Hot answers tagged rest
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First, a bit about physiology. Just like some people have big feet and some people have small feet, some people have big hearts and some people have small hearts. Those that have smaller hearts have higher heart rates in general; their resting rates won't be as low and their maximum rates may be higher. That's just natural variability. It's also generally ...
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It really depends on what you are after. If you are running the Starting Strength program or some other beginner program, they take the stance of take as much rest as you need--even 10 minutes between sets! The goal for those programs is to increase the weight on the bar as quickly as you can.
Trade offs for Rest Times
Longer rests provide more recovery ...
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Without knowing your goals, your training plan, the time you spend in the gym, the workload you put in the gym, it's going to be difficult to prescribe anything that will 100% work. However, there are a few principles you can go by:
Set both short term and long term goals and work to beat them.
Well rounded programs include strength, hypertrophy, ...
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You are correct to be suspicious of the "one muscle a day" prescription. While that method works fine, it is perfectly possible and very productive to do whole-body exercises every time you work out.
Many Olympic weightlifters do what's called Bulgarian training, which is training five or more days a week, sometimes several times a day. They use whole-body ...
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Are there disadvantages to longer rests between sets?
Sure. I cool down if I wait longer than five or so minutes between heavy squat sets, and that can be a problem if my mobility is iffy and I really need to be warm to get good form. It's also annoying to have the two-hour-plus workouts that result from 10-minute rests between sets of, say, heavy ...
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Typically, no. What I've been doing is getting through the warmups as quickly as I can without rushing. When I'm done with the warmup work, I allow myself a proper amount of rest before the first work set.
How much rest you need really depends on you. If you have a head cold, or are running on too little sleep, you may need an extra few seconds after ...
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Here are some things I do (this is strength training, not body building, though):
If I missed one or two workouts, repeat the last completed workout (not increasing weights on any of my lifts).
If I miss more than that, I deload 5-10% and just slowly rebuild as my program would normally progress.
If I miss a lot of time (usually just on one exercise due to ...
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If I find myself wanting more time between warm-up sets than it takes to change the plates, I know something is wrong. Most likely I'm not recovered enough, indicating my program or eating or sleeping or stress is messed up. It's not a big problem, but it's something to note. I should be getting warm and mentally ready for my work sets, not getting tired.
...
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If we want to grow muscle, we need to give it a reason to grow.
This reason (ie the stimulus) can be a 185 lb bench press or a 400 lb bench press - it all depends on the person.
If the stimulus is not enough, we will not grow. If it is too much, we will not grow either. If it is just right, however, and we allow for proper recovery (sleep + nutrients), we ...
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Yes, there are disadvantages in that you won't be stressing your muscles enough to get all the growth that is possible out of each session.
Muscle growth is a combination of two different types of hypertrophy, sarcoplasmic and myofibril. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy produces more size, but less strength (This is what is stimulated by the 8-12 rep range), while ...
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In general, the people who live the longest, sleep six to seven hours per night see Wikipedia: Sleep.
So how does sleep and exercise relate to each other?
Ligtht physcial exercise seems to favor sleep, e.g. see Effects of light physcial exercise on sleep regulation in rats.
Heavy exercise and sleep deprivation creates an energy deficit, see this ...
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If you were to train every muscle in the body, I only count the "show off muscles" here, like biceps, triceps, abs, etc not all in the body, you would train each muscle about once in a week, if not even less.
It is widely accepted that muscles need some rest after you train them, but for achieving most muscle growth you should train them in when they are in ...
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I recommend against extensive conditioning or additional lifting on rest days, but if you have time and energy, active rest can be very beneficial.
When I have time to really do it right, a rest day can involve leisurely medium-distance walks, stretching, a brief morning warm-up or yoga session, or mobility work with a band.
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Can You?
If you're focusing on strength and mass gain, you do best by prioritizing strength and mass gain.
Doing other things (cardio, biking, hiking) might be consistent with your goals, if your goals are not primarily strength and mass. But our bodies have a limited capacity for physical recovery. You have to decide how you want to allocate that ...
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Once a week workout's never worked for me. I have wasted years doing that non sense. For me it only gave starting results and then left me making little improvement. I felt that this was not enough workout and working out each body part twice a week was much better. You could also try alternative routines like Starting strength OR GVT and than lose the ...
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Seems your best bet would be to use resistance bands. Figure out your max with the strongest resistance band. once you have established this number than do your sets throughout the day with 60-75% of that number. As you increase your repetitions over time use lighter resistance bands and then eventually no resistance bands at all.
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For warm-up sets, no. Warm-up sets would imply that they shouldn't be taxing your body that much. Warm-ups are just that, warm-ups! It should be used to "lubricate" your muscles and joints as prep for your larger lifts.
For me, for example if I'm going through my warm-up sets for bench-press, I use the warm-ups mainly to check if I have any problem ...
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As Dan John would say, it all depends on your goals. In fact a lot of programming, or how you string your exercises together both throughout a session and throughout a cycle, has to do with your goals. There are a few approaches to programming:
Sets x Reps @ weight, with as much rest as needed in between
Supersetting: switch between 2-3 exercises one ...
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What you're describing is the reason many people work different muscle groups on different days. In short, yes, you can.
Let's say your aerobic activity worked your legs primarily, stationary bike for example. The next day may be a great day to do arms. However, you may want to gives your legs some rest.
Aerobic activity is building a different type of ...
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In order to answer your question, it's best to review how the body's energy systems work. An article called "Death by Prowler" by Matt Reynolds has a good overview. It's an educational read, but I'll summarize a couple high points here:
Aerobic activity burns more fat in proportion to sugars.
Aerobic metabolism does not shut off when you push into higher ...
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