Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1612: Everything You Need to Know About Sets, Reps & Rest Periods

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin lay out everything you need to know about sets, reps, tempo, and rest period. Sets, reps and rest periods: The nuts and bolts of exercise programming. (2:51) Understanding the difference between exercising and training. (5:51) Sets.  Defining what it is and the proper dose per week. (8:10) Mind Pump’s thoughts on German Volume Training. (13:27) The value of supersets. (18:02) The dos and don’ts. (19:18) Reps.  Defining what a rep is and what is the best range? (21:10) The various tempo schemes and how to manipulate them in your exercise programming. (29:13) Is there value in loose, forced, and partial reps? (35:19) Rest Periods. Why the rest is as important as the active part of the workout. (37:42) What is the ideal rest period? (40:02) A guaranteed way to break through your training plateau. (43:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Strong and MAPS Powerlift 50% off!  **Promo code “AUGUSTSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Drink LMNT for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! German Volume Training: Benefits, Exercise Plan, and More Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog How To Use Supersets For Maximum Muscle Gain – Mind Pump Blog Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Blog MAPS Fitness Anabolic | Muscle Adaptation Programming System Why Your Tempo Matters When You Workout! - Mind Pump TV How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts Mind Pump #945: The Best Rest Periods For Muscle Gain & Fat Loss Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Stan “Rhino” Efferding – CSCS (@stanefferding)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right in today's episode. We talk about sets, reps, and rest periods. Why are they important? What are the best ones of all of them?

Like how many sets? How many reps? What's the best rest period? We break it all down for you. If you listen to this episode, you should be able to construct a good workout program for yourself. And if you want it all done for you,

go check out our workout programs at mapsfitinistproducts.com. By the way, running a sale all month long, maps strong as half off and maps power lift is half off. 50% off. That's crazy. Go check them out. Again, mapsfitinusproducts.com. Use the code August Special with no space for that discount.

One more thing this episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, LMNT. It's an electrolyte powder that tastes delicious, but here's the secret. It's got the right amount of sodium. Most electrolyte powders are low in sodium, so it's really a waste of time. This one is high enough in sodium to make a difference, especially for those of you that don't need a lot of processed foods or on low carb diets

or like to work out a lot. I get crazy pumps when I use L-M-N-T. I'm not making this up. In fact, if you go to their website, drinklmnt.com forward slash mind pump, you'll get a free sample pack. Try it yourself. I promise it'll blow your mind. All right, enjoy this podcast.

Off topic and I know this isn't the conversation we're having today, but I did want to bring up. I actually got a lot of DMs about your comment, which I haven't done yet, about combining the sodium, the element with creatine. Oh yeah, yeah, I got messages about that, like oh my God, Sal said this other day.

So I haven't done that yet. Yeah, so it increases the uptake of creatine. So there's a couple ways, people were saying they feel the difference. Big time, wow, interesting. So there's a couple ways you can increase the intake feel the difference. Wow, big interesting So there's a couple ways you can increase the intake of Crateen Carbohydrates or sugar cell volume is one of them sodium is the other one and of course sodium has no calories and before your workout helps with the Sugar

I was always aware of because of cell tech. Yeah, that was there their theory was that they put it I don't want to drink 70 grams of sugar No, no, that makes it and that was why they used to tell you to mix it with like grape juicer, what do I get right? That was kind of the, the, the, the, the, No sodium, sodium works excellent. Yeah, wow. I do it in the element T. And you, you just, do you put it like in a water bottle

size amount? Because normally I actually, the element T is so strong that I actually put it in my picture. No, so I'll fill this up right here, right? And I'll, it's like a shake or cup. And I'll, this will be filled with water, yeah, I'll, T, I'll work out with it. Yeah. Then I'll do another one post workout and then add, this will be filled with water, I'll work out with it.

Then I'll do another one post workout and then add the creativity. I do the creative post workout. Speaking of workouts. Speaking of workouts. Speaking of workouts, we again, we'll cut up our shows into clips, put it on YouTube, and occasionally certain clips

get lots of comments, lots of questions, lots of people interested. And one of the more recent ones that had a lot of interest really revolved around information surrounding basics of workout programming in particular sets, wraps, rest periods in particular. Like, you know, everything about those things, why are they important? What do they do? And you know, again, sometimes we get stuck in the minutia, everything about those things, why are they important, what do they do? And, you know, again, sometimes we get stuck in the minutia,

especially because we've been doing this for so long, that if you think about all the important things to communicate, like, those three things, just those three things right there are so important. It makes such an impact on how well you're gonna respond to your work out. Well, you see all these different modalities kind of become created as a result

of manipulating those factors. And people get really almost religious and they evangelize that this is the best way, the best rep range, the best tempo, the best rest amount of time that you're going to have in your workouts. And so it becomes like this sort of fight amongst people and fitness. It's hilarious. Well, it's really the nuts and bolts of exercise programming. I mean, minus the exercise selection, which would be up there with

the most important things when it comes to programming. So other than that, these are the other factors that make all the difference of what constitutes a good or bad program. Yeah. And to give you an example, I want to illustrate this with an example, has nothing to do with working out. So let's say I gave somebody 10 colors that they could use to paint a picture. Depending on how you use the colors, the strokes that you make and the way you combine

them, you'll either have something that's recognizable as a painting or you'll just have a bunch of random colors on a piece of canvas. This is what workout programming is. So when you look at workout programming, you have all these different pieces and just throwing them on the canvas doesn't give you an effective workout. There is a way you put them together. There's an order that you can put them together that'll make it super effective or not effective at all. So programming is extremely important when it comes to, and that's what program that's what we're referring to, is how you put it together, how it all works together in the week and the month, and so on.

