Still, you push and pull your way to soreness. On other days, you're tired and lacking a bit of motivation. You seem to recover a little quicker than other days because you are well fed and well rested. On these days, you grab the weight and it is nothing but effortless motion. Now the school of thought which I practice and preach: resting purely by "feel." On some days, you feel good and are ready for the physical and mental onslaught which awaits you before each set. So all of you social butterflies out there who aren't powerlifters, shut up and lift! Unless you're powerlifting, then you probably shouldn't rest that long. I haven't had much experience with resting 3-5 minutes in between sets but I will leave it that way. However, you do run the risk of losing the much sought after pump and the rush of endorphins which gives you a natural high. The longer you rest, the more your muscles can recover from the previous set, and the more weight you can push and pull. Taking longer rest periods is more for strength than anything. Now that I have addressed taking little rest intervals, I will address longer rest intervals. If the muscle is there and you diet correctly, everything else falls into place. Even when I prepare for a contest, I still keep my rest intervals around 60-90 seconds and let my cardio and dieting take care of the detail. I remember 135 feeling what seemed like 300 lbs.ĭon't get me wrong because I am not saying little rest is bad for you but based on the way I've been training, I believe little rest such as 30 seconds does more harm than good for strength and size. All of that without a rest between the three. I stepped foot in the gym and he grabbed me and said: "You're training chest with me today." I thought to myself: "cool, I get to train with Erik! He's a hoss!" Wrong! We did giant sets which included bench press, incline press, and decline press. I recall training chest with him years back. I got the privilege of training with this animal on a few occasions and let me tell you, it was no fricking joke! He was intense! Probably the most intense individual I have ever come across in my time. I think he suffered from a severe case of muscle dysmorphia because no matter what he did, he still "felt small." So to overcompensate for this, he decided to take the more is more approach knowing that it would do more harm than good. I have a friend who used to train 6 days on/1 day off for two hours a session and resting only 30 seconds in between sets. You tire yourself out very quickly! Before you know it, you're having to crawl around the gym in order to complete your workout. Let me tell you a little something about resting only 30 seconds in between sets. There are schools of thought which say you should only rest about 30 seconds in between sets. It is a good rule to use because various studies have indicated that 60-90 seconds of rest is enough to recover about 90% of your muscle's capacity to do work. Well, for most well trained individuals, 60-90 seconds is optimal rest time. After all, results are what we're after, right? Now that we've agreed that rest time is important for good training, how do we go about gauging our rest times. So you have to be able to get it just right in order to achieve optimal results. Too little rest and you quickly fatigue the working muscle. Rest time in between sets is paramount in a quality workout. So if you can't focus, there is no way you can determine how your body "feels" in order to gauge proper rest time. If you're wandering about the gym in between sets socializing with other avid social butterflies, then there is no way in hell you can focus. How you ask? Well, getting a "feel" for your ability in the gym can only be achieved if you're mentally and physically focused. I know this doesn't help you but if you really think about it, it does. Well, I'm going to tell you that you should rest according to how you feel. You have to come to the realization that no two bodies are alike and it may take you 30 seconds to fully recover from a work set while it may take me 90 seconds to fully recover. Well, after over 3 years of training and trying nearly all of the theories out there, I've come to the conclusion that there is no set amount of time one should rest in between sets. With so many schools of thought on different training theories, how much rest time should one really take in between sets? I'm sure that you've heard 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, and so on.
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