There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
To Rest or Not to Rest. That is the Question.
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell. I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994.
Speaker 1:The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Let's look at the science, let's talk. I'm going to have some fun talking today, as usual. Before I get to today's topic, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service and home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out just what your home is worth? 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:All right, so backtracking just a little bit from the other day. I was talking about some bigger picture items, you know, some macro items versus micro items. They all work out to be important in the world of health and fitness. But I'm going to talk about some of those program variables again today. I'm going to get back into that series and I'm going to finish it up. How long should you be resting in your workout in strength training? Now, if you remember, I've talked before about what the acute program variables are and I'm just assuming everybody listens all the time. That's pretty arrogant of me, so let me not do that. The acute program variables are the amount of exercises, the total number of exercises, the number of sets, the repetition ranges, the load percentages and the tempo and finally the rest time. So a lot of people do ask and you know when I say ask, there's a lot of internet stuff, I get a lot of questions that way regarding what is the ideal amount of rest time. So let me give you the science and then we'll talk about the real deal of how to make it work into your fitness program.
Speaker 1:So there are roughly four different adaptations that come out of strength training. I know it sounds like there should just be one, which is strength, and you know, in the big picture that's really true. But strength can really be broken up into flat out muscular strength. Then there's muscular endurance, which is very, very much connected to strength. Then there's hypertrophy, which is muscular size, and then finally there is power, and that is how quickly you can move a load. All of those are roughly different adaptations to strength training and sort of require a little bit of different rest times.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're training for flat out maximal strength, like you know, like I did when I was in high school and a little bit after high school, a lot of young men do probably some young women weightlifters do it. So like if you're really trying to PR personal record on your bench press, on your squat, on a deadlift, things like that, you need what we call maximal rest. Now, maximal rest scientifically is two to three minutes between the sets. That's a long time. It's not a long time if you're a kid in a weightlifting gym, because you know it's amazing how much rest you can take between your sets. And you know, at the bigger box gyms like LA Fitness or I don't know fill in the blank, any of them, really the YMCAs you're probably going to see guys sitting around the bench presses and squats, taking a lot longer than that. Honestly, they probably don't know better, but you really don't need more than three minutes. And the reason why we know this is because the purpose of the rest is to restore all of your ATP, which stands for adenosine triphosphate. That is the compound we use for immediate energy. So that needs to be restored if we're going to do a maximal lift. If it's only partially restored, you're not getting maximal lift. So that only matters when you're training for outright maximal strength, like I said, you're trying to bench press more than you ever have, your training goal is all oriented for that. That's when you would need maximal rest.
Speaker 1:Now the next, or kind of opposite end of the spectrum would be muscular endurance. And muscular endurance is when you're trying to do more repetitions with the load you already have. Say, for example, you want to be able to increase your push-ups, so maybe you're at 15 and you want to be able to do 25 or whatever. You want to increase your pull-ups, maybe you're doing five, you want to be able to do 10. So strength isn't the problem, right? So you're already able to do it, but you want to be able to do it more. So that's what muscular endurance is. As you see, they're all really interconnected. But if we're training for outright maximal muscular endurance, like I was just about to say I've said before, assuming everybody listens, man, it's a bad habit.
Speaker 1:I worked with a kid that was trying to get into West Point. He actually did get into West Point successfully and graduated already, and he's already serving in the army. So this was several years ago. So that was his goal was muscular endurance, because to do well as a cadet he needed to be able to do more push-ups, more sit-ups, more pull-ups and things like that. So for muscular endurance, the rest time is the opposite. You want the least amount of rest as you can take and pretty much the research shows 30 to 60 seconds maximal, with the sweet spot being around 30 seconds. So that means you do a set, you huff and puff, you come back and you do another set. So that is muscular endurance. Now hypertrophy is muscular size and hypertrophy actually happens ideally kind of between the two, so somewhere between maximal strength and maximal endurance. So you're going to be able to do like ideally around eight to 12 repetitions. So, just as you might guess, if one end is very long, rest three minutes, the other end is very short, rest 30 seconds. Hypertrophy sweet spot is somewhere in the middle and most research shows that somewhere around a minute is ideal for that.