That determines your progress or not. I feel like that's the first time you've used that art analogy for a program. Yeah, it is. I'm just picturing, like, you know, it's like really shitty art that people think is amazing. Oh, I thought you were gonna go with the build a cake. Not about analogy though, because there's a lot of times where people think that something is really good

and it's really not. It's really trash, but it's just a bunch of random stuff thrown together. Yeah, because you see salt sugar, you know, eggs and flour and you see how people all put that together like and you can get a really shitty king. You know, that's that's also a good point to make too though is that, you know, there's there's exercising and then there's training, right? And exercise can be anything. Like just moving yeah, just moving and and there's there's benefits to exercise and it's not a bad thing.

I think where we get really hypercritical about programming is a lot of programs out there are just a bunch of exercises. And they're not designed like a training program that is designed to take you somewhere. You know, get you faster, get you stronger, reduce body fat, build muscle. A lot of them really are just a bunch of exercises that are thrown together in a creative manner. And there is a significant difference between somebody who wants to exercise and somebody who wants to train.

Now, our profession is trainers is we get clients that have goals, that have a place they want to get. And therefore, this stuff really matters. It does. And also consider this when you're looking at workout programs, typically workout programs design for the general population whose goal is just to lose weight. They place almost no energy or emphasis on workout programming because you take the average person who's not active and you just get them to move more and eat less and they will lose weight.

Of course, they end up failing later on. I think to fail rate something like 90%. Now contrast that to workout programs that are designed for athletes, especially competitive strength athletes. Lots of thought, lots of effort goes into programming because the result has to be you perform better on stage when you're lifting a weight

or you're cleaning something overhead. So the workout programming for general, for fitness, for leanness, for what a typically sucks. And this is one of the reasons why one of the main things that we do is we design programs. We saw that and we said, okay, this is wide open for like really good workout program. Well, to your earlier point, that's the argument that I always can't stand that argument. The one that's like, well, they're at least doing something now. Yeah. You know, beforehand they weren't even getting off the couch and making the effort.

And so at least they're doing this. But if you kind of play that all the way out and see what that ends up doing in terms of like creating bad habits and creating problems in the future, they could have avoided by just being more intentional and finding their way towards a better program. They would have had a lot better success. All right, so let's start with sets, right? First, let's describe what a set is

for people who might not know what that is. So a set is a specified period of time that you're doing the exercise consistently. So let's say you're doing 10 times of an exercise or reps, which we'll get to, and then you stop. That was a set. And sets refers to repeating that over and over again, or doing different sets of different exercises.

Now, why is that important? It's important because defining sets helps you define reps, helps you define the length of time that you're doing the exercise, volume, volume, and sets are very important. Like why not just do one set? Like why do I have to do sets of anything? Well anecdotally for decades athletes and bodybuilders and strength athletes notice that they just they just got better results when they did multiple sets versus They just got better results when they did multiple sets versus just one. We now have studies that support this entirely.

They'll compare single set to three sets or four sets, and typically, generally speaking, multiple sets performs better than just one particular set. Now, there's always, of course, there's a diminishing returns point where you can do too many, and then you're not getting great results, but doing multiple sets generally is better than just doing.

Well, let's talk about that. Do you think when programming, choosing an exercise, we're going to choose bench press, we're going to choose squat, whatever the exercise we're going to do, is there a sweet spot of how many sets that you do? Is there a number that's not enough, and is there a number that is too much, and is there

a sweet spot there? Yeah. So studies will show that the range for total sets per body part, and I'm going to explain why there's a range here, generally is about for most people, the sweet spot is 9 to something like 18 sets total per week. So if you did three workouts divided up by those three workouts for that body part. Now, why is there such a range? That's like nine to 18, right? That's a double within that particular range. Because some exercises cause more damage to the body than others, right? 18 sets of

barbell squats can feel very different than 18 sets. I also think there's that wide of variants too, is because of the genetic potential of the person, the client. Yeah, fitness level, like some people respond really well to lots of sets, high volume, which would be on the 18, 20, 20 sets in a week type of range. Other people respond really well to a lower amount, which would be the nine. And think about that for a second. Nine is not very many for an entire week. Not three sets, three times a week, right? Pobodipar. Right.

So that's not all. And finding out. And I also, I also think for the person that is just getting started, regardless if you do well on more sets, almost everybody should start on the low end and then scale up. Of course. Yeah, there's an upper limit of what you can tolerate

and then there's a sweet spot in terms of what's gonna give you the best results and they're not the same. Okay, so let's say my, I'll give you an example. Let's say my body, it just responds the best. It's the healthiest. I build the most strength, the most muscle. I get the best consistent results at 12 sets per body part per week.

