If you want to experience the greatest range of benefits from the least amount of time spent training, then you should dedicate some of your gym time each week to practicing fast movement.
Why fast movement?
There are two main reasons:
First, along with flexibility, the ability to quickly generate force declines significantly as we age.
Consistently practicing fast movement can not only delay the start of this decline but also slow its rate. And if you improve your ability to move quickly now, you’re also much more likely to have the capacity needed to weather the expected decline and still be able to do the things you want to do when you’re 100.
Second, fast movement recruits more muscle fibers.
Super-quick physiology lesson: What we typically think of as a muscle or muscle group — the biceps on the front of our upper arm, for example — is actually composed of groups of groups of muscle fibers. (Yes, “groups of groups” was intentional and not a copy/paste error; and this is still perhaps too few “groups”.)
Like a non-dimmable light, the muscle fibers contained in the lowest-level groups can only be “on” or “off”. The way we generate different amounts of force is by activating more or fewer of those low-level groups. When we lift submaximal weights or move at speeds below our max capacity, we naturally recruit only the amount of muscle needed to execute the desired movement.
So, the ways that we recruit more muscle include:
- Lifting heavier weights (or intentionally creating more internal tension).
- Moving faster.
- To a certain degree, both 1 & 2 together.
Hopefully obviously, recruiting more muscle produces better results (e.g. strength, endurance, tissue growth) faster than recruiting less.
What exercises are best for fast movement?
Some exercises such as the get-up aren’t meant to be performed quickly. Isometric contracts such as planks obviously can’t be performed quickly either.
However, most other exercises — squats, push-ups, presses, curls (if you must) — can be safely and effectively performed faster.
Of course, there are still other exercises and activities that are perfect for (and often require) fast movement:
- Kettlebell swings, cleans, and snatches (optionally, with a barbell)
- Box jumps
- Sprinting
- Medicine ball slams
- Barbell or kettlebell jerks, push presses, and thrusters (or, “long push presses”)
- Hard pulls on a Concept2 rower or ski erg
In any case, the specific exercises you might pick generally matter less than that they’re performed quickly. And safely, of course.
A few last words of caution
Don’t confuse movement speed with movement tempo; and remember to rest.
Movement speed is the rate at which any single repetition of an exercise is performed.
For example, a single push-up could take three seconds to complete or one second. What I’m talking about in this tip is choosing the one-second option.
Movement tempo is the rate at which multiple repetitions are performed. Or stated differently, it’s the pace or amount of time between repetitions.
Doing five 3-second push-ups with one second between each rep would take 19 seconds. Doing five 1-second push-ups with four seconds between each rep would take 21 seconds. There are reasons you might choose to do either, but the second option is a better choice in this context.
And that brings us to rest periods between sets.
Like tempo, inter-set rest periods are important and can be increased or decreased to produce a variety of outcomes. While there’s nothing wrong with short rest periods, they tend to be overused for the sake of “getting more cardio”. Delving into this topic is a discussion for another time.
For now, just remember three things:
- If you’re breathing heavily for a long duration, you’re probably not moving as fast (speed) as you could be moving. This is often caused by a fast tempo, too many reps, and/or too little rest between sets.
- If the goal is to recruit more muscle (and experience better results faster), you should prioritize movement speed over heavy breathing.
- Long, slow cardio and VO2 training (i.e. heavy breathing — an oversimplification, but useful enough for now) have their place. But so does speed work. Do them both. But do them separately!
Putting it into practice
If you’re currently not intentionally training with fast movements, consider adding some to your training once per week.
If you’re new to training or haven’t done anything fast in awhile, start out slowly (😉) by keeping reps low (3-6 reps or 5-15 seconds) and doing just a few sets (2-5) with long rest periods (2-5 min) between sets.
Stop for the day before you think you might be sore because this will still make you more sore than you’d imagine! And if you’re sore, you’re less likely to train. Not what we’re after!
If you’re already doing some fast movement work, you may expect me to suggest adding more. While that’s always an option, I’m actually going to challenge you to assess how fast you’re actually moving.
If you think you’d be able to move faster while still controlling your movements, consider cutting down the reps a bit, per session and/or per set. Alternatively, increase the duration of your rest periods.
In either case, pay close attention to your movement speed throughout the training session. Call it a day or move on to other strength work when it begins to slow.
Based on your past training, that might be a mentally challenging suggestion to follow. But I’ll bet that if you do, you’ll be surprised by the speed at which your results will improve!