Time Between Sets, Plus & Minus

If I wait 2 minutes between sets, I can crank out a certain number of reps. If I wait 5 or 6 minutes, I can double the reps. Would it be better to follow the first criteria or the second? My main goal is strength with a secondary goal of any hypertrophy that comes along.

If it helps: 6’6", 271, mostly have done powerlifting moves and Oly style, for martial art. Also am…ahem…over 50.

Many thanks for any help!

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
If I wait 2 minutes between sets, I can crank out a certain number of reps. If I wait 5 or 6 minutes, I can double the reps. Would it be better to follow the first criteria or the second? My main goal is strength with a secondary goal of any hypertrophy that comes along.

If it helps: 6’6", 271, mostly have done powerlifting moves and Oly style, for martial art. Also am…ahem…over 50.

Many thanks for any help![/quote]

If your primary goal is strength, then go with the second option. You yourself said that you could double the reps if you wait longer. Makes sense to use the method where you feel strongest, right?

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
If I wait 2 minutes between sets, I can crank out a certain number of reps. If I wait 5 or 6 minutes, I can double the reps. Would it be better to follow the first criteria or the second? My main goal is strength with a secondary goal of any hypertrophy that comes along.

If it helps: 6’6", 271, mostly have done powerlifting moves and Oly style, for martial art. Also am…ahem…over 50.

Many thanks for any help!

If your primary goal is strength, then go with the second option. You yourself said that you could double the reps if you wait longer. Makes sense to use the method where you feel strongest, right?
[/quote]

I don’t completely agree, while yeah use a method that helps you lift the most weight over the course of the set, but 5 or 6 minutes seems like too much. I’d say 2.5 to 3 minutes for strength.

[quote]PF_88 wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
If I wait 2 minutes between sets, I can crank out a certain number of reps. If I wait 5 or 6 minutes, I can double the reps. Would it be better to follow the first criteria or the second? My main goal is strength with a secondary goal of any hypertrophy that comes along.

If it helps: 6’6", 271, mostly have done powerlifting moves and Oly style, for martial art. Also am…ahem…over 50.

Many thanks for any help!

If your primary goal is strength, then go with the second option. You yourself said that you could double the reps if you wait longer. Makes sense to use the method where you feel strongest, right?

I don’t completely agree, while yeah use a method that helps you lift the most weight over the course of the set, but 5 or 6 minutes seems like too much. I’d say 2.5 to 3 minutes for strength.[/quote]

Ryan Kennelly strongest bencher in the world says he would take upwards of ten minutes in between some sets.

[quote]PF_88 wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
If I wait 2 minutes between sets, I can crank out a certain number of reps. If I wait 5 or 6 minutes, I can double the reps. Would it be better to follow the first criteria or the second? My main goal is strength with a secondary goal of any hypertrophy that comes along.

If it helps: 6’6", 271, mostly have done powerlifting moves and Oly style, for martial art. Also am…ahem…over 50.

Many thanks for any help!

If your primary goal is strength, then go with the second option. You yourself said that you could double the reps if you wait longer. Makes sense to use the method where you feel strongest, right?

I don’t completely agree, while yeah use a method that helps you lift the most weight over the course of the set, but 5 or 6 minutes seems like too much. I’d say 2.5 to 3 minutes for strength.[/quote]

Based on what? Why does 5 or 6 minutes seem like too much?

Just by what I’ve read and how I’ve learned, I’m still young though so maybe I’m wrong, it’s just how I’ve trained when I train for strength and it has helped me increase my poundages.

Sentoguy,
You don’t think his time between sets should relate to the number of reps he’s using? He didn’t say what rep range he’s doing.

Personally I think if he’s using a rep range of 7 or greater, waiting too long (3+ minutes) between sets would defeat the purpose of that set. On the other hand if your talkng about 3 rep sets where your just worried about power, waiting 5 minutes may be good. Also mix it up time and range occasionally.

