What are You Doing Between Sets?

You just completed a set, what do you do?

A)Start the next set, right away

B)Stare off into space

C)Text all your friends back

D)Talk to the person beside you

E)None of the above

If you answered E, you are correct. After completing a weight lifting set, the average person will sit down, look at their phone and relax. Looking at your phone or chit chatting about last night’s game is not the best thing to do between sets.

What should you do between sets?

Instead of sitting back and staring into space, you should be doing something productive between sets. If you are staying focused at the gym you will put full effort into your workout.

Grab a Foam Roller!

One thing you can do between sets is some soft tissue work. Sometimes your connective tissue can start to hurt after a workout. A foam roller can help perform some soft tissue work, allowing you to reduce pain in your connective tissue after a workout. Try stretching out each body part your set just focused on for one minute after each set.

Grab a drink and take a walk.

As you know it’s important to stay hydrated during your workout. However, you should walk between sets to stay loose. Even though stretching is very important, maybe you’re sick of stretching or that area of the gym is packed. Grab your water bottle and take a walk around the gym this will help your muscles stay loose.

How long should you rest between sets?

Now that you know a few things to do between your sets. How long should you rest? Honestly, this depends on what your goals are. You should consider three factors, to determine your rest time between sets.

First, consider your primary goal. Are you planning on building muscle, increasing strength or losing weight? Let’s just say you are planning on increasing strength. In this case, you will need to rest longer between sets. Your muscles need approximately 5 minutes to recover after you lift your max weight to prevent fatigue.

The next factor you need to consider is what that exercise is doing to your body. Let’s just say you were on the stair stepper for a half hour. It would be a good idea to go stretch your legs out for 5 minutes each leg.

The last factor to consider is what rep range you are using for an exercise. The more reps you are doing per exercise, the longer rest you’ll want.

In Conclusion

We know long rest times are boring, however, there is no way around them. Resting between sets is important and will reduce the risk of injury. Now that you know you should stretch between sets or take a walk, hopefully, these tips speed the rest time up.