Resting 1 min or 3-5 between sets

[Warrior'sSuite]

Personally i prefer to rest at the most 1 minute between sets because this makes the workouts faster, on some exercises i even rest 45s. Standing around 3-5 min waiting for the other set is kinda boring.

But does it depend on what you are doing, how much you rest between sets? For example if you're doing endurance, strength or hypertrophy?

I read an article by Tom Venuto it seems and it said "You want to rest enough to recover as much as possible before doing your next set. None of this 1 minute crap. More like 3 to 5 minutes. You're not circuit training. Fatigue is not intensity. Fatigue is fatigue. Short rest periods promote quick fatigue. Fatigue limits overload and fatigue limits growth."

This article was for building muscle though. So that's why i ask if it depends what you are doing that determines how much you rest between sets.

I wouldn't mind taking 3 min if it's going to be better of course, but i think slizzardman said (or i read this somewhere else) that if you take 45s-1min at the most between sets that you stimulate more growth hormone this way.

[Felipe]

it depends on what you are doing. If you are doing an Lsit that's the right ammount of time. If you are squatting over 100 kg you will know that Tom Venuto was even too good (even 7 mins may be needed).

It really comes to intensity.

[Warrior'sSuite]

Well, take for example slizzardman's pullups routine, the one where you do 6 different types. He says to take only 30s between sets. Why is that? Wouldn't you be better off taking 3min and getting more reps in?

[Felipe]

Dont know about his routine, if it is the one in the videos I think you do only the hardest variation (in that case I would do 2-3 mins of rest), but if it's for hypertrophy it's better doing short rests. It also depends on how many reps and how much you weight (for me pullups are easy, I'm only 66 kilos!)

[AtT]

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6425

read through the first entry...there is plenty on information about different resttimes

The rest is important for a related, but different reason. The rest has nothing to do with how many reps you do. It is based off of which energy system you want your body to be working off of. For pure strength and power, you want your body to work off of ATP and creatine phosphate because it provides the most energy per second. Depending on how efficient your body is and how hard your set was, it could take as little as 3-4 minutes or as much as 10 minutes to completely replenish the creatine in the muscles you just used. If you don't take the rest you need, it's like driving on an empty tank. You run out of gas! Always make sure your tank is full, so to speak. It will take some experience, but after a month you'll pretty much know exactly how long you have to rest when working on pure strength. The exact times are different for everyone and sometimes different for each exercise.

Your rest periods do not determine what effect you will get. The emphasis of your work sets will determine how long your rest periods have to be. Doing pulls during the rest between pushes is good. Push, 2 min, pull, 2 min, repeat 4x is a good way to pair exercises for strength.

If you're going for mixed strength and hypertrophy(kind of a misnomer, since strength development is really a different type of hypertrophy) then you're going to want to be in the 30-50s work set range. That means 6-12 reps, depending on your pace. at 2120, that's 5 seconds per rep. That means you'd want 6-10 reps. You'd start with something you could do 6 times at that pace and you'd stay there until you can do 4-5 sets of 10 reps. Then you're ready to move on to the next progression. You're going to be looking at 90s-3minutes of rest. Probably closer to 3 minutes at first. If you need more, take more. Taking MORE rest will NOT hurt you when it comes to strength and size. I know there are some people here who will say, and not incorrectly, that there is more to this statement, but I'm keeping it simple. You want to go into consolidation training, go for it. I don't want to deal with it right now. This is the basic principle for the hypertrophy + strength."

"My point was that if you are doing sets of 30 reps, resting for 7 minutes will not magically make you get stronger. By nature, you are doing endurance work. That's just how it is. Therefore you use the rest period that suits that work. The nature of the work determines what rest periods you should use.

If you try and do 5x3 of PPP and use 45s rests you are not magically going to get better endurance. You are working so hard, and your sets are so short that you never enter glycolysis or aerobic respiration, and that means that you are not even beginning to tax the energy systems that fuel endurance efforts. Because you are not using these energy systems, you are not going to get a training effect in them. What is happening here is that you are not getting the most out of your strength sets. Why? BECAUSE YOU AREN'T RESTING LONG ENOUGH FOR THE ATP and CP TO REGENERATE!!! When you are relying on a particular energy system for fuel, you have to rest long enough for that system to replenish itself. Otherwise you aren't going to be able to do as much work, which means you're not going to get as strong of a training effect. The training effect is the adaptation you're trying to get from your workout. Strength, speed, endurance, etc. You figure out what energy systems you are relying on, and you rest long enough for the slowest one to regenerate. For strength sets, you're only relying on ATP/CP so you should be working with 3-5+ min rests. Strength-hypertrophy mix is still going to get 3-5 minutes, because even though you are delving into glycolysis a little bit, you're mainly relying on ATP/CP, which takes longer to regenerate. If you're doing pure hypertrophy, which is in the 40-50 seconds range, you're not going to need to rest quite as long because you aren't completely relying the ATP/CP system. You aren't functioning at maximum output, so the rate of energy production from sugar can sustain the efforts until waste products build up to the point where they can't be processed fast enough to keep the energy flowing. In this case, you're letting your body flush waste products. That's the main purpose of the rest, not replenishing ATP. The resistance used for this type of set is lower than strength, and because of that you don't need your ATP/CP system to be completely restored. Sugar can handle it. It takes a fairly long time to deplete muscle sugar compared to ATP/CP, longer than a size oriented workout will take for each muscle group if done properly.

i think this will answer your questions. make sure to read through the hole thread it is very informative

[Warrior'sSuite]

^^^^ Yeah that's pretty good, i think that answers my questions and some doubts i had.

I'm not sure but i think i had already read that, it was probably even in a thread i made but i just can't remember right now.

So probably the most important thing is to do your reps slow, like it is said there, 5 seconds per rep. This is going to be the hardest part for me because I'm not used to do them like that, I probably do at the most 2-3 seconds per rep.

So if gymnasts never train in the mass times (45-60s per rep), how are some of them so big?

[Blairbob]

It's called training 20-35 hours/week for 10 years. This does wonders when you are either swinging or supporting yourself MANY times.

[Warrior'sSuite]

Just wanted to clarify one more thing: so is it safe to say that, the number of reps is irrelevant, as long as you count the T.U.T of each set you do? That is, is it better to count the tut, and work in the area that you want to, (strength, size, whatever) and forget about number of reps?