Don’t Murder Your Muscle Gains
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Jack finishes a focused set of exercises and re-racks the weight. His legs are wobbly, he feels light headed and he takes a big swig from his water bottle. He looks down at his watch and presses the start button to begin counting down backwards from 2 minutes.
He read that 2 minutes is the ideal rest time between sets in the gym, and he wants to get it exact. Once that watch beeps at the 2 minute mark, he’ll be back in the squat rack to perform another set. He stands up tall and paces around trying to catch his breath in preparation for his next battle with the weights.
2 minutes is up. His legs still feel weak, his heart still beats frantically and he doesn’t quite feel 100%, but that watch beeped and that means his time is up. He must perform his next set regardless of how he feels.
He unracks the weight and squats down. His legs still burn and he wishes that he could have had more time to prepare for this set. He puts forth a mediocre effort, re-racks the bar, and sets his watch for another 2 minutes. Bobby, just like a ton of other aspiring lifters in the gym, is making a deadly, critical mistake.
By having a set rest interval between sets, he is forcing his body to train at an effort level that is far less than his maximum potential and is severely sacrificing the amount of muscle growth he can ultimately stimulate because of this.
A muscle respond to stress. WHen you lift an amount of weight doing a number of reps your body adapts to this level of stress. If you want your muscles grow, then you have to force your body to higer levels.
What you have to do then is to lift as much weight as you can again, and again, and again.
Because of this, you must always go into every single set of every single workout at your maximum strength potential. By sacrificing the amount of weight you can lift, you sacrifice the amount of muscle you can build. And there is no worse way to make this sacrifice than by not providing your body with enough rest between sets.
So, return to your exercise set when you feel you are again at 100% of your strenght capacity. When will it be? When your body tell you so, listen to it an you will know when it is time to the next set.
The set rest period theory is also highly flawed because it does not take into account the fact that certain exercises tax the body much more heavily than others and therefore require more rest between them.
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