musclegaintruth.us/articles

Some guy in the gym finishes a hard set of barbell squats and re-racks the weight. He feels really tired and he takes a big swig from his water bottle. He looks down at his watch and presses the start button to begin counting down backwards from 2 minutes.

Somebody told him that 2 minutes is the ideal rest time between sets in the gym, and he wants to get it exact. Every time the watch beeps, he’ll be back in the squat rack to perform another set. He stands up tall and paces around trying to catch his breath in preparation for his next battle.

Time is up. His still feel weak and his heart is still beating a lot, he doesn’t feel completely ok, but the watch beeped and that means his has to go back and perform another set, it doesn’t matter how he feels.

He unracks the weight and squats down. His legs still burn and he wishes that he could have had more time to prepare for this set. He puts forth a mediocre effort, re-racks the bar, and sets his watch for another 2 minutes. Bobby, just like a ton of other aspiring lifters in the gym, is making a deadly, critical mistake.

By having a set rest interval between sets, he is forcing his body to train at an effort level that is far less than his maximum potential and is severely sacrificing the amount of muscle growth he can ultimately stimulate because of this.

Muscles grow because of an adaptive response to stress. You lift X amount of weight for Y number of reps, and your body adapts to this level of stress. In order to see continual gains in muscle size, you must continually force X and Y to higher and higher levels.

What you have to do then is to lift as much weight as you can again, and again, and again.

So, every time you are going to start a new set you have to do it when you are at your maximum. If you don’t do it so, you sacrifice the amount of muscle you can build. In other words, give your body enough rest between sets in order to achieve the best results.

You should only begin your next set when you feel that you can perform it with 100% of your strength potential. A stopwatch cannot tell you when that time has arrived; only you can by listening to your body and relying on your own instincts.

The time between sets cannot be always the same. It will depend on the type of exercise you are performing. Some of them will tax the body much more heavily than others and obviously will take more time to your body to return to the ideal state.

Stop wasting your time, effort and money on B.S. “Miracle Programs” that don’t deliver results! Learn the honest truth revealed by a real Body Building expert and at last start noticing the gains you want. Visit us if you want to read more Fitness Articles