Workout Tempo

Couple of months ago I lifted 20lb almost non stop, five days, thee hours per day, averaging about 35 lifts per minute.

That comes to 6,750 lifts per day, I only use dumbbells, cycling between standing dumbbell curls and overhead shoulder press.

So when my arms get tired, I switch to shoulders, but I get abdominal muscles, back and legs from it too.

It wasn’t non stop exactly, as I had to take a few seconds every minute, or two, largely to restore circulation, or what feels like it.

My diet relied on trail-mix, so I had good energy, and rather than returning to my usual 15, I kept to 17.5lb per hand.

I did grow muscle, and burn fat, I look much nicer now for it, it should be no surprise that lifting heavy for hours grows muscle.

But my stopping is a problem, certainly a distraction, though twisting turning and almost dancing does help with circulation.

I don’t have very many 70BPM songs, and 75 is very slow for me, as I am used to 160 with 10 pound dumbbells, I still have fat to burn.

But I like to take a moment, and do a kind of a semi serious workout, to poke at tempo, or weight, and dance, and see what I may learn.

I’ve noticed that I can lift 20 much more reliably and to faster songs now, especially after a weekend break from lifting.

It seems my Monday are going to be 20lb now, and rest of the week 17.5 and 15.

Today I measured myself with Adele's Skyfall, the slowest song in my current playlist.

I was using 17.5 as I was an hour into my workout, and already somewhat tired, sometimes I just can’t eat the necessary noodles in the morning.

As I am still on a diet that is not a bad thing, just makes for some tougher lifting.

I went home and tapped out Skyfall to 78 beats per minute, and I write a program some years ago to process mp3 files changing their tempo.

Changing my usual 130BPM song to 78 beats, is no good, that is just too big of a change, and the song stops being fun.

But, a compromise to 100BPM turned out to be somewhat reasonable, there is a warbling effect, but it is not annoying.

While I hope to redevelop my program with JavaScript, for now I use ffmpeg’s atempo filter to adjust the speed of my songs.

Going from the average of 130bpm to a stable 100bpm, will allow me to lift 17.5 pounds per hand with no stopping.

And should have me just taking a moment’s rest between songs, when working with 20lb dumbells.

I won’t be burning as much fat on Monday’s, when lifting heavier, but, next month, or maybe in two months I will speed up to 110bpm.

That should be a small enough increase, for my body not to really notice, and certainly, adapt in a month or two for the switch to 120bpm.

I expect, a lot more fat burning and muscle definition, and even larger muscles, which is getting a bit ridiculous, but it is science.

I honestly can’t imagine lifting 20lb dumbbells to 130bpm for 3 hours per day, that will look ridiculous.

People usually lift 20lb 30 times, and go home to have a nice day, me lifting them 11,700 and shuffle dancing to my car and work on my program.

Is is only OK, because I am testing what works, and building up an intuition about bodybuilding.

So that I can look into some more, informed guesses.

Finally, what I have learned thus far, is that sets and reps are a myth, as they beach a person with weights too heavy to lift for a meaningful stretch of time.

It does not matter what sets and reps were originally, it has been bastardized, into a workout program that does not work.

What does work is focusing on workout duration first, and weights last, so establishing an hour long routine, with light dumbbells.

But not so light, that you can lift more, and not so heavy, that you must stop.

To get to that first non stop hour, you must use an interval timer, with an eye on slowly eliminating those rest periods.

Check how long you can lift 5lb for to Skyfall, and how long you need to rest to do it again.

Enter those times into your interval timer, and set the number of rounds to fill an hour.

Joggers do this when building up to their first jog, except that they use landmarks.

Unlike bodybuilders and fitness nerds, joggers just know, it is not a real jog, unless it is non-stop; a great wisdom.

And then once you achieve your hour, you either extend workout duration, adjust song tempo, or increase dumbbell weights.