Hey all, just wanted to get your opinion on part of my programming. So, I have limited time in the gym, about 1hr of so. In that time, so far I have been resting only 30 seconds in between sets. Issue is, my recovery is terrible after so little time and I have to drop the weight significantly in order to get anywhere near the same number of reps as the previous set. I would do 4 sets like this. The other day I tried resting longer, and I was able to match the previous set pretty well, but the added rest times mean I can now only fit in 3 sets. Overall, 4 sets of dropping weight with lower rest time and 3 sets of using the same weight with higher rest time seem to equal about the same amount of total weight lifted, so the question is, which is better??!
An hour isn’t what I would consider limited time. You can get a lot of good sets in that amount of time, with plenty of rest between your sets.
I would rather rest and get in a good 3 sets than not rest while trying to fit in a 4th. There is no magic in that 4th set if you work hard on the other 3 and take them to near failure.
FWIW, almost all my workouts are 45 to 60 minutes.
When I say limited, I meant that it isn’t an option to do 4 sets with extended rest time, which, if I had an extra half hour I might have considered doing.
OK cool, that’s what my gut was telling me. I do PPLPP, so my workouts generally consist of about 7 movements in each which was taking me just under an hour with 30 secs rest, and now just over with around 2mins rest. I used to train with a buddy many years back and couldn’t work out why my recovery was so bad now other than maybe age. Then it dawned on me that training with someone of course forces you to have longer rest times between sets!
Maximum hypertrophy. Coming up to 40 years old soon and have a goal to look better than I did in my mid to late 20s! Maxing out on strength is secondary as I want to preserve my aging joints a bit!
Because it’s not. Remember the stimulus to fatigue ratio. At a point more volume only accumulates more fatigue / muscle damage. 1 proper set is sufficient to stimulate the hypertrophy process. Every subsequent sett has diminished returns, less MUR and will add fatigue
We know that mechanical tension is the main stimulus of muscle growth (26). Muscle fibers primarily experience tension through producing force, and the amount of tension that a muscle experiences is dependent on its contraction speed (5). When CNS fatigue is present, muscle activation decreases – especially in the motor units that control the larger muscle fibers that grow the most in response to training (5). If you can’t activate these fibers in your next few sets, how are they supposed to grow? Working out with high levels of CNS fatigue, then, probably isn’t best for growth. Does the research confirm this idea?
