Speed Masks Dysfunction
We all want to feel fast, springy, athletic. Not because we’re about to get drafted but because it’s useful in regular life, catching yourself before you hit the pavement, hopping rocks on a hike, keeping up with your kid when they take off running. That kind of quickness comes from the same family of qualities you see in top athletes. Fair to say an important attribute!
Seems logical then, that we should train fast.
Hmm yes and no:
The Speed Paradox
Here’s the problem — most of us don’t actually own speed anymore. When the body tries to move quick, it cheats. Momentum takes over, things get jerky, and the parts that should be working get skipped. We might think we look like Ronaldo but really it’s closer to Ronald MacDonald. It’s chaos.
No control. No awareness. No idea of what’s working or what’s compensating. That’s how you end up with cranky joints and eventually something giving out.
Think about it — pros vs. amateurs in anything. A pro soccer player glides, looks slow even, but they’re always in the right spot and they don’t waste a step. The amateur is flying around at full tilt, falling over themselves, and somehow still slower. Same with carpenters, same with pianists. The pro looks smooth. The amateur looks frantic.
Look at these two examples.
A subtle difference between amateur and pro pianists…
And
Why Pro Football Looks Slow on TV: The Speed of Play Paradox
Control first, speed will come.
Why Smooth Matters
Maybe you don’t care how it looks. Fine. But you will care how it feels.
We know that injuries happen when load exceeds capacity of a tissue.
Fast and jerky skips the weak spots. You bounce through the bottom of a squat and those tissues never actually get loaded. You flop through push-ups and your chest and core never carry the weight. Which means those spots, those tissues stay weak, and one day when they finally do get loaded — boom, you’re hurt.
Speed covers it up. Control exposes it.
Enter the Tempo
So how do we build that control? We slow it down.
Tempos are simple: you follow a count through each rep. For example, in a squat:
4 seconds down
1 second pause at the bottom
2 seconds up
1 second pause at the top
That’s 4–1–2–1. Try it and tell me you don’t instantly feel everything working. You can’t fake it, you can’t bounce, you can’t rush. You have to own it.
Why it works:
Time under tension exposes those tissues to load for longer. This means stronger and bigger muscles and tendons.
Awareness: slowing down forces you to feel your position, your core and the very tissues we want loaded.
Connection: your body learns how to move as one piece, not a disjointed collection of parts.
Control: when you can own the slow rep, the fast one becomes effortless.
More time under tension = loading those tissues for longer, i.e. stronger muscles and tendons.
Earn the Ego
Tempos are humbling. The weights feel heavier, the reps are longer, your ego will take a hit. But that’s the point.
Ego lifting is just throwing shit around and hoping momentum saves you. Real strength is when you can take that same weight, slow it down, pause, and still stand it up smooth. That’s when you know you’re strong.
So expect to be humbled. Expect to feel more connected. Expect smoother push-ups, the confidence that you will come back up from your squat, and a core that’s actually involved in everything.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.