Workouts: Making the Most of Every Minute

Strength training is time consuming. Warm up. Cool down. Rest between sets. By the time you’ve done all that, you’ve no time left to do the lifting. So how much of a workout, really, should be devoted to not working out? The Washington Post’s Moving Crew tells us that a recent study appearing in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research found that those who rested three to five minutes between sets were able to lift 30 to 32 percent more on their second set than were people who rested one minute, and that five minutes’ rest did not yield a statistically significant gain over three minutes. OK. Now that we’ve got that down to the minumum, we just have to figure out what to do with those three minutes. The Crew reminds us that we have many muscles to work on, and that “resting” means resting muscle sets, not necessarily your entire body. So get busy.