But I can tolerate and get away with doing 20 sets. That doesn't make it better. That just means I can tolerate it. In fact, I'll probably get worse results at 20 than I did at 12. And this is important because what we tend to do, especially as fitness fanatics, is we tend to push to what we can tolerate, not aim for what is ideal. Well, yeah, but then we just get into that trap of, you know, I can tolerate it, but really

am I adapting, you know, versus, which adapting is really that, that's the sweet spot. You try and find that like, really advantageous dose where your body's going to respond, get stronger, build muscle, and it's not just, you know, trying to weather the storm and go through the gauntlet, which the irony of it is like, so in the beginning, get stronger, build muscle, and it's not just trying to weather the storm and go through the gauntlet, which the irony of it is, so in the beginning, you can't tolerate as many sets, and so you kinda work your way up in terms of the dose with that, but two, the goal isn't to be able to do as many sets as possible, like the most crazy volume

you can, because the goal is the opposite. The goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So even if you are someone like Sal who can handle 20 plus sets on a single muscle group in a week, if he hasn't been training for let's say a month just because he can tolerate that, going anywhere near that doesn't make sense. Starting someone off who hasn't been trained, starting them off in the nine range for the week on the lower end of the spectrum would be a much better place, even if you're somebody who handles that high volume,

because again, you want to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. Yeah, so it's like imagine you get a dirty dish and you're washing it in about a minute. It's perfectly clean, right? But you're like, in about a minute, it's perfectly clean, right? But you're like, I'm gonna wash this for five more minutes, right? You're wasting your time.

You're totally wasting your time. And ain't gonna get any cleaner is the point. Now, that's not even a good example because it would be more like this. If I went for five minutes washing the dish, it's gonna start to get dirty again. This is what happens to your body. You go past a certain point,

now you're taking away from your body's ability to adapt. Here's one of the greatest discussions that I like to have around sets. And I learned this relatively young. So when I first started working out, my first experience with programming was I had Arnold Schwarzenegger's and Cyclopedia body building.

In fact, we actually have it up here in the studio. It's all covered in tape because I've read that thing probably a million times. Got it when I was, I think for my 14th birthday. And Arnold loved to do or like to promote lots of exercises, maybe three sets per exercise, right? So let's say you're doing 15 sets for chest, it was probably comprised of five exercises, three sets each.

And so I did that for a little while. Now, later on, I got my hands on different style of training. And I believe, and I know it's called German volume training. I don't know what it was called back then. I think that might have been what it was called. Yeah, GVT, but 10 sets. Yeah, but they recommended, rather than doing 15 sets of, you know, total three sets of five exercises, right?

They would say something like two exercises, divided 15 sets, or do one exercise in just two 15 sets. You're doing lots of sets of one exercise versus fewer sets of lots of exercises, and I tried that, right? I did a whole block. I think it was like a two-month period of training where I cut my exercises way down, and I just did more sets of fewer exercises. And I got phenomenal results.

I got incredibly strong, and I got great results. Now that doesn't mean that that was better because it was a change. That's what got my body to respond because of course, then when I went back to the old way, I got a great response again. But it highlights that there's a difference between the two, right? The fewer sets, more exercises, was good for the pump, good for different angles,

you know, different stimulus, the fewer exercises, more sets. Boy, I practiced these exercises a lot. My CNS got lots of training in a particular movement pattern, and I got really, really strong. Both extremely valuable, both things I think you should mess around with. And in fact, if you follow our maps programs, you'll see this, some of our programs have way more sets with less exercises and other programs will have fewer sets,

production size, but more exercise. We get asked a lot about what we think about GVT training, right? And I think that it's excellent. You know, the unfortunate part is a similar knock that we get with somebody who's never seen any of our programming and they buy anabolic for the first time is the simplicity of it.

That seems too simple. Yeah, oh, that's it. You're only doing that many exercises. Like that can't, then people assume it's not as good because it doesn't have a bunch of creative exercise. But the truth is, and we talk about this, you especially use cell all the time about the importance of practicing movements, especially the big

ones, especially the ones that are more technical, like the squatting, the dead lifting, the overhead pressing. These movements are so technical, I've been doing them for 20 years, and I still don't think I've perfected those movements, and I'm still making tweaks on improving them. So even with all the experience that we have in there, there's so much room to improve and you get so many benefits from improving in those movements that it makes sense to do something 10 sets like that.