Speaker 1:Now we get to muscular power. Again, power is how quickly you can move a load. Now that's very important for sports like basketball, football, baseball. That's all. Power, like how far you hit the baseball, isn't strength. You can be strong as a bull, but if your bat speed is slow you're not going to hit that ball very far. It's about speed of the bat. So the bat is, oh gosh, 28 ounces Good, glad I remembered that. So anywhere between, say, 28 and 34 ounces, I think.
Speaker 1:So you've got to take that object, which is 28 to 34 ounces, and move it through the strike zone as fast as you can. That's power, that's not strength. It's why it like really irks me whenever I hear people say, oh, these guys are hitting these home runs because they're taking steroids. That's not true. Steroids does not help you hit the ball further. It's all about bat speed. They might help you recover and I'm not an advocate for steroids, but it's just wrong how it's used in the sport of baseball. I'm not saying they don't use it, because I know they use it to get over injuries, but it doesn't help them hit the ball further. You know I can go on that all day. I'll just move on.
Speaker 1:So power is being able to move that bat, being able to move your body, like in football. You can be strong, but if you can't get that quick start, you know, if you watch football, think of a running back. He can be strong, but if he can't burst in the speed really fast he's going to get tackled on the backfield. So that's all. Power, very, very important. A lot of people who don't strength train a lot. You know they think these guys are super strong. They are to an extent, but mostly when they're at that level they're working on muscular power. They're working on quickly doing things. You know they're doing their repetitions as fast as they can and not hurting themselves Like it's all about that.
Speaker 1:Now that requires kind of the same rest time as maximal strength. You want the person to be fully recovered before they do their next set. Now, like sometimes, if somebody's working on power by doing like, say, jump squats or box jumps, and they're doing it for power, not for speed, like not for endurance, not for a workout, so to say, but to actually improve. So, in other words, let's take a basketball player a vertical leap which is what they do to dunk the basketball. That's power. Right, they've got to be able to move their whatever. Take Shaquille O'Neal, when he was at his peak playing basketball 300-pound body. He's got to be able to get up off the ground as fast as he can. That's power. So you'd want him to work on maximal power by jumping as high as he can in one explosion, rest, catch his breath and do it again. So the key is maximal rest, all right.
Speaker 1:So where do you fit in? Well, you know we all have a time limit to an extent when we work out, so we really can't take that much time right. And I think that most people fall into the category of needing a little bit of all of those things I just mentioned, but mostly what we call general strength, which is in that cross between muscular strength and muscular endurance, so kind of in that hypertrophy range. Most people fall into that. They're looking for general strength. Anytime you go to the gym and use resistance, you technically are getting stronger. So it's not like you have to lift the heaviest weights for the lowest amount of reps with the maximal rest time to get stronger. That's not true. Get maximally strong, sure, but how many people are really targeting that? So most people fall right in the middle of that and should be looking around a minute or so in the rest time.
Speaker 1:Now we do a lot of circuits for people and typically after a circuit somebody will take a minute. If they're doing like a circuit of, say, 10 exercises, you know it takes about a minute for them to finish their set, walk over, set the machine and do that as well. So it's typically about a minute in that range. But I want to give you like kind of an even simpler solution because I don't think. I mean, we know we don't. We're really experienced at the gym when we work with the clients and when I'm working out myself, you know I'm experienced as far as listening to the body. So that's the key. Like we watch people, we want them to be able to do their set to their best ability, because most people are there to get stronger. So we're not using the strength training as a cardio workout. Now sometimes we do.
Speaker 1:I'm working with one of our sponsors, zach Hawk, right now and stuff like that. So we're doing like a lot of hit metabolic workouts with him right now because that's what he needs to kind of supercharge his fat burning right now. Like that's what's been working for him. He's already in good shape, but he's lost 25 pounds Excuse me, I had a stop and cough so he's recently lost 25 pounds, which is awesome. So occasionally we will do what's called a metabolic workout, which is more or less a strength training workout geared towards moving very fast and keeping the heart rate up. But we don't do that very much, because most people are shooting for general strength and Zach's not going to be doing that forever. That's just kind of in a phase we're in right now until he gets to the weight he wants to get to, because he's already doing some other strength training.
