Whats up with this? 2 min rest intervals between weights?

Expert Discussion Strength Training
1

I read this from Christian Thibaudeau’s forum on Testosterone Mag.

First mistake … increasing rest between sets DOES NOT decrease intensity as you state. It decreases density.

Second mistake… even if one rest longer between sets and that he is less fatigued so it’s possible to do more set, the micro-trauma can be too great.

i.e. Your body has a limited adaptation energy (since you seem to like to quote peoples, look up Supertraining by Siff, Adaptations to Sport Training by Viru or Organization of training by Verkhoshansky for an explanation of the “current adaptation reserves”). So if you do too much work, or place too much stimulus on your body you might not be able to recover fast enough.

Yes, taking longer between sets can help you lift more weight (and that’s a benefit) however studies have shown that increasing the density of training leads to greater gains.

What I don’t like about your question is that you seem to quote something you heard without really understanding anything about the training processes (or even the quote you use itself!).

You say that taking longer rest periods will help create a greater stimulus “nerve-wise” (when I read that part of your post I immediately was reminded of my favorite expression: “Complexity is the language of the simple minds”). I agree that using heavier loads will lead to a greater CNS stimulation. However understand that producing maximal effort under sub-optimal conditions (not being 100% recovered) actually leads to a very powerful training effect: the nervous system actually has to work extra hard to keep producing the required amount of force. As a result it will need to innervate muscles fibers that may be of a higher threshold and that would not have to be recruited under normal conditions. Why do you think that the Westside guys (strongest group of powerlifters in the world) use very short rest intervals when training for power? And I can attest that Bulgarian olympic lifters actually take VERY little rest between sets, even between heavy attempts. A training session for them least 30-60 minutes and includes 2-3 exercises, which gives them 10-30 minutes per exercise and they normally do 6-10 sets… do you think that it’s possible for them to rest for 5 minutes between sets?

Taking longer rest periods is good for specific skill work. In other words, when you are practicing a certain movement with the aim of mastering it fully. Why? Because when training for a skill you want to develop a specific motor pattern. If you are fully recovered before every “set” (even if the term “set” is not really adequate for skill practice) you will recruit the same motor units over and over, making them all the more efficient at the particular skill. However the problem with this as it related to strength training is that it neglects a good proportion of motor units. A motor unit that is not fatigued is not being trained (check out your “pal” Zatsiorsky for more on that subject).

So by taking a lot of rest between sets you are favoring a certain group of motor units which receive a lot of stimulation, but the rest of the fibers are actually undertrained! If you train with shorter rest intervals, an amount of time that allows you to be rested enough to maintain the current level of effort without fully recovering, your nervous system is forced to recruit more different motor units with every set.

So training for “synaptic facilitation” (to quote your “pal” Tsatsouline) is good if you want to be efficient at a certain exercise/movement. But it’s actually not optimal if what you want is overall muscle strength. When you become extremely efficient in a movement you use less and less motor units to accomplish the task at hand, which leads to less and less general strength gains. You become stronger at a specific exercise, but this performance improvement is not readily transferable to other exercises. Modern olympic lifters are “specialists”: they only train on the competition exercises and a few assistance drills (squats, front squats) that is so that they can be as efficient as possible in their competition exercises. That’s fine for olympic lifters because improvement in performance is directly correlated to their technical efficiency.

However for an athlete who doesn’t do any lifting exercises in competition the important things are to strengthen groups of muscles, improve energy systems and increase neural drive. NOT increase a lift for the sake of it.

Bottom line, if you want to gain overall strength and power (transferable) and not only efficiency in a certain exercise (not readily transferable) training while only recovering 85-95% between sets is better than fully recovering.

I always thought that around 5 mins was was minimal for rest intervals between heavy weights.

CT is saying that less recovery time between sets is optimal for strength training. (I’m guessing around 2 min).
I know I would struggle with exercises like squats if I had to do this (would have to lower the weight quite a bit).

What do the other members think?

2

common sense applies here :slight_smile:

3

Being simple-minded, I find this topic very complex.
First: Lifting (the same) heavy weight for multiple sets is always done in a state of incomplete recovery, regardless of the rest period.
Second: Weightlifting with shortened recovery, at times, can enhance the strength potential via complementary means, as CT states, but it comes with a risk that is only worth taking when there are no other means to stimulate high level contractions under incomplete recovery. Though this might apply to a weightlifter, it certainly does not apply to sprinters.
Third: Surely, there must be guidelines for the selection of lifts with short breaks.

4

There is some evidence that short recoveries can lead to greater releases of HGH but if it is too short it can lead to a major compromise in the intensity. Though I could see at different times of the training year lifting with short recoveries, I believe that you don’t want to compromise the intensity. Also, if you are lifting at submax. intensities like the speed strength part of WSB programs it’s no big deal to lift 2-3 reps every 30-60 seconds. However, when going 80%+, I would rather take too much time rather than too little.

5

As I said common sense applies here -

Obviously with short rest periods, at each successive set you will be generating lower and lower force. The shorter the rest periods the greater the amount.

If you are lifting near your 1RM, obviously your not going to have much luck maintaining enough force ouput to lift a weight at say 90% after a couple of sets of 3 reps with short rest in say the back squat.
But if you were doing singles you could extend the total amount of work even with 1min rest periods.

But if one were to use lighter weights and apply maximal force to each rep, then even with shorter rest periods, you would be sure that you would generating max training effect even if force outout is dropping per set.

well that’s my take on it :slight_smile:

6

Common sense applies in many places and about many subjects.

7

Hmmm… I had a go at this today with upperbody push exercises (this was before I read the replies to this thread).

