Why is it important?

If you don’t get enough rest, you won’t see any results – no matter what your goal. Fat loss and increases in strength, muscle mass or muscular endurance all occur outside the gym, while your body recovers and adapts. Lack of rest may lead to overtraining – signs of which include a feeling of general fatigue, aching, depression, and decreased performance. Incorporating rest days also helps maintain a better balance between home, work and the gym.

How much recovery do I need?

Recovery for bulking up 5-7 days

It takes up to 7 days for muscles to fully recover and add size. Training a muscle group prior to this is likely to do more harm than good. You have fully recovered 48 hours after any soreness has gone. So, for example, if you train your biceps on Monday, they’ll ache Tuesday and Wednesday (compensation), and you should rest Thursday and Friday to allow growth (super compensation). You can train other muscle groups while one group recovers, but should always leave at least five days between training the same muscle or muscle group.

King tip Should you experience the negative effects of overtraining, take a week or two off. Your body will repair itself and bounce back strong. Make sure you change your program before resuming.

Recovery for building strength and power 2-3 days between the same exercise movements

Strength and power gains are dependent on the efficiency of the neural pathways which control the relevant movement pattern. The law of specificity requires the repetition of the desired movement pattern in order for it to develop. For example, if you want to be able to bench press more weight, you must practice the exercise over and over again to reinforce the neural pathways responsible for maximal muscle contractions. Two to three days is sufficient rest and will allow your nervous system to fully recover.

King tip When recovering, partial variations of exercise movements can be performed. For example, perform a snatch from thigh level rather than the floor.

Recovery for muscular endurance One day or ‘active recovery’

Endurance exercise depletes phosphocreatine and glycogen stores in the muscles. It takes 24-48 hours for these to fully restore. If after 24 hours you feel muscular soreness, have a rest day or do some active recovery (low to medium intensity cardiovascular exercise at 50-70% maximum effort). Ensure that through a seven day cycle you have a minimum of 48 hours off from any form of training.

Recovery for reducing body fat Two days between resistance sessions; one day or active recovery after HIIT

Ensure you take 48 hours off between resistance training sessions. This time can be filled alternatively with high intensity interval training (HIIT) or low intensity longer duration cardiovascular exercise in order to maximise fat burning. HIIT should be followed by a rest day or active recovery. Do no training at all for a minimum of 48 hours a week.

Quick breather or long break? PT James King shows you how to optimise rest periods for every training goal

 What is it? Rest refers to the time you allow for your body to recover between sets during a workout.

Why is it important? A firm understanding of the science of rest periods will ensure you maximise gains while minimising your risk of injury and/or burnout. How long you rest is a crucial and often overlooked facet of training: the amount you rest between sets should directly correlate to your training goals and level of conditioning.

How can I apply this?

Rest to increase strength 3-5 minutes

Watch pro weightlifters, sprinters and any savvy trainees looking to increase strength and explosive power in the gym and you’ll note they spend far more time resting than lifting. That’s because the energy used by the body to generate force in strength training sessions (low reps; high sets) comes from your ATP-PC system, which utilises the phosphagens in your muscle tissue to produce energy very fast without the presence of oxygen. Your store of these phosphagens is very small and only lasts around 15 seconds; it takes at least three minutes rest to become fully replenished. Due to the high number of sets required to reinforce the neural pathways that allow for maximal strength gains, it is therefore paramount that enough recovery between sets is taken to allow completion of the target sets and reps. Full recovery allows you to bring about the greatest muscular force possible for each set and maximise gains.

King tip: Never rest for any longer than five minutes. Your body temperature will drop, inhibiting performance and increasing your risk of injury.

Rest to bulk-up 45 to 90 seconds

Training correctly to maximise muscle gains (6-12 reps; 3-4 sets) uses energy from your ATP-PC system and your glycolytic system (carbs), with a little energy coming from your aerobic system (fats). Research has found deploying short rest periods best stimulates the production of human growth hormone. The key source of muscle gains, HGH secretion triggers the production of new body tissue by converting fat into muscle mass.

King tip: Note that if you’re coming back from a period off training due to injury, or general laziness, you should start with a longer rest period between sets and gradually bring it down to the optimum level as you approach your peak physical condition.

Rest to build endurance 1:1

To best hone marathon muscles, simply get your ratio right: spend exactly the same amount of time resting as it took you to complete the previous set. This creates high lactate levels in your exercising muscles, forcing your body to enhance its efficiency in buffering the accumulating lactate, and thus improving your body’s ability to sustain muscular contractions over a long period.

King tip: If you’re a beginner, take an extra 30-60 seconds rest after each set and decrease this slowly as you become fitter.

Rest to reduce body fat None

That’s right. None. Circuit workouts are key to blitzing fat in the gym. As soon as you finish your final rep of a set, move on to the next exercise and power through it. Alternating between upper and lower muscle groups will ensure fatigue doesn’t end your workout prematurely. This approach derives energy from the glycolytic and aerobic energy systems, burning carbs and fats while creating a strong afterburn and moderate gains in strength and mass. Another benefit of this approach is that it is time efficient and allows more scope for extra High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) sessions – another key weapon in your battle against blubber.

King tip :Weight loss hit a brick wall? Switch rest times for a week every 4-8 weeks to keep your body guessing and eliminate plateaus.

The first number is the initial phase of the lift – be it concentric (lifting) or eccentric (lowering). The second is the point of stretch or contraction (often where there is a pause). The third is the concentric (lifting) or eccentric (lowering) phase, and the final number is the stretch or contraction at the top or bottom of the movement.

To perform a dumb-bell curl using a 2/0/4/0 tempo, you take two seconds for the concentric phase (lifting), no pause at the top of the exercise, four seconds on the eccentric phase (lowering), and no pause at the bottom point of the exercise.

Why is it important?

The rep tempo you adopt has a profound effect on how your muscles adapt to training. Your body has mechanoreceptors in joints, ligaments, tendons and muscles, and these monitor your intensity and speed of motion when working out. The force of muscle contraction is not as important as the rate of force production. In other words, choosing the right tempo is even more vital than choosing the right load.

How can I apply this?

Tempo to build strength If your aim is to increase sheer power and strength, employ a fast tempo, such as 1/0/2/0 – where the first phase is concentric (lifting). This takes advantage of the ‘stretch reflex’ – the natural tendency of muscles and connective tissue to spring back to a shortened state after being stretched. When there is no pause between fast eccentric and concentric phases, body adaptations are predominantly at the neuromuscular level – that is, within connective tissue, as opposed to muscle. If you’re using a heavy weight, it may of course move slowly, but you should always aim to shift it explosively if strength gains are your primary goal.

Tempo to bulk up To increase muscle size, focus on a slower lifting tempo – typically 2/0/4/1. This targets growth-prone type II muscle fibres and limits the stretch-reflex component of the lift. The long eccentric phase causes a high amount of microscopic tears in your muscle fibres, which then increase in mass – provided they are allowed appropriate rest and recovery. The one-second pause at the bottom point of the move allows your connective tissues to lengthen and relax: the stretch-reflex is lost and the majority of adaptation thus occurs within your muscles

Tempo to reduce body fat The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that a tempo of 3/1/1/0 (where the first phase is lowering) significantly increased resting energy expenditure (the amount of fat your body burns post-workout) for up to 72 hours after exercise in both trained and untrained individuals. The slow eccentric phase increases the tension on the muscle which then demands more energy (fat stores) in order to repair. Lifting explosively, meanwhile, promotes strength gains which will enable you to lift heavier as the weeks go by.

What is it?
A set is a group of repetitions followed by a rest period before another set is performed, or you move onto another exercise. The idea is to use a weight that will fatigue the muscle or muscle group by the end of the set.

Why is it important?
Getting your sets wrong can easily lead to overtraining. When the volume of training you undertake exceeds your body’s capacity to recover, you cease making progress – and can even begin to lose strength and fitness. Your aim should be to perform the fewest sets and exercises necessary to reach your objectives. This will save you time, increase your workout intensity and reduce your risk of injury or overtraining.

How many sets should you do?
Your first set training any muscle group should be a warm-up set. Do 10-15 reps with a weight around 50% of the maximum you can lift in one repetition. This will mobilise your joints and stimulate blood flow to your muscles.

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1. Military press
The military press is a guaranteed bulking banker and should be a mandatory exercise for anyone serious about weightlifting. “This is the ultimate compound pressing exercise for your shoulders,” says King.

Set the bar up in a power rack or squat rack so you don’t have to clean the weight up to your shoulders to start the exercise. Your grip should be just wider than shoulder width. Starting with the weight resting on your upper-chest and shoulders, press the bar up in front of your face, extending the elbows just before they lock out. Return the weight under control to your upper-chest to complete the rep. “Do not bounce, use your legs, or use your hips to get the weight up, as this would be a push-press,” says King. “We want shoulders only.”

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The stress and tension that your muscle undergoes in this battle results in microscopic tears in the muscle which, given the correct amounts of rest and nutrition, repair and grow back bigger and stronger. The more tension you can place on the muscle, the bigger and stronger your muscles will grow back.

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Gradient workout
1. Walk for two minutes at 5kph to warm up.
2. Now set the treadmill to a speed you could jog comfortably at for 20 minutes but only jog for two minutes.
3. When the two minutes is up, keep the speed the same, but every 30 seconds increase the gradient by 1%.
4. Continue this until you can no longer complete the 30 second period at your current speed.
5. When you have reached your maximum incline, reduce to zero gradient and jog at your 20-minute pace for two minutes, followed by a further two minutes walking at 5kph to cool down.

Tip: If you are able to bring the treadmill to its maximum incline your base speed is too low, so bring it up next time. Alternatively, if you fail to make the 10% mark, drop your speed a little next time.

Bleep test workout
This workout simulates the dreaded multi-stage fitness test – more commonly known as the “bleep test”. To start, warm up by walking for two minutes at 5kph.

1. Once again, set the treadmill to a speed you could jog comfortably at for 20 minutes but only jog two minutes.
2. Increase the speed by 1kph every thirty seconds until you can no longer keep up the pace.
3. When you can no longer match the speed increase, reduce it to 5kph for 1-3mins recovery.
4. Once recovery is up, start the next set. Complete between two and five sets, depending on fitness, time and intensity.
5. When you have completed all your sets, initiate cool down by reducing speed to your starting pace and jog at your 20-minute pace for two minutes, followed by a further two minutes walking at 5kph.

Tip: Vary recovery times weekly to help boost metabolism even further. Always aim to go faster and faster.

As featured on Mens Health Online.

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