Speaker 1:So what I want everybody to think about is listen to your body. Like I said, we want the person to be ready for their next set. So I'll look at them, I'll watch their breathing, like, let's say, they move from the leg press to the leg extension, they sit down on the leg extension. I make sure that the seat's good, the range of motion's good, the weight is set and all that stuff. And I'll look at them. You know, I mean it.
Speaker 1:Just I can tell if somebody's huffing and puffing they're not ready to start their set. You know if they're talk, talk, talk, talk. Well, clearly they're pretty recovered and not everybody's a talker. So then I have to kind of just watch their mannerisms to decide if they're pretty well recovered. And some of the clients who've been training for a while just will naturally tell me give me a sec. You know I got to. I feel like I'm feeling a little lightheaded or whatever. You know there's a communication thing.
Speaker 1:But just realize you want to be able to do your next strength set without huffing and puffing, because if you're huffing and puffing, because if you're huffing and puffing, that's saying that your body doesn't have enough oxygen yet to recover. So you got to bring that down a little bit now. The better shape you get in, the less recovery you will probably need as well. So there is always that factor. So, yes, it's typically around a minute, but we also use a little bit of common sense and make sure that the person is ready to go.
Speaker 1:Now, on the far end of that, we don't want somebody to totally like lose momentum and lose focus by taking too long. Because, look, people hire a trainer. They know themselves. Maybe they're just kind of like, you know, wasting time, they're not ready to do some of the harder exercises, so they're dawdling a little bit, they're talking a little too much. Well, we know that too and we just encourage them. We'll say all right, let's go, let's get to the leg curl, let's get to the chest. Press Time for those flies. You know, we know when somebody is kind of like ready, but they're stalling a little bit, we know that too.
Speaker 1:But for those that work out on your own and want advice. You know you just need to pay attention to that, because if you start kind of dragging your butt a little too much because you're just kind of like not into it, I can tell you that only makes things worse. Like, when I start to take too much time in between sets, I really lose my mojo. Like I really start to lose energy. So I'm good about going all right. So I'm really not going to recover that much more if by walking around here. So let me take a couple of deep breaths and get after it. So we can definitely overdo rest and we can underdo rest and a lot of it is.
Speaker 1:You just really need to learn yourself, both physically and mentally. Like, do you know yourself? Do you know you have a tendency to kind of like drag it a little bit? Do you have a tendency to push too fast? I have clients like that. Harpreet I'm not talking to you right now, I don't mean you, harpreet, I hope he's listening because sometimes he goes a little too fast and he's a little bit too gassed going into the sets and you know, god bless him. He's doing that because he really thinks he needs to be working harder, and he does work hard, but sometimes he needs you know the old restrictor plate and coach Rob to say, all right, slow down, hold on, hold on. You know, hey, how's work. You know I need to actually slow him down a little bit, and you know. So we, we need to learn what we're really trying to do and by learning what the ultimate objective is, which is we want to be able to the to do the next set to the best of our ability, we program that in our brain. I think that really helps us, with our own self-governor, to figure out exactly when we're ready. All right, so I think that clears up all the acute program variables.
Speaker 1:They're fun to talk about but, as I said, none of this means anything if you won't get to the gym. So please work out, it will make your day better. Every time I work out, I feel better, like if I've got something on my mind, if I've got something bugging me. You know if, whatever, I will work out, whether it be cardio or weights. And it's amazing as I take my mind off of my problem and I put my mind on my workout.
Speaker 1:Whether it be man, this run sucks today. It's humid, it's rainy, it's this, it's that, and I start thinking about that 20 minutes in. All of a sudden I start getting solutions. So it's amazing, when we put our brain to the physical, how much the mental solutions start to come. Give it a try if you're not already hooked, please. I'm telling you it works. And the other thing that works is your garage door. If you happen to get one from Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, owned by Jeff and Zach Hawk, the best garage door company in Volusia County, there is no question about it Give them a shout at overheaddoordaytonacom.