5 minutes might be ok, but I can see anything longer as too long. While he wants to do the most weight at competition or at a particular time, when training you don’t want to burn yourself out using a weight that it takes you 5 minutes to recover from week after week after week.

For the Ryan Kelly reference, I say this Powerlifters like to stress their heavy sets, with long ass rest periods but when you look at the true elite and their logs alot of them have hypertrophy type warm ups that most people tend to overlook. I remember seeing one guy’s log, I don’t remember who, and he did a set of 40 with a decent weight.

50 huh? Hope your using steroids…J/k. But you may seriously want to consider how often you go heavy (for your joints) I’m sure training at 50 is different than 20.

[quote]Airtruth wrote:

For the Ryan Kelly reference, I say this Powerlifters like to stress their heavy sets, with long ass rest periods but when you look at the true elite and their logs alot of them have hypertrophy type warm ups that most people tend to overlook. I remember seeing one guy’s log, I don’t remember who, and he did a set of 40 with a decent weight.

[/quote]

That’s why I said some sets lol.

Give us an example of the exercise, weight, and reps your using.

Theres a big difference between resting 5 minutes to be able to do 20 reps, vs resting 5 minutes and doing 6 reps with a heavier weight.

Also, if a recovery that long is needed, then it would either mean your fairly advanced, or your training too close to failure.

[quote]Airtruth wrote:
Sentoguy,
You don’t think his time between sets should relate to the number of reps he’s using? He didn’t say what rep range he’s doing.

Personally I think if he’s using a rep range of 7 or greater, waiting too long (3+ minutes) between sets would defeat the purpose of that set. On the other hand if your talkng about 3 rep sets where your just worried about power, waiting 5 minutes may be good. Also mix it up time and range occasionally.

5 minutes might be ok, but I can see anything longer as too long. While he wants to do the most weight at competition or at a particular time, when training you don’t want to burn yourself out using a weight that it takes you 5 minutes to recover from week after week after week.

For the Ryan Kelly reference, I say this Powerlifters like to stress their heavy sets, with long ass rest periods but when you look at the true elite and their logs alot of them have hypertrophy type warm ups that most people tend to overlook. I remember seeing one guy’s log, I don’t remember who, and he did a set of 40 with a decent weight.

50 huh? Hope your using steroids…J/k. But you may seriously want to consider how often you go heavy (for your joints) I’m sure training at 50 is different than 20.
[/quote]

Sure, the amount of time needed to recover is going to change with different rep ranges and depending on how taxing the set was. But, if his main goal is strength (performance based), then I assumed that he was talking about using fiarly low reps. Even if he’s using a moderate rep range, or even a high rep range, I don’t see any problem in him waiting as long as he needs to maximize his performance.

LOL! I wish I could take 5 or 6 minutes between sets! What are you doing durig that time, taking a nap?

Seriously, if you can lift more when well rested, that would be what I would do. It allows you to lift heavier. When I have to physically remove a customer from my store, I want to be as strong as possible.

I guess I just think there should be a little more seperation between maximum performance and training for maximum performance.

I find the reps usually increase each workout, when you use shorter then 5 minute rest periods.

[quote]dankid wrote:
Give us an example of the exercise, weight, and reps your using.

Theres a big difference between resting 5 minutes to be able to do 20 reps, vs resting 5 minutes and doing 6 reps with a heavier weight.

Also, if a recovery that long is needed, then it would either mean your fairly advanced, or your training too close to failure.[/quote]

I was benching with 2 minute rest when I got interrupted by someone and when I did the reps, I found I could do more. I was doing reps of 5, going near failure on the last rep (but not to failure).

If I tried one more rep, I would have failed. With all the rest, I did 8 reps. Tried it again 6 minutes later and got 10! It seems that short rest periods inhibits how much you lift. I know that there is some ideal time here and that going beyond would also be a bad idea (cooling down too much).

I dont know about this one, it sounds a bit iffie.

