Let's Talk About Rest Baby

More specifically, how long should you be resting between your sets.  This might be a more important part of your training session than you realize.  If you cut your rest periods too short you’ll risk not being adequately recovered and carry unnecessary fatigue into your next set, potentially limiting your output on that set and not meeting the intention of the set.  There’s also a downside between letting those rest periods stretch out too long.  Sure, you’ll be plenty rested for your next set, but what I see most commonly is that with long rest periods it’s easy to become mentally disengaged from the task at hand.  Say you pick up your phone and scroll through some posts or reply to a few messages, then talk to your buddy for a few minutes, the next thing you know 10 minutes has gone by and you’ve still got four more working sets to go.  Not only are you eating up valuable training time (and that bench that someone else is probably waiting for), but you lose the mental connection with your training.  We want to be in a mental state where we’re focused on attacking and executing each set to get the most out of it.

There’s no magic formula for rest times, but here’s a few recommendations we have for you based on the intent of your training and the specific movement at hand:

For strength/power training 3 to 5 minutes between sets is a good rule of thumb.  It will allow your energy systems enough time to recover, stay engaged at the task at hand, and allow you to generate maximal power output. 

For hypertrophy training, typically how our accessory work is structured in the LSN programs, 1 to 2 minutes is ideal.  

For muscular endurance training, the type of burnout sets you might find at the end of your workout, 30 to 90 seconds is good, but in general we like to jump right back into these whenever we’re ready.  That means as soon as you’ve got your breath back and have shaken some of the lactic acid out of your muscles.  

Hopefully this helps you keep your training sessions efficient and effective!  Stay focused on the task at hand and attack your sets with some aggression, but do it when you’re recovered enough from your last set so that you can meet the intent of your training and maximize your results!