Day 2 of the Twelve Days of Fitmas: How Proper Rest Between Sets Can Improve Your Performance In The Gym

Leave a comment

Merry Fitmas guys! So, I’ve been personal training for a few years now, and one thing that I’ve noticed about my clients is that they will either take full advantage of their rest times and even try to extend them by distracting me with conversation, OR after about 20 seconds of rest they think they’re ready to jump right back into the exercise as if them resting is wasting time when they could be burning more calories. With this article, I plan to explain the importance of resting properly between sets and how it can actually improve your performance in the gym!

When I train on my own, I always time my rest in between my sets. That way, I’m not wasting time, and I’m staying on pace with my workout. It also allows me to have consistent rest in between my sets, so that I can better keep track of how I’m improving. With proper rest, your body should be able to perform the exercise with the correct form to the same degree of strength or better. If not? Then you may need to increase your rest time in between sets, or start to drop down your weights. Either way, by keeping track of not only the weights you use, but the amount of time it takes you to recover in between sets, is a good way to see how much your body’s strength and endurance is improving.

Having proper rest in between sets is even more important when you’re doing a strength based workout. So when you’re doing power lifting, doing heavy olympic lifts, or doing heavy sets of 3-5 reps trying to increase your overall strength. It is important to make sure your body is getting adequate rest so that you can avoid any potential injury. When you are doing a heavy lift, it requires a ton of mental and physical strength to be able to do it, and performing the exercise itself is very taxing on the body. That is why you may often see these big guys or athletic women in the gym, loading the bar with heavy weights, performing the exercises for 3-5 reps and then resting for what seems to be a long time. Now, I’m sure some of these patrons of the gym are taking way too long of a rest time in between sets, but for some of these heavy lifts you may actually need about 2, maybe even 3 minutes of rest depending on the person. Obviously the more athletic the individual, the faster they will be able to recover from the exercise, but if it is a style of training that you have never done before, or haven’t done in a while, it may take you a little longer to regain the strength to perform the exercise again properly.

Rest is also very important when you are training as a beginner, and it’s funny, because it is the beginners that I see either resting too much and not actually training, or they are not resting enough and forcing their body to do movements they don’t quite understand how to perform properly. It is mostly men who do the latter, and women who rest too much, at least in my own personal experience. As a beginner to the gym, it is very important to take the time to learn how to perform the basic movements properly, like a plank, squat, lunge, row, push up and so on. Once you have the basics of these movements, then you can begin to add-on accessory work, and variations to these movements. However, when you are learning these movements, you want to start off with using mostly your own bodyweight, taking the time to slow the exercise down. Let your body understand how it should feel like when you do it properly (have someone help you with this who has more experience in the gym, or professional help). Then have adequate rest in between your sets so that you are not tiring yourself out too much, that you start to forget and loose the proper form you’ve been working so hard on trying to achieve. You need to give yourself enough rest so that 1) you’re not tiring yourself out, loosing form, and therefore setting yourself up for potential injury, and 2) you are giving yourself enough rest so that you are not too tired to focus on the following set, therefore giving you a greater chance of creating muscle memory and learning how to do it on your own properly.

There are styles of training out there that don’t require a lot of rest, or they have “active rest periods.” These are perfectly fine, and are mostly circuit style training, and cardio training. These types of training don’t allow you to lift weights that are super heavy because you are not giving your body enough time to recover to be able to continuously do heavy sets. Instead, these styles of training are meant to keep your heart rate up, and get you nice and sweaty. These are great for people who want to improve their cardiovascular endurance, it’s great to incorporate into a weight loss training routine, or to incorporate into the days where you are on a time crunch. Even with these types of training, you should still time your rest periods, even if they are very short. That way, you are still getting consistent rest in between your sets, and you are not allowing yourself to rest too long, therefore, bringing your heart rate down too much. Obviously, if you are feeling sick, or you can no longer perform the movements properly, you should extend your rests, or modify your exercises. But at the end of the day, you should be using whatever rest time you have effectively. Use it to take a sip of water, to towel off quickly, or even to just regulate your breathing so you don’t tire yourself out too quickly. Rest is very important and it shouldn’t be wasted on social media. Make sure you are taking proper rest between sets, time them so that you are not taking too long of a rest, and record the amount of rest it takes for you to be able to perform the same exercise again properly. Obviously you may start to fail at the exercise but if it takes you about 40 seconds to be able to do the exercise for the majority of the sets you do, even if you fail on the last few reps of the last two sets, eventually you will be able to do it without failing with the same amount of rest. If you keep the rest consistent you will eventually be able to up the weights you’re using, with the same rest times! But you will never actually know this, if you are not resting properly, or timing and recording it as well. Rest, along with tracking the weight you use is a great way to measure your improvements at the gym.

stopwatch

 

 

 

Weight Training is essential to FAT loss! Find out why!

1 Comment

Last month I was teaching one of my corporate fitness classes, and I was demonstrating a reverse lunge to the class, while holding a kettle bell. One of the participants asked me what the purpose was of me holding the kettle bell? Instead of going into a long-winded rant about the importance of weight training, I gave her a very simple answer about how holding a weight increases the difficulty level, forces your muscles to work harder, forces your balance to come into play and how it works your core (people LOVE that). A lot of people don’t really understand how important it is to regularly weight train. Most people assume that weights are only there to make you big and strong, and this scares a lot of women away, because the last thing many women want to be is BIG and Bulky. Yes weights do help to build your strength, but they do more than just that. If done properly, and with intensity, lifting weights are essential to you losing body fat. Cardio is simply not enough to lose weight, and it is not the ONLY option. Yes, cardiovascular training is important but it will not give you a nice butt! Trust me! Unless you become a sprinter… but let’s be real most of us are not going to start our weight loss journey doing the 100 meter dash!

I’ve written two other articles related to weight training and some of the myths that surround it like How I’ve enhanced my feminine shape through weight training 🙂 or Toned? or Skinny? Toned, the new word for skinny…. There are so many misconceptions when it comes to weight training, and it is very frustrating! Not only as a fitness professional, but as a female. Lifting weights will not make you big and bulky! But too much of your favorite treats will! Lifting weights will actually help you achieve better overall fat loss than just cardio alone, and it will also give your body a better overall shape and definition. But how?

Image result for cardio queen vs weight lifter

  1. First of all, weight training increases your metabolic rate for 36 hours post workout. This means that not only did you burn x amount of calories during your workout, your body will keep burning calories for the rest of the day at a higher rate. Sure, you may burn more calories minute per minute of cardio than you would weight training, but you would only burn an additional 40-80 calories post workout from cardiovascular training. This means, that even though you may burn a lot of calories during a good cardio session, you would burn more calories overall with a consistent weight training program. In order to achieve a high post calorie burn from aerobic exercise, you must being doing it for a long period of time, like a marathon runner for example. However, people who are capable of such long distance running are not typically concerned with fat loss. Sprinting, on the other hand can bring about a post workout calories burn similar to that of weight training, however, you must be sprinting pretty hard in order to see these kinds of benefits.                                                        Image result for long distance runners vs sprinters  Image result for long distance runners vs sprinters
  2. Secondly, not only will weight training boost your metabolic rate for 36 hours post workout, it will increase your long-term metabolic rate as well. It does this by increasing your overall lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate will be. Your basal metabolic rate is a calculation of the amount of calories your body would burn just lying in bed, not moving, just breathing. The more accurate calculations would consider your lean mass as well, not just your overall weight, however, the point is, is that the more muscle you have the more calories your body will burn. This is why men, who typically have more muscle mass than women, can eat more than women and gain less weight. I need to be clear though, no one will just magically bulk up in lean muscle mass the second they pick up a weight. Naturally it takes a month to build 1-2 pounds of PURE MUSCLE for a male, and in the same amount of time a female will be able to build 1/2 to a full pound of muscle. This is does not include water and fat that come along with general weight gain. That being said, over time with consistent effort, this will make you much more resistant to weight gain as you grow older.
  3. Unlike cardio, weight training has the ability to completely reshape your body. Doing cardiovascular training does help with general weight loss, however, this weight loss will be a combination of fat, water, and muscle. Therefore, if you were just to do cardio, you will be left with just a smaller version of your current self. Also, too much cardio training can cause your body to release cortisol (stress hormone) which will cause your body to lose lean muscle mass, and to gain fat in the abdomen. Instead, if you are performing resistance training, with a proper diet, meaning you are consuming enough protein to sustain and grow your muscles, you are more likely to lose just body fat and some water. In addition to loosing your body fat, you will be enhancing the shape of your body, and the definition of your muscles. If you were to just do cardio, you will still be soft, and you won’t have the same muscle tone.
    belly-dancer

    This was me in University in the 4th year when I used to teach a lot of cardio based fitness classes. Very long and lanky, not too much muscle tone. 

    workout

    Through consistent weight training my body has more balance and shape. This is a photo from earlier this year (I need to be better with taking photos) my shoulders and arms have more definition and shape. 

I’m naturally more of a pear shaped female. I’ve always been leaner on top, and fuller on the bottom. It has been through weight training that I’ve been better able to balance out my body and create more of an hourglass shape. If you’re worried about becoming too masculine? Please don’t be! We females do not produce enough testosterone naturally to build that kind of size, and the average female does not consume nearly enough calories to get that big either. So, if you want to enhance your shape, lose body fat and improve your long-term health? You must weight train on a regular basis!