For one, if your goal is pure strength you definately shouldn’t be doing 10 reps, and even 5 reps is a little high.

Also, if these rest periods are making that big of a difference with thes “lighter weights”, then your conditioning is probably pretty poor. You may need some GPP.

Lastly, if your goal isn’t just pure strength, and hypertrophy matters to you, then more reps isn’t always better. Think density. Resting 2 minutes and performing 5 reps is much better than resting 5 minutes and performing 10 reps, as far as density goes. Sure you may have to do some extra sets to get the volume up, but in the long run, you’ll be bigger, and your endurance will be better.

[quote]dankid wrote:
Lastly, if your goal isn’t just pure strength, and hypertrophy matters to you, then more reps isn’t always better. Think density. Resting 2 minutes and performing 5 reps is much better than resting 5 minutes and performing 10 reps, as far as density goes. Sure you may have to do some extra sets to get the volume up, but in the long run, you’ll be bigger, and your endurance will be better.[/quote]

Well if you and a few coaches who have nothing to do with bbing say so, I guess it must be true, right?

There sure are a lot of answers.

HH, Bro, you know the answer to this question.

The more rest favors HTMU’s full recovery. So they are back in force after long rest periods and that is what you felt when you rested longer.

When you rest shorter your LTMU’s come back quick, but don’t have the power of the HTMU’s, so you are not as strong.

But, the key is that both types of fiber units hypertrophy. And if you rest a long time you will have better strength increases, but not as much hypertrophy because you are not stressing the LTMU’s enough.

So if you want strength and size you have to use both approaches; heavy load long rest periods and lighter load shorter rest periods. IMO, the best approach is to cycle in and out of it.

So start with a lighter load with shorter rest periods. Then, each workout add weight and increase the rest periods until you max. Then, drop back and start over again with a slightly heaver starting light load. Do this over say 3 weeks to a month.

You can’t go heavy all the time anyway. So you need to have some form of cycle or variation to keep progressing and using rest time as a variable works and is a good way to keep growing. Even over 50yrs (damn dude!).

Sigh…why make this more complicated than it needs to be. Rest as long as you NEED to to lift as heavy as you can again.The only caveat is that if you spend too long training, at some time cortisol will become an issue. Again not a concern as long as you’re progressing from session to session but training for hours on end many not yield consistent progress over time. Taking Vit C before and after th session should be useful here.

This method of overload soon runs its course as you can’t push up more weight from session to session (intermediate and advanced lifters). The next method besides revamping your session and changing or replacing movements?

Either try to do more reps in each set OR reduce rest intervals between sets trying to keep the load the same. When nothing else works, last option is to add an extra set in said movement, but this is not a tenable measure of progress - more like a last ditch attempt to force progress in the NEXT session.

Why do you think Rippetoe asks trainees (albeit beginners) to wait as long as they need to before the next set - of course some limits need to be set considering the total volume of the session .

[quote]tribunaldude wrote:

last option is to add an extra set in said movement, but this is not a tenable measure of progress - more like a last ditch attempt to force progress in the NEXT session.

[/quote]

This is not correct. Adding volume is an effective means of progress and nearly all BB do it.

Adding volume will not consistently add size unless you happen to naturally respond to high volume. I’m not referring to switching to a higher volume approach by the way, i;m talking about keeping the movement the same but increasing volume by ADDING an extra set.

Ad yes, nearly all BB increase volume from time to time to force progress or trigger a growth spurt but no one does that indefinitely.If any BB merely keeps adding volume from session to session indefinitely without changing movements and/or increasing tension or TUT or reducing rest intervals - then he probably has no idea how to periodize his training OR he responds to volume overload at that stage in his career.
Most natural Bbers are nowhere near that level.

[quote]Lorisco wrote:
tribunaldude wrote:

last option is to add an extra set in said movement, but this is not a tenable measure of progress - more like a last ditch attempt to force progress in the NEXT session.

This is not correct. Adding volume is an effective means of progress and nearly all BB do it. [/quote]