And it seems like mundane because you're like, oh, I'm gonna come in and all I'm gonna do is what two exercises today, and that's all I'm gonna train. But I actually love to do this. And I like to sprinkle it in, I don't know, once a quarter when I have been train like this in a while, that's one of the ways I'll break up our programming

because we don't have a lot, I don't think we have anything that is 10 or 15 sets of one. For one exercise? Yeah, no. But it's a great way to train. I love training this way, and I love teaching clients this because sometimes two to three or four sets is not enough

for somebody who you're trying to teach like a squat to. It's like the first one, they're all over the place. The second one, you finally get them the concept to do it. The third one, they're finally, and now it's time to move on. It's like, no, let's stay here for a while. They haven't got me groove yet. Yes, you know one of those things, you feel that

when everything sort of clicks and your body responds away, it wants to and it stabilizes you properly through all that. So there's lots of little nuances, especially in those compound exercises, where I find lots of value with practicing it repeatedly. Oh yeah, I noticed when I do, if I did like 10 sets of, let's say dead lifts or squats,

by set four or five, I actually start to get stronger. It looks like it's almost like I start off at a certain strength, I'll get stronger halfway through all those sets, and then I start to get a little fatigues. It looks like it's almost like I start off at a certain strength. I'll get stronger halfway through all those sets and then I start to get a little fatigue. It's very interesting feeling. Now on the flip side, less sets per exercise but more exercises, this is like you'll get when you do your bodybuilding style workout. A really good pump and a good squeeze and you're hitting different angles of the body part so there's value to that as well. Now there's more, there are also advanced types of set configurations, one of them being a superset.

A superset really is two exercises put together without any rest. So it counts as one big set. There's a lot of different ways to do this. You could do the same body part, so squats to lunges, for example, or you could do opposing body parts. So bicep to tricep. You can also do different body parts

that aren't too close to each other. This, I don't necessarily count as a super set. I don't see tens of value in this. There's some value, but not a ton. I like to focus on you the same body part or opposing body parts within this kind of super set. So with two exercises back to back, you could do a compound, two anisolation or vice versa,

mess around with this. Really, really good for the pump. It's good for stamina and endurance. I like to use this personally when I'm cutting my calories and I know my strength is going down anyway. So it just gets me out of that mindset of, oh my gosh, I'm getting weaker. I have to go lighter anyway.

And this also sort of blends into another one of the cute variables with rests. So you're gonna cut that rest in between, jumping from this exercise to the next one. And it gives you that completely different kind of a feel and it stimulates the muscles completely differently. Now I feel like one of the important takeaways from this is that one, there is a sweet spot,

so that nine to 20 sets in a week for a body part, right, is kind of where you want to be. I think that's, I think we should give people an idea of what the dos and don'ts here, right? So I want to fall somewhere in there. There's your sweet spot. Whatever, whatever I decide, if I'm going to do in incorporate drop sets or supersets or these different types of training modalities or ways of training. I want to do that for three to four weeks.

Stay consistent with that so I can then see the response that my body is getting from it and then move or change from that. To a different style. Right. I like that. By the way, drop set is when you'll do a set with a particular weight without rest, take some weight off and then do another set right away and you can do this three or four times very advanced. Drop sets, pyramids, there's a lot of different styles this way and I think

for someone who's learning how to program them, the first way to do that is to stick with that. Yeah, stick with the basics. Yeah, stick with that for a while and then you can start to play with all these different techniques in there. And the one pitfall that I think I see that's most common is just falling in love with one, and then adopting that as the way you train all the way. So that's the thing you got to caution everybody that's listening. It's like, okay, so I've never tried that before. The guys talked about GVT training.

I'm going to go do a bench press for 10 sets on my next workout in squats, 10 sets, and that's all I'm gonna do. And they say great results. Oh my God, the body responds. Like your experience. Yeah, and now you're doing that for the next six months to a year because you got such great results

in that first month. And the same rules apply that we always talk about, you know, one of the best things you could ever do for yourself is whatever it is you're not doing right now. So then you move out of that and you adopt other ways to stack your sets. Totally. Now let's talk about reps, right? So a rep is literally one full completion of an exercise.

In other words, if I'm doing a squat, going down, coming all the way up, that's one rep, doing a curl, curling the weight up, bringing it up down, that's a repetition. Now of course, reps are important because that's what gets the muscle to move with resistance and that's what sends the muscle building stimulus.

Now one of the bigger debates in fitness, for a long time, this is actually one of the debates that have been around for a long time, probably since the beginning, not so much today because we have lots of studies around it, but definitely, I remember when I was a kid, this was a big debate was, what's the best rep range? Right?

How many reps builds the most muscle? How many reps burns the most body fat? Right? If I'm a strength athlete, what do I train in? If I'm a bodybuilder, what do I train in? And it was always this debate back and forth in terms of what's the best rep range. And I think it's safe to say that, especially if you look at the studies, anywhere between

maybe one rep to 30 reps, I would say, in the context of resistance training, in other words, lifting weights or using resistance in a way to build muscle, you're fine. One to 30, there's value in all those. Once you go over 30, it starts to become more cardio-like, and obviously you can't go below one rep. So they all have some value. Now which one builds the most muscle, right? Here's where the studies get confusing.

If you read studies, and studies are typically done nine weeks or 12 weeks long at the most, when they compare groups of people, what they tend to find in these studies, they tend to, because some are conflicting, they tend to find that eight to 12 reps builds the most muscle in people. Now here's the problem with that, is there's short studies, and they're not showing that a person adapts to a particular rep range, and then what do you do from there, right? Eight to 12 definitely will and ahead to head, but if you keep going down that path long enough and you never get out? Eight to 12 definitely will and ahead to head, but if you keep going down that path long enough and you never get out of eight to 12 reps, your body will stop responding. And what will get your body to continue responding is to go to a different

rep range, three to five or 15 to 20. Here's the truth about the rep ranges. Like I said, one to 30, they all build muscle. This is what's cool about. They all build muscle, they all burn body fat. All of them. And they all burn body fat. Forget the calories burned while doing your workout. This is such a dumb thing that people look at. How many calories did I burn while I did my workout? It's such a nominal number that means almost nothing

when you consider the context of your metabolism. Which one, what rep range is going to affect my metabolism in a way that makes my metabolism burn the most calories? Well, that's the rep range that's gonna build the most muscle. So the question is which rep range builds the most muscle? Muscle, the one that you're probably not used to. Getting the rep range you're not used to, and that's where you're gonna see, you know.