I rested 2 min between all sets of compound lifts and 1 min for single joint lifts. Normally I use 5 min for all compound lifts (with an extra min or two for squats).

For bench press, I found that I had to lower my 6RM by about 10 pounds. Then I was able to get 5 reps on all my sets until the 4th set, when I failed on the last rep and was stapled to the bench.

8

David 5mins is excessive

3-4mins is sufficient. But it all depends how close your are to failure per set.

I personally never lift within 3 reps of failure. Bar speed is important to me, unless I’m going for a new RepMax PR

9

If you had 4 sets, what about 2 min rest after 1st set, 3 min after 2nd set, 4 min after 3rd set? Or something to this point?

10

With sprinters with body weights under 175, I have used rest periods up to 5 minutes…but then with my small brain they were stuck at 500 pound squats.

11

95% of your ATP/CP is replenished within 3 minutes, so I always use that as my minimum for recovery…

12

We have to remember that the 95% ATP-CP repletion in 3 minutes is from a biopsy study that was done probably in the 60´s or 70´s, and I don´t know if it was ever repeated. It could be accurate, but I doubt that it is an absolute.

Good to read that people are giving different opinions as to what works for them.

Reading dry stuff like Supertraining or an Ex. Phys. text helps me understand the whys, and then experimenting and building on others´ideas helps me figure out what works for me. There aren´t many shortcuts to learning.

WHY I do things is the theory base I need to design workouts or programs, just as I need a fitness base to train. There are no x and y formulas that we can carve in stone.

13

Carson,

At the LEVEL II seminar they mentioned that the nervous system needed 3 plus minutes…this is something I will investigate later.

14

Originally posted by lebeau
If you had 4 sets, what about 2 min rest after 1st set, 3 min after 2nd set, 4 min after 3rd set? Or something to this point?

That is an approach Charles Staley uses, use a set time to do the sets and allocate rest time as needed. More as you fatigue.

I increase my rest times with fatigue instinctively anyway :slight_smile:

15

Originally posted by Clemson
Carson,

At the LEVEL II seminar they mentioned that the nervous system needed 3 plus minutes…this is something I will investigate later.

I can vouch for that in my own experience. I remeber one session I was doing sets of 3 on the full back squat at 72% of 1RM. The first 2 sets were fast, then the next 3 slowed dramaticly with 3min rest periods. Then after 4mins rest I blew out the following sets. Obviously CNS recovery was a factor here

For myself anyway 3.5 to 4 mins seems to be the sweet spot with the low reps I use. any longer and you get “cold” and lose excitation from previous sets. Any shorter and your CNS is not ready to fire at a higher rate, and you accumulate too much muscular fatigue.

I suppose the training goals will dictate which direction you take - muscular or more neural, strength speed, speed strength, limit strength? etc

16

Increasing recovery times for same rep/same weight sets doesn’t make sense to me as limits will be reached sooner, as the compromise to later sets cannot be mitigated, even by ever-longer breaks. This phenominon is well understood with running intervals.

17

Originally posted by Charlie Francis
Increasing recovery times for same rep/same weight sets doesn’t make sense to me as limits will be reached sooner, as the compromise to later sets cannot be mitigated, even by ever-longer breaks. This phenominon is well understood with running intervals.

If you could expand on this it would be appreciated.

Shouldn’t max weights be somewhat treated like spd training in terms of rest? Of course there are limits especially considering training time allocation but…?

18

However understand that producing maximal effort under sub-optimal conditions (not being 100% recovered) actually leads to a very powerful training effect: the nervous system actually has to work extra hard to keep producing the required amount of force. As a result it will need to innervate muscles fibers that may be of a higher threshold and that would not have to be recruited under normal conditions. Why do you think that the Westside guys (strongest group of powerlifters in the world) use very short rest intervals when training for power? And I can attest that Bulgarian olympic lifters actually take VERY little rest between sets, even between heavy attempts. A training session for them least 30-60 minutes and includes 2-3 exercises, which gives them 10-30 minutes per exercise and they normally do 6-10 sets… do you think that it’s possible for them to rest for 5 minutes between sets?

If the goal of this kind of training is to facilitate the use of higher threshold motor uints by only allowing the lower threshold ones to receive incomplete recovery, I’m wondering if there aren’t better ways to achieve this. For example, how about the use of speed endurance runs (which are esentially allowing incomplete recovery as the length of the run increases and fatigue sets in…each stride gets harder and harder!)

Also, it seems to me that in the CFTS, the use of EMS is a very effective way to stimulate motor units that may not otherwise be taxed with standard lifting.

As a matter of fact, could EMS perhaps be of use in helping to ‘educate’ the muscle to use those high threshold motor units in other movements as well? Thoughts?

19

The use of short rest periods between sets has a pretty good history in the development of strength. There are many forms of this type of training, which is better known as “REST-PAUSE” training. The actual “REST-PAUSE” can range anywhere from 10 seconds to a little over a minute. While there have not been any scientific studies ( that I know of, which are worthwhile) that have studied the effects of using incomplete recovery. There is a wealth of empirical evidence from weightlifters during the 50’s and 60’s that showed that shortened rest periods “REST-PAUSES” where an effective training variation in developing strength. If you want to study ‘True Strength Development Methods’ take a walk back in history and look at the training of the old time strongmen and weightlifters. I like reading scientific studies as much as anyone but it is important to remember the science DOES NOT lead, it follows. Science comes after the fact and tries to explain what already is or what has just happened. The weightlifters during this ‘Golden’ period of time knew what worked. They did not need a muscle biopsy or an EMG study to tell them that this was an effective form of training. They knew it because it produced RESULTS.

20

BTW classic rest-pause training involves single rep sets. Take it one rep at a time.