New Workout Metrics on Tempo

One of our new year’s resolutions was to make taking a Tempo class feel more intentional and to make all of your hard work even more worthwhile through actionable data.

And would you look at that, we did it in the first month! (That has to be a new year’s resolution record, right?)

Meet our new in-class hero metrics.

While these heroes won’t be saving you from a burning building and aren’t a delicious sub sandwich, they will ensure that you’re getting everything you can out of a class.

How does It Work?: Your rep counter will continue to grow alongside your white progress bar as you do more reps. Once you hit the target rep count, the rep count and the progress bar will glow (just like you, you star).

Why does It Matter?: A familiar face on your Tempo screen. Our Reps metric is there to, well, count your reps. However, we’ve added one important update that many of you asked for. Now your Reps counter will also include the number of reps from your previous round and show the previous set of the same exercise and duration. It’s like a mini digital scrapbook of all of your hardworking reps.

So why did we decide to keep this metric at all? Well obviously, it’s nice to not have to think about how many reps you’ve done and focus more on your form (and mentally cursing your coach for telling you to do yet another round of thrusters). Outside of that, having a predetermined reps target alongside your previous round’s rep count keeps you accountable to yourself and teaches you how to remain consistent. It may seem like such a simple thing to track, but there’s a lot behind it.

“Challenging yourself with the right weight is the best way to build muscle, strength, and metabolism quickly. Comparing your reps to the rep target set by the coach will help you zero in on your perfect weight,” Dr Joel French, Tempo’s Head of Exercise Science said.

In fact, Dr. French explains, you’ll get the most out of your strength training by working until failure, which means those last couple reps in every set are really important — and consequently so is the weight that you’re using.

Did you burn yourself out in the first round and only got half of the target reps in the subsequent rounds? Did you blow past the target reps because the weight wasn’t challenging enough?

This new Reps metric will empower you to more deeply understand your body, your limits, and will also be really helpful in climbing that leaderboard, too.

How does It Work?: Your heart rate will be tracked in real time as long as you’re wearing a compatible heart rate monitor (Tempo will work with any ANT+ enabled heart rate monitor). As you train, you’ll see how near or far you are to specific heart rate zones as each color block fills in.

During your rest periods, Tempo will show you a chart of your heart rate (the white line) and how long you spent in the target heart rate zone in the previous round.

Why does It Matter?: Another familiar face, but with some major modifications. You’ve probably heard our coaches asking you to try and hit a certain heart rate zone and now our new Heart Rate Zone metric will give you a more streamlined look at what zone you’re in — and what zone you’re on the way to hitting.

Heart rate zone training is incredibly important, and no one knows that better than Dr. French, who’s provided heart rate training expertise to the likes of the Mayo Clinic and the US Olympic Committee.

“People who wear a heart rate monitor and track their zones see significantly better results than those who don't,” Dr. French said. “Training the heart is like training any other muscle, it needs to be challenged to get results. Tracking your heart rate and hitting the target zones is just like lifting the correct weight. It will guarantee that you get the best health, fitness and calorie burn results from each workout.”

Need even more convincing? Studies have shown heart rate training will also result in a lower resting heart rate, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, protection against dementia, increased life span...shall we go on?

On the other side of that, the Heart Rate Zone metric will train you how to properly recover. For as important as hard work is during class, rest is equally important. You’ll want to figure out how to bring your heart rate down to lower zones effectively so that you can hit the next round with the same intensity without pause or extra rest.

It’s definitely not easy, but seeing how your heart rate zones fluctuate and correlating it with how you feel, what exercises you just did, and how much rest your coach is giving you will teach you how your body can get to your target heart rate zones and how to bring that heart pitter patter down when you need to.

How does It Work?: You’ll be tasked to fill up the half-circle into the middle as consistently as possible. The more often your reps hit the target pace, the brighter it’ll glow.

If you go a bit too fast, you’ll be seeing red.

Why does It Matter?: I guess you could really call it a “change of Pace”. This newly added Pace metric is all about time under tension.

Throwing around a ton of sloppy reps up won’t do you a lot of good — each rep should feel intentional. If your coach is asking you to lower your bicep curl slowly, control the descent of a fly, or maybe pause for a second at the bottom of a squat, this Pace metric will make sure you’re doing so at the right speed (or tempo, if you will).

It is during these times under tension that more muscle breakdown will occur, and consequently more muscle growth. This metric isn’t here to tell you to do every rep as slow as possible, but to teach you how fast to go through a movement to reap the most benefits from each rep.

Reps, Heart Rate Zone, and Pace were all designed with you and your fitness in mind. You’re showing up to class and putting in the work, and we believe these new metrics will not only get you more mileage out of your work, but teach you a lot about yourself, too.

You may notice that depending on the class or the exercise, one of these metrics will be given priority on your screen — that’s our way of telling you what to focus on and how to measure your success during that time.

If you’re looking to get to know these metrics a bit better, Reps will likely be found in a wide variety of classes where the coach may ask you to work every minute on the minute or hit a target count for particular exercises.

For Heart Rate Zone, you’ll find them often in HIIT classes (naturally), and Pace will be the star in a lot of strength and hypertrophy classes.

Have any questions or feedback? Head to our Official Facebook Group where we welcome constructive feedback, questions, and you’ll also have access to our very own Dr. Joel, and our coaches.