This is hard, this is probably one of the hardest hurdles to get people to understand because of all the camps that we have in this. You alluded to it already. We have the bodybuilding camp, you have the strong man camp, powerlifter camp, you endurance, the Spartan, I mean, you have all these camps,

and then there's studies and research around what, you know, rep range or sets, whatever we're talking about is a most ideal for that client and then it's, well, whatever I identify with, so that's how I train all the time. I mean, I fell into this trap. I fell into this trap as a young kid thinking that

if I wanted to build muscle, I got to stay in the six rep range and I never moved out of it forever. Then I got stuck in the body building, and I tell you, oh, I want to sculpt and build a body. They say hypertrophy, eight to 12 reps is the best range to stay in. And so then I stayed in in the body building, I tell you, oh, I want to sculpt and build a body. They say hypertrophy eight to 12 reps is the best range to stay in. And so then I stayed in that range forever.

But the truth is, just like I was talking about with the sets, whatever rep range you decide you want to be in for whatever goals, stay in that for three to six weeks and then move out of it, regardless of what the goal is. And the idea is to move through all those different rep ranges so the body is constantly having to adapt and change. Yeah, and one of the main things, one of the things I saw a lot too with female clients coming in

was just the exposure towards the lower rep range was something that, I know based off of a lot of marketing out there, a lot of programs that people have subscribed to in the past, or let's say a lot of the videos that were being pushed out, there were very high in the rep range, because you wanted to keep those lean tone muscles. And so that was very much marketed to forever, which then taking a female client and then putting them through anywhere from one to five reps was like a totally different experience.

And their body just responded right away because it was just something they had never even considered doing. This was one of the greatest selling points for me personally for this all happening. I mean, almost eight years ago now, Sal sent me over, maps and a ballic and the what him and Doug had created. And at that point in my career, this was something that I had figured out by now that, man, one of my favorite things to do to a female client was make them train in a strength phase.

Once I got past the mental hurdle that this is not going to make you bulky and huge, that this is the best thing for your body, their bodies responded so well for that exact reason that you're saying. that this is the best thing for your body. Their bodies responded so well for that exact reason that you're saying. So the idea of coming out with a program where you started everybody in a strength phase, I just thought was brilliant. You figure 65 to 80% of most trainers clients are females.

That's one of the biggest hurdles that you have to come over is convincing them to strength train. So I know that, okay, one of the easiest ways I can start to show my client great results, immediately, is by probably putting them in a phase they've never trained in. And that was one of the brilliant things that I saw in a Maps and a Ball, I said, oh my God,

this is so such the right way to start 90% of your clients. Yeah, I had a lot of, I mean countless female clients. I can't seem to tone my legs, or I can't seem to tone my arms, or I can't seem to tone my arms, and then I would put them in low reps. Why are we doing low reps? Watch what happens.

They come to me afterwards. Oh my gosh, I've never been this toned. What's happening? Like you're building. So that's what's happening. That means build muscles. Yeah, and you've never lifted heavy before. The opposite is true too.

Like so, my guys, who never want, my guys that want to get big and strong, never wanted to do, definitely would never do 20s. Exactly, yeah. And that's why I love, Stan Effording is known for this and at least on social media. He's one of those guys that touts 20 reps squats, you know. Because he never did them.

Yeah, nobody does that. You know what I'm saying? But he's strong as an ox, and I tell you right now, if you've never trained 20 sets of frickin' or 20 reps, excuse me, 20 reps of squats, watch how your legs respond. They will blow up from that, but there's this idea that, oh, well, that's for leaning out

or that's for girls to lift that many repetitions. So this idea of a rep range fits this demographic of people is so silly, and the truth is, most people never train in a rep range fits this demographic of people is so silly and the truth is Most people never train in that rep range and there's still tremendous Benefits in that high rep range for building strength and muscle and if you've never done it watch what happens One of the most important things I think to understand about rep ranges isn't necessarily What the rep ranges do for your body and you know, and higher reps versus low reps, and that's valuable, but here's the most valuable thing, is the mindset that you

go into when you're training higher reps versus lower reps. It's very different, right? So if I'm going in to do a set of squats for five repetitions, it's a different mindset than when I'm going to do a set of squats for 20 reps, right? When I'm doing five reps, obviously the weight is going to be much, much, much heavier. I'm bracing, I'm holding my breath at the bottom of the squat. It's all about driving with my CNS and hyping myself up and staying tight and very, very different feeling. When I go to do 20 reps, I'm controlling my breathing.

I'm trying to get a good pump. I'm squeezing at the top. The burn is totally different. It's a totally different feeling. And so it requires a different mindset. Well, this is where I think tempo plays such a huge factor with reps is when you're doing something you're like you said, lifting really heavy, it tends to be a faster,

more explosive type of tempo because you've got to move that weight. When you're going for something that's more of a pump, it's the slower, more explosive type of tempo because you've got to move that weight. When you're going for something that's more of a pump, it's the slower, more control type of tempo where you're trying to feel the exercise and slow it down and the slower, the more time and attention, the more blood you're going to pump into the muscle and so it lends itself well.

So this is where you start to see all the different four, two, two, the one, one, one, and like, what are all these things? What are those numbers mean? What is four, two, two, the one, one, one, and like, what are all these? What are all these? What are those numbers mean? What is four, two, two mean? So four would be the negative or eccentric portion of the exercise. Two would be the isometric contraction,

which is the part where you hold it either at the bottom of a bench press, the bottom of a squat, and then the one to two seconds would then be on the positive, right? So four would be four seconds down, two seconds at the bottom, two seconds up. Right. So whenever you see any kind of workout,

I mean, first you understand, in every rep, there are three portions of that exercise, right? Concentric, eccentric, and isometric, right? So basically, the positive is what everybody would know it, know it, the negative, and then the, you know, the hold, right, of the portion of the exercise. And all three of those, they hold tremendous value. Yes. And all three of those, I would say you put more specific emphasis on the portion

of that based off of what you're trying to accomplish. Oh, you can manipulate all three. Like one of my favorite things to do, for example, I like to do this with squats is I'll manipulate the hold. So I'll get into a squat and I'll do a four second negative. And then I'll hold the bottom for four seconds or five seconds And then I'll come up for example, and that's if I want to work on the bottom portion of my squat increase the stability there You can manipulate all three of those by the way in a particular rep and make the exercise feel Oh, yeah, well, and that's why with beginners I like to make sure like the temp was like a four two two or something

That's nice and slow and and you're really emphasizing each one of those contractions because you know, it's all about control, stability, it's about organizing your body to get through the mechanics of it. And so the intention of it is everything going into the exercise in order to learn it properly and get your body to respond properly. But then you can start having fun with it and cut out part of the timing for concentric. Now I've said I'm more explosive in that rep. The opposite of that where I'm just really grinding through the negative, which really breaks down the muscle in a different way. You can have a lot of fun by just manipulating each one of those.

This was one of my favorite things to teach. It still is, because of all the things we're talking about today, I would say it's the one that's least manipulated or played with. Oh yeah, everybody's the same tempo. I mean, even the Doug Boisbring, I mean, when we were talking about this episode and we were putting together,

he goes, you know, I really want you guys to get into tempo. He goes, I even as much knowledge as he has and being around us and all experience he's got, that's still something that hasn't fully registered for him and how he plays with it. And there's a reason for this, because one, it's not talked about very often. And there are these tempos that are attached

to these avatars or types of training modalities, right? So I'm a power lifter, it's explosive. It's quick and fast, like Olympic lifting, power lifting is that way. I'm a body builderter. It's explosive. It's you know quick and fast like Olympic lifting power lifting is that way I'm a body builder. It's slow and controlled and feel the squeeze and so you have a Muscle tension all the time. Yeah, so you have these these these avatars or characters that we identify with and we see That's the way they train and so we just fall right into that whatever feel and then once you do that for a long enough Period of time your body gets good at that tempo. And so you wanna be good at all your exercises,

I wanna be good at my squat, I'm gonna be good at my bench press, so you don't manipulate that. This is the, and a lot of times, people aren't even doing the most ideal one for what they're trying to accomplish. There's research around what the hypertrophy ideal tempo is for, and it's that 4-2-2.

I always tell people that it's one of my favorite things to manipulate because a lot of people want to build muscle and burn body fat and train for hypertrophy. And I go in and I go like, okay, let's see if you actually do a four to two and very few people. Nobody does a four second.

No, you never see it. And if you never train that way, one, it's gonna be a lot harder. So you're gonna have to reduce the weight, which is tough for a lot of the people with the ego that wanted to lift the weight they were lifting. But talk about it a quick, easy way to get your body to change because you've gotten so used to training

in this one specific tempo. And now there's some basic rules to the different types of tempos for what you're trying to accomplish, but again, it's just like the other thing we were talking about with sets and reps, like rules to the different types of tempos for what you're trying to accomplish. But again, it's just like the other thing we were talking about with sets and reps as sets, is that whatever it is that you're consistently doing, one of the best things you can do is do something different.

So if you're the power lifter explosive guy who's doing a 1-1-1 all the time type of tempo, one of the best things that guy can do is go to a bodybuilding and the same, the reverse is true for the guy who does the bodybuilding. Right now he's more connected to his muscles. You know, there's just so much carryover and benefit for both. Like even if you're a bodybuilder, like that avoids a lot of that like heavy,

you know, loading in one to five rep range, well, you're missing out on stretching the capacity even further for recruiting more muscle fibers. So, you know, there's just a lot of carryover between each one of these types of ways of manipulating the tempo. Yeah, by the way, that middle number where there's that pause, typically refers to the bottom of a repetition, although you can do an isometric portion of a rep at any portion of a repetition. The top halfway through, there's lots of different ways to manipulate a rep to work different different areas of the rep and then that of course will train different. And I love to manipulate that

part when I have a client who has a really hard time connecting to a muscle, right? So you alluded to the squat and holding on there. Love that for somebody who can't feel it in their glutes. Every time they squat, all I feel in my quad is, we'll get them down in that isometric position and then try and get them to think about driving through their glutes and focusing on that. So I extend that period of time and that's great for getting them to feel that and then there's also benefits to it

because they never train that way. They're probably gonna build more muscle because of that. Totally. You also look at your rep form and compare perfect reps to loose reps. Now typically you're gonna get more value at a really good, perfect reps to loose reps. Now typically you're gonna get more value at a really good, perfect reps. However, there is some value in loose reps.

There is, now I'll save that for advanced lifters. Like you've seen advanced lifter doing something like a push press or a cheat curl. Is there value in that? Some, there is some value. But for most people you want your repetitions to look very, very clean, very perfect, just generally speaking, you'll get better results that way.

There's also things like four straps. This is where you have a partner help you squeeze out more reps after you can't do any more repetitions. There's partial reps where you can do the same amount of weight for five more reps because it's too heavy now, so you do five half reps, that's partial reps. Those are all advanced techniques, and I'm gonna be quite honest,

there's a little bit of value that you can find in advanced lifters, occasionally, but for most people, if you avoid those, you're fine. Not only you find, you're probably better off. I think for most people incorporating things like four straps and partial reps and going to failure, will probably get you to your goals slower.

Well, the thing you gotta be careful is the same thing that I brought up before, is let's say someone's listing right now, and they're like, oh, I've never tried loose wraps or partial wraps and then they start or going to failure and then they start to add that to their routine and whoa, the body responds. Well, yeah, response, because you weren't trained,

you never trained this way and now you've had it. The thing you gotta be careful in is falling in love with that now. Oh, I always do these types of partial reps or forced reps or going to failure because my body responded that one time when I did it. And you got to just be careful of any of these techniques that you're using, any of these rep ranges, any of these sets that you're sticking to, you want to stick to it for an extended period of time where you can actually track and see how the body's responding.

We tend to say somewhere between that three to six week range and then move away from it. So whatever you're messing with in the rep range, the same thing holds true here. If I'm going to follow this 12 rep range, tempo looks like this. I'm going to do that for a good three to four weeks. After that, then I'm going to move out of that to keep my body progressing. Now, I will say though, partial reps, four straps going to failure. For most people, you're probably better off avoiding it. Those are advanced techniques.

Yeah, and just not because, you know, and it's not because they're advanced and you just not good enough to do them, it's just too much. It'll get your body, you will not progress faster if anything. You might slow your progress down. The last one is rest periods. What's funny is for the average person, this is the most controversial. And it's the most controversial because this is what you tend to hear from people whenever you tell them to rest in between sets. I used to get this with clients all the time.

Well, why do I need to not do anything? I do something while I'm sitting here. As if the rest period is a waste of time. Or as if I have to rest. Here's another one. Clients would tell me, I can keep going. I don't need to rest. No, no, no, you're not resting if I have to rest. Here's another one. Clients would tell me, I can keep going. I don't need to rest. No, no, no, no. You're not resting because you have to. You're resting because the rest is as important as the active part of the workout,

which is the reps and the sets. Now, why is that so important? Well, here's why. When you're doing resistance training, your goal should be to try to build muscle, speed up the metabolism. Of course, the side effect of to try to build muscle, speed up the metabolism, of course, the side effect of that is to become leaner, essentially make your body more bulletproof and make it easier for you to stay lean.

And of course, when you build muscle, you look better, better hormones, that whole deal. Well, why do we have to rest? If we don't rest, we start to move into an energy system. In other words, your body starts to use energy that actually does not encourage muscle building, but rather encourages endurance stamina, which is fine if that's what you're looking for. But if you always train for endurance, you'll actually teach your body to lose muscle because it becomes advantageous for your body to burn less calories, become more efficient, and you don't need strength to have lots of endurance. The evidence is endurance athletes, look at endurance athletes.

They're very small, little body fat, little muscle as well, in fact very, very little muscle on most endurance athletes. Resting means when you rest that you're burning a type of energy and there's a type of energy system primarily driven by something called ATP and we don't need to get all complicated with it, but it's a very quick burning, explosive form of energy, but it also burns out very quickly. So if you do a set of, let's say, 12 repetitions, that's the energy that you're using,

then you rest, allow it to replenish, and then use it again. Utilizing that form of energy encourages muscle building. If I don't rest, then I just do set after set after set after set, I'll burn that energy out, and then I'll type tap into something called glycogen. Now I'm just training for endurance. That's fine if you want to do that,

but if you're doing set after set after set with little to no rest, you're essentially doing cardio with weights. Well, like the sets and reps, there is a spectrum here, but there is still a range, right? Yes. And moving out of that range on either end of the spectrum is not ideal. And that's going to fall somewhere between 30 seconds on the low end up to three minutes on on the highest. Yes. And everything in between there has value to all pursuits, right, building muscle, building strength, building stamina, and all those things, all those rest periods contribute

to those goals, and the same, if you haven't picked up on the steam yet, it's the same rules apply as the other ones, whichever way you've been training all the time, the one that you never do or rarely do, is probably one of the most ideal for whatever your pursuit is, whether it is to lean out, build muscle, build strength, stamina,

whatever your goal is, the thing you're not doing most often is probably the thing that's going to benefit your goal the most. I think this particular one really highlights the intention of how you structure your workout more than the rest. It's really one of those things that as a trainer trying to articulate this to clients because that was such a common theme was I need to be doing something because I'm here, I'm working out, what else?

Or even I've seen some trainers apply rubber bands in between exercises which active rest is what they call that, which is total garbage. But, you know, you need to allow your body to go through that specific energy exchange and to make sure that the strength part of it is the focus of it that we're literally telling in program are body to respond, you know, according to what that demand looks like and how we're manipulating the central nervous system specifically and focusing on that. So yes, it's important. It's important to rest and then, you know, refocus and then apply that very specific energy

towards lifting the weight so it's strength focused. Yeah, and I would also get this comment. It's like, well, one, I burn more calories if I do stuff while I'm supposed to be resting. Again, very small, it's a very, very short-sighted way of viewing exercise. Technically, would you burn more calories if you didn't do any rest within that workout? You would. Does it make a difference in terms of fat loss? Yeah, it does, and the negative.

Because again, you're not encouraging your metabolism to speed up the same. You're actually encouraging your metabolism to start to become more efficient. This happens very quickly. Within a month, this will start to happen. If your goal is fat loss, and it's long-term fat loss, and it's easier fat loss, you want a faster metabolism. Forget the calories you burned during your workout. It's a complete waste of time to do that. That's not important, unless you're doing it for like four weeks. Like within a four week period, yeah, it might make sense after that you start to adapt

and then it starts to kind of become negative. Now you brought up active rest, right? So people are like, well, I don't want to just sit here on the bench and rest, I want to do something. Okay, so if you're like super busy body, I have to do something. You can stretch in between sets. Now, this may be beneficial for muscle building.

I don't recommend this if you're a performance athlete, static stretching, they actually reduce activation and may actually increase risk of injury. But if you're more into a body building workout, long stretches in between sets might actually help with muscle building at the very least that won't hurt. So if you're one of those people's

like I gotta do something, fine, you're working of those people, it's like, I gotta do something fine. You're working at your chest, the whole stretch in between sets. So I wanna give a hack right now for the people that are consistent lifting, a guaranteed way to break through your training plateau that you potentially might have right now. So, and it's literally,

and this is one of my favorite things to help somebody who's already been lifting advanced lifter who comes to me and hires me to help them out. Do not change any of your exercise program, like whatever routine you're following, stick exactly to that. Literally manipulate your reps and your rest period. And pick, so go to your reps first.

Choose the rep range. We gave you a rep range where to follow in between. South set it up to as high as 30, I think 20 is fine, but very few people go even above that. Most people don't even go to 20. So somewhere in that five to 20 range, I always like them to go to the most extreme opposite of where you're at. So unless you fall right in the middle of the 12 to 15 rep range, then either direction is fine. But if you're somebody who tends to lift low reps all the time,

go to the opposite of the spectrum, go to the high rep range, like the 20 rep range. If you're somebody who tends to go more 20 rep range, go to the low rep range, so choose that. So choose a rep range that is vastly different than what you normally do. And then the same thing goes for rest periods. If you're somebody who tends to sit and get on your phone

and give yourself long power lifter type of rest rest periods where they're three minutes and sometimes beyond, cut it down to 30 seconds to one minute. If you're the busy body, never sits still, super sick circuit type training person who rarely ever rest longer than 30 seconds to a minute, go the other extreme and go three minutes. Do those two things. Don't change your exercises. Don't change anything about your work. Watch how your body rests, and stick to that for three to four weeks. I guarantee you breakthrough.

Now here's one more thing too, is that traditionally long rest periods are combined with low reps and heavy weight. And traditionally short rest periods are combined with high reps and lighter weight. And I know why, right? This makes sense, right? So if you're going low reps, heavy weight,

the goal is to lift as much as possible. So it makes sense to have long rest periods. And if you're going light with higher reps, maybe your goal is to get a good pump. And so the goal, so it makes sense to have shorter rest periods, because that also contributes to the pump. But is this a rule written in stone? Now, you could do high reps and have long rest periods.

You could do low reps and have short rest periods. I do this all the time. I've done this before with heavy squats where, and by the way, I can't go as heavy because I'm not resting as long, but I'm still training in the five rep range and I'll do 30 seconds in between sets or I'll do high reps and do like a four minute rest

in between sets. It's a wonderful combination. So it's not a written in stone rule. Because you do see that in workouts. You typically see the heavyweight, low reps with the lump. You can mix them up and it's totally fine. You get great results doing that. So there you have it.

Your sets, reps and what was the last rest periods. There you go. Those three things very important. Manipulate them. Everything you need to know about those. By the way, if you like our information and you want more information on exercise, nutrition, even information for personal trainers,

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