Rep timing

Often at the side of workouts in magazines you see the numbers 3-1-2, this is the rep timing.  Rep timing is the time you spend performing a rep when lifting weights, this is very important as this dictates the time duration of the stress being put on the muscle group being worked out.  For example 3-1-2 on a bench press means 3 seconds down to your chest in the eccentric phase and then holding it for 1 second at the bottom before pushing it up for 2 seconds in the concentric phase.  You didn’t always used to see rep timing by the sides of exercises in magazines but now it is becoming more common so I thought I would explain it here in the blog.

Rep timing is important because for different goals you want to vary the rep timing, bodybuilders compared to the average gym goer will have a very different rep timing.  Most people when performing bicep curls opt for a fast eccentric phase where as bodybuilders if they know what they are doing will tend to perform this slowly to put more stress on the muscles to hit muscular hypertrophy.

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