How many times have you seen this happen in the gym:
A big, burly, meathead of a man lays down to grunt out a couple reps of heavy benches presses where the bar bounces off of his chest like a basketball while his ass leaps off of the bench with his lower back resembling the Arc de Triomphe.
Then he racks the weight and goes and grabs a swig of water or chugs a vat of protein.
A couple minutes pass and now he’s watching some highlights on Sports Center with a few of his meathead buddies.
A couple more minutes pass and now he’s molesting some good-looking cardio queen with his eyes.
Finally, five to seven minutes after he completed his last rep on the bench press, he’s ready start his next set.
More likely than not, this guy will take several hours to complete his workout at this pace. Clearly, this is not the most efficient way to exercise. Now, if your goal is maximum strength and power, then three to five minute complete recovery periods have their place.
But chances are, if you’re like most of the general population, you couldn't care less about how much you can bench or squat and are more focused on having the lean, muscular build of a Men’s or Women’s Health model.
A big, burly, meathead of a man lays down to grunt out a couple reps of heavy benches presses where the bar bounces off of his chest like a basketball while his ass leaps off of the bench with his lower back resembling the Arc de Triomphe.
Then he racks the weight and goes and grabs a swig of water or chugs a vat of protein.
A couple minutes pass and now he’s watching some highlights on Sports Center with a few of his meathead buddies.
A couple more minutes pass and now he’s molesting some good-looking cardio queen with his eyes.
Finally, five to seven minutes after he completed his last rep on the bench press, he’s ready start his next set.
More likely than not, this guy will take several hours to complete his workout at this pace. Clearly, this is not the most efficient way to exercise. Now, if your goal is maximum strength and power, then three to five minute complete recovery periods have their place.
But chances are, if you’re like most of the general population, you couldn't care less about how much you can bench or squat and are more focused on having the lean, muscular build of a Men’s or Women’s Health model.
In
other words, most people can afford to lose some fat and gain some
muscle and the key to doing so is to maximize training density. Density
describes the amount of work completed per unit of time. Density also
happens to be the biggest primer for fat loss because the more work you
can complete in the same amount of time or less the leaner and more
muscular you will be.
How do we accomplish this? We do so by reducing our rest periods between exercises. According to the NSCA, shorter rest periods lasting 30-60 seconds or less resulted in the greatest growth hormone response. Growth hormone is one of the most powerful fat-burning and muscle-building hormones in your body.
Look no further than the world famous Tabata Study for the fat-burning, metabolic-boosting benefits of high-intensity work periods combined with short rest periods. In this groundbreaking cycling study, researchers discovered that only four minutes of a 20-10 interval protocol (20 seconds of maximum effort followed by 10 seconds of rest) provided greater fat loss and conditioning than 60 minutes of steady state cardio.
Now one of the problems with this study is that in the real world most people aren’t able to perform multiple bouts of max effort for the same exercise with short rest periods (in fact, most of the elite cyclists in the study couldn’t complete all four minutes of the 20-10 protocol because it was too intense).
However, by employing a circuit training format where you perform alternating sets of non-competitive exercises, we can maintain the high-intensity work periods in conjunction with the short rest periods as in the Tabata study.
Furthermore, I have personally found this 2:1 negative work to rest ratio (in this case of Tabatas, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off) to be unreal for rapidly improving fat loss and fitness for my clients and for my own personal workouts.
THE FIX: Employ short rest periods of 30-60 seconds or less between exercises in order to maximize training density and the growth hormone response from exercise for maximum fat loss and metabolic acceleration.
How do we accomplish this? We do so by reducing our rest periods between exercises. According to the NSCA, shorter rest periods lasting 30-60 seconds or less resulted in the greatest growth hormone response. Growth hormone is one of the most powerful fat-burning and muscle-building hormones in your body.
Look no further than the world famous Tabata Study for the fat-burning, metabolic-boosting benefits of high-intensity work periods combined with short rest periods. In this groundbreaking cycling study, researchers discovered that only four minutes of a 20-10 interval protocol (20 seconds of maximum effort followed by 10 seconds of rest) provided greater fat loss and conditioning than 60 minutes of steady state cardio.
Now one of the problems with this study is that in the real world most people aren’t able to perform multiple bouts of max effort for the same exercise with short rest periods (in fact, most of the elite cyclists in the study couldn’t complete all four minutes of the 20-10 protocol because it was too intense).
However, by employing a circuit training format where you perform alternating sets of non-competitive exercises, we can maintain the high-intensity work periods in conjunction with the short rest periods as in the Tabata study.
Furthermore, I have personally found this 2:1 negative work to rest ratio (in this case of Tabatas, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off) to be unreal for rapidly improving fat loss and fitness for my clients and for my own personal workouts.
THE FIX: Employ short rest periods of 30-60 seconds or less between exercises in order to maximize training density and the growth hormone response from exercise for maximum fat loss and metabolic acceleration.
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