Beginners should do lighter weight, about 60 percent of your 1 Rep Max (1RM) for 8 to 12 reps. Training your muscle fibers to work together (neuromuscular training) means you’ll exhaust your energy systems and your nervous system, and it’s the nervous system that takes a little longer to recover. As such, the training protocols are a little different for beginner and advanced lifters. Strength training is all about teaching your muscles to work together to maximize your strength. Optimal rest period: 2 to 5 minutes between sets I want to stress that you don’t need to look at these as rules that must be obeyed but rather guidelines to help you customize your plan to something you can stick with long-term (which matters more than anything). As I mentioned above, everything works and I personally get bored if my rest breaks are too long. When I refer to optimal rest below, I mean the amount of time required to help you work your hardest during your set. Even during these endurance-based events, it was the work sets that made the difference in their results.
In the article I wrote that looked at the Sleep Low training strategy, both groups of athletes did the same high intensity interval workouts, but the ones that had the greatest gains on their triathlon times were the ones that were able to work a little harder during the intense sets (because they trained their bodies to supplement their efforts with stored body fat). They’re pacing themselves to make it to the end. Short and intense workouts are all the rage right now, but the rest periods are so short that people aren’t really working as intensely as they could (and should). I see the same thing with other types of high intensity training. They figure working above and beyond what they need will make it easier to get through the shorter distance, but what actually happens is they pace themselves for lower intensities and aren’t ready to work at the higher intensities required for their fights. They need to get ready for three 5-minute rounds, so to prepare, they’ll do ten 10-minute rounds.
I still see this all the time with young fighters. Just because it feels harder doesn’t mean it works better You need to give yourself adequate rest so that you won’t hold back too much during your work sets. Pacing yourself won’t work all of your energy systems and it won’t trigger the same gene expressions. Longer work sets will force you to reduce your intensity so you can pace yourself all the way to the end. You also want to make sure the volume/duration of the work set will trigger the adaptations you want. Short rest breaks are fine if you’re in a hurry or want to keep your heart rate up for extra fat burning, but the long-term adaptations are triggered by the work set. Rest is important for proper training, but it’s purpose is to ensure that your body has recovered enough so you can give your all during your next set. The first thing I want to emphasize is that when it comes to training adaptations, it’s the intensity of the work set that matters most. You’ll not only spend more time in the gym, but it will take you much longer to reach your goal. Ultimately any kind of training will cause improvements, but the wrong kind of training wastes your time. This kind of overtraining actually did work for many, but more often than not, it led to burnout and injuries. If you want to train for a marathon then you need to run ten miles a day. Previously we thought it was all about mileage. A great example of this is the realization that high intensity interval training quickly improves long distance endurance. For the most part these are obvious (to build your running endurance you need to run more), but we’re discovering that some aren’t as obvious as we once thought.
REST TIME BETWEEN AB SETS HOW TO
When it comes to figuring out how to reach your goal, you first need to know what stimulus will trigger the adaptation you need. I want to go over some optimal rest recommendations to use during your workout, so you can hit your goal quickly without overtraining. The human body is amazing, but it has it’s limits. Training too little won’t provide enough stress to trigger adaptations, but training too much won’t give your body time to replenish and rebuild. The key is finding the right balance of work and recovery to stimulate the changes that you want without overdoing it. You stress it with something like exercise and it quickly evolves and grows stronger to ensure it can more easily handle that same stressor the next time.