for the input guys! I think I am gonna give it a go for 4-8 weeks and see what I think just to switch it up for a while.