Not at all
30 minutes or so
I do not wait 5 minutes between pulldowns and deadlifts, and decline press. My breathing just returns to normal, as I train a different population of muscle fibers depleting the phosphagen in that group of muscles.
I try to train daily. Just feels good , much like my hillbilly mentors from Tenn. and Ga.
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I now realize you previously mentioned doing the excercises in a repeated curcuit fashion, similar to WODs or HIIT. You are probably onto something here - in regards of not going til failure. The compensatory excess volume seems reasonable. How do you measure progress? Or - is this just the perfect maintenance vehicle for injury prevention?
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‘8x3’ for 2 exercises and 3 Aux at 3x6-10 is plenty for me! And I’m only doing 70% 1RM!!
Mine have been averaging 27 min (8x3: 2 exercises, 3x6-10: 3-4 exercises)
Not sure if our definitions differ, but my 8x3 are done with 15-30 sec rest periods → seems pretty close to Clusters to me!
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In guess everyone has their own version of certain methods.
I love cluster sets and do them a little bit differently. My rest between clusters equals the rep number ; if I do 3 reps , my rest is three deep breaths which is about ten seconds.
I love using them in a break down fashion with over head presses on a calf machine … drop every other hole for five drops.
Yes, that’s how I understand Clusters, by definition, too. And that’s great for 3 to 5 sets. When you go up to 8 sets, you’d have to lower the weight to probably 50% 1RM for a 3B/10sec rest period, after each 3-rep subset, to work.
I use breaths to time my breaks too and my breaths are also ~3 sec each. For a 65-70% 1RM load, my rest periods start at 4-5 breaths, depending upon the exercise. I increase them as the overall mega-set continues: (4,4,5,5,6,6,6)
Drop Sets change the story considerably. Of course a 3B rest would be more sustainable then!
It seems the method @atp_4_me is suggesting has a diferent intent than clusters though.
Clusters is a very good method for strength progression. Personally I’m in favour of Dr Stevenson’s clusters (“muscle rounds”): 6 minisets of 4 with 10 sec intervals + one failure point in set 4 or later - combined with loaded stretches after a finished musclegroup. An entire workout/period can be based around these . Probably one of my three favourite methods all time (alongside 5/3/1 and Darden HIT).
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Yeah, muscle rounds are great … a favorite of mine , too. 
I first saw them on a John Meadows YT clip.
I remember many years ago how difficult doing multiple sets was after training in typical HIT of one set to failure for 15 years. It was pretty embarrassing.
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Oh Yeah. ‘Humbling’ was the word I used!
Please refresh my memory on these: What do you do when you hit that Failure Point?
You lower the weight 10-20% depending in which set you fail (in order to continue doing four rep mini sets - for six sets in total). The challenge lies in having just one failure point.
The perfect failure would obviously be in the 6th mini set. But, depending on your goals, it can be liberating going heavy to die on the 4th miniset.
Then adjust weights accordingly next workout.
And vice versa…going from multiple sets of not to failure to one set to failure was humbling also
Thanks! I may give that a go at a later date. Ongoing medical concerns dictate that I avoid Failure for the time being. That’s what I enjoy about the 8x3 → The sets stop when I no longer “own” the weight.
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You’re not kidding about that ! My first really serious HIT workout was one from Dr. Ken and it was titled ‘The Look of Power’ . I had been studying HIT over the summer but where I trained then it was not air conditioned or heated. I read accounts of Dr. Ken’s workouts and knew if I were to go about it ‘right’ , that it would be nuts so I decided to wait until the cooler fall weather to attempt it.
That routine , like many of his , started with Squats immediately followed by SLD. Next exercise was Overhead Press which was followed by Shrugs.
I was already woozy from hitting the Squats and DL’s harder than I ever did so my presses sucked … and my attempt at shrugs failed because I wasn’t able to even stand up for more than a couple reps. I got really nauseous, laid on the floor and fell asleep. About 30 minutes later I woke up … and realized what hard training was all about.
No regrets on this way of training except that I took it too far for way too long. When they talk about ‘building a foundation’ , HIT certainly does that probably better than anything. I made the mistake of thinking it was the one and only way to train for everything.
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I’m sorry