[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.

[00:00:26] Welcome to episode 15 of Wits & Weights. Let's say you're a busy working professional perhaps in your forties with a family, a mortgage. And a high stress job, but you want to improve your health through lifting and nutrition. That's why you're listening to this podcast.

[00:00:50] The last thing you want is a one size fits all training program that has you lifting six days a week with 90 minute long sessions, something. So out of whack with your current lifestyle is not exactly sustainable. And it's a surefire way to bomb out within weeks. If not days. On this podcast, we focus on maximizing your time inside and outside the gym for a sustainable long-term approach.

[00:01:17] You can stick to consistently results only come with steady application over time. That is the first principle of this whole deal or else. The rest is irrelevant. Therefore you'll probably want a training program that has you in the gym, maybe three or four days. Of course, if you can swing more in that makes sense for you.

[00:01:37] Go for it for maybe an hour, not counting. Although we talked about the benefits of a home gym back in episode eight. Today, I want to cover how to maximize your lifting sessions regardless of where you train. So you can get the most out of your workout without it taking forever while also producing the results you want.

[00:01:57] In today's episode, we cover planning for success, staying focused, using smart programming, warmups, super sets and rest periods. All right. The first thing that I think about before even leaving your house for the gym is having a plan. Now we've talked in previous episodes about the specifics of planning, your training programming ahead of time for.

[00:02:25] The next day, the next week, the next month. But in general, what I'm getting at here is you don't want to just leave your house, go to the gym and work out without having a specific plan of what you're going to accomplish during that session. And ideally this is documented in a notebook or an app, and you've got everything laid out, such that you don't even have to think about it when you're in the gym.

[00:02:48] So that would be each movement you're going to accomplish. And within each. The number of sets reps, the specific weights, as well as the warm-up sets and even the rest periods. And some apps actually let you pre-program some or all of that, including automated timers for your rest periods, whatever makes it easier for you to be consistent and make sure that you go in and don't get distracted and get the work.

[00:03:14] The other thing I would suggest before leaving your house is to prepare substitute movements for your workout. Now, if there are things, you know, for sure you're going to be able to do, you know, your gym has plenty of power racks, plenty of barbells over certain machines that you want. And they're always available.

[00:03:31] Find. But if either you expect the gym, you're going to, to lack certain equipment and get your programming calls for, let's say a double cable crossover, and they only have a single cable machine, you know, with a single cable. Well, then you can't do that movement. So you have to come up with the substitute.

[00:03:51] Am I going to do a one-arm crossover? Am I going to switch to dumbbell flies? What am I going to do? Prepare that ahead of time. Also prepare for the fact that if the gym is busy, Occasionally have a lack of availability of certain machines that you have a substitute in place, just in case sort of your plan B like, okay, if I can't do this, I can do this instead.

[00:04:13] You don't want to just not do the movement and give up and move on, try to do something that is a good substitute. So those are two ways to make sure that when you get to the gym, you don't waste any. All right now you are at the gym ready to get the work done. And the next thing I want to talk about, which is probably the most important for a lot of folks and where we waste a ton of time, often unconsciously or subconsciously is avoiding distractions and just focusing on getting the work done.

[00:04:46] And there's a lot of things tied in with this. For example, during your rest periods, you might. Decide. You want to check out social media or watch a video or check your email. And before long you could be stretching your rest period out much longer than you intended. That's one way that you can waste time.

[00:05:06] And so going in with a rule that, Hey, I'm not going to browse social media. I'm not going to do any work. Anything I do is related to my workout. Like if I'm going to watch a video, it's going to be to help with my movement, or if I'm going to browse social media, it's because it has to do with. My training programming specifically, but I would suggest that you don't even need to do any of that stuff.

[00:05:29] Maybe listