Long rest periods between sets = bad?

[Fedorgasm]

I work from home and today I had a few minutes between meetings so I went and knocked out 2 sets before my meeting started. But then I couldn't do the 3rd set until an hour later.

I was thinking I could possibly do this all day. Just squeeze in a set when I have a spare minute. And over the course of the work day I'd geta nice workout in there.

The only downside is that I know you're supposed to only rest like 60 seconds or whatever between sets, and sometimes I'd be going an hour, maybe several hours, between sets if it's a busy day.

What are the downsides of these long rest periods?

 

[maximus__]

I work from home and today I had a few minutes between meetings so I went and knocked out 2 sets before my meeting started. But then I couldn't do the 3rd set until an hour later.

I was thinking I could possibly do this all day. Just squeeze in a set when I have a spare minute. And over the course of the work day I'd geta nice workout in there.

The only downside is that I know you're supposed to only rest like 60 seconds or whatever between sets, and sometimes I'd be going an hour, maybe several hours, between sets if it's a busy day.

What are the downsides of these long rest periods?

It's just greasing the groove or strength practice.

Get Stronger By Greasing the Groove

To become an all-around stronger man, you have to practice strength.

www.artofmanliness.com

It's great for strength but not for hypertrophy or systemic adaptions. Usually it gets recommended for pullups.

Pavel Tsatsouline talks about it pretty regularly and covers it pretty well in this podcast.
from 40-53 mins.

Personally the main problem I found is I lost the ability to go hard and turn around with shorter rest periods, because I got used to the long recovery. My all out sets or reps were great, but my ability to do repeated sets with minimal recovery also needed to be trained.

 

[Fedorgasm]

It's just greasing the groove or strength practice.

Get Stronger By Greasing the Groove

To become an all-around stronger man, you have to practice strength.

www.artofmanliness.com

It's great for strength but not for hypertrophy or systemic adaptions. Usually it gets recommended for pullups.

Pavel Tsatsouline talks about it pretty regularly and covers it pretty well in this podcast.
from 40-53 mins.

Personally the main problem I found is I lost the ability to go hard and turn around with shorter rest periods, because I got used to the long recovery. My all out sets or reps were great, but my ability to do repeated sets with minimal recovery also needed to be trained.

Awesome thank you. I'll probably stop then because while strength is awesome I'm starting to look like shit, so I need dat hypertrophy!

 

[maximus__]

Awesome thank you. I'll probably stop then because while strength is awesome I'm starting to look like shit, so I need dat hypertrophy!

Yeah usually people just do it with a single exercise to improve like pullups or something that requires a bit of skill like pistols or muscle ups. Then you just spread out 5-10 sets through the day do sub max sets. You get to practice whilst getting stronger with a minimal impact to recovery. You could still do your normal training without too much of a major impact by just adjusting other movements for a period.

 

[Trabaho]

well you are getting cold. Like your body gets cold. However it´s not bad per se. Like you benefit. Details are detials. YOu are getting sets and work in.

 

[NoSmilez]

Long rest is fine. Some people take it too far. I seen powerlifters do 2 sets in like 30 mins. They just play with their phone or eat candy. I don't think it matters past 5-10 minutes. Anything more than 5 is really obnoxious in a commercial gym setting.

 

[Oblivian]

My rest periods will differ drastically depending on where I'm lifting at or what I'm doing. This is a basic outline:

Lifting at home: Generally long rest periods with heavy weight. Workout can take up to an hour and a half. The exception is if I'm working up to something near failure which I'd never do at the Y. I've never failed a rep there.

Lifting at YMCA: Always working up to a top set with relatively short rest period on main lift. Lots of machine assistance with short rest period. Rarely there an hour.

Pullups/pushups/other assistance at home: This can vary with doing exactly what you said. I may be doing chores, working from home, or something else and do sets over a 3 hour period. I keep it very submaximal and the volume just adds up. On the flip side, I'm sometimes just squeezing in a workout within 20 minutes while getting ready to go to a kid's game and do higher rep sets with short rest.

 

[gspieler]

Fine for greasing the groove on lower intensity stuff, eg pushups, chins, bw squats. Bad for a anything really intense, or do faith a barbell.

 

[Thepaintbucket]

The only downside is time optimization. Having more time to recover is never a bad thing. The more intensive your workout is, the more time you need to recover. If I'm doing like 5> reps or less I'm going to be sitting there until I feel strong enough to do another five reps.

 

[period]

Shorter rest periods mean that fatigue is accumulated more, longer rest periods allow for more complete rest in between. Shorter rest periods give a stronger pump, more strength-endurance as a side-effect, and sometimes an automatically more efficent movement pattern (you will never get any good at manual labour for example if you never work to the point of fatigue; but then again, in that case, the idea is to distribute fatigue all over the body), while longer rests allow for more max-strength work and / or a more conscious focus on technique.

You could argue that you have four variables in training: intensity (load), volume (load x reps), frequency and density (work per time). Playing around with these factors can be key for continued progress and breaking plateaus, although in the end the training goals and the individual capacity will determine what bandwith of approaches makes most sense in the given case.

 

[Deaths Head]

I work from home and today I had a few minutes between meetings so I went and knocked out 2 sets before my meeting started. But then I couldn't do the 3rd set until an hour later.

I was thinking I could possibly do this all day. Just squeeze in a set when I have a spare minute. And over the course of the work day I'd geta nice workout in there.

The only downside is that I know you're supposed to only rest like 60 seconds or whatever between sets, and sometimes I'd be going an hour, maybe several hours, between sets if it's a busy day.

What are the downsides of these long rest periods?

Do long rest periods on strength days I always do 5 minutes bc your not competing with anyone but yourself sometimes I take 10 minute’s depending if I’m drinking or not to knumb the pain but you always go by feel …

 

[DEVILsSON]

It's perfectly valid and has been used by some strongmen going back decades. Paul Anderson was a proponent of that for his heavy squat workouts. He would rest 30-60 minutes per heavy set and do them over many hours.

There's also greasing the groove approach for certain exercises which involves doing high daily volume of submaximal lifts. It was popularized by Pavel Tsatsouline.

I have rested 30-60 min between heaviest sets or before moving to other exercises. It depends on what your goals are.

 

[Kforcer]

I work from home and today I had a few minutes between meetings so I went and knocked out 2 sets before my meeting started. But then I couldn't do the 3rd set until an hour later.

I was thinking I could possibly do this all day. Just squeeze in a set when I have a spare minute. And over the course of the work day I'd geta nice workout in there.

The only downside is that I know you're supposed to only rest like 60 seconds or whatever between sets, and sometimes I'd be going an hour, maybe several hours, between sets if it's a busy day.

What are the downsides of these long rest periods?

I think it all depends on what your goal is for that specific workout. High demand exercises where a certain level of performance is necessary might necessitate a certain level of rest period. I think if fatiguing the muscle and getting a "good workout" and breaking down the muscles is paramount, then you rest less. Sometimes it is a mixture of things. Sometimes the exercise or movement is demanding enough in and of itself that the performance of it results in a "good workout" and creates a sufficient degree of muscle fatigue, IMO. Sometimes not.

Sometimes, I've mixed in high demand exercises/movements that demanded longer rests with a period where I think did different things with minimal rest to create the fatigue and the "workout" portion of the session.

I know for me, it also varies depending on the workout, whether performance and form are paramount, or whether engaging with the pace and fatigue is more so my goal.

I also think that, most of all, in terms of muscle memory and muscle growth and all that, Aristotle's wisdom shines through: 'The perfect is the enemy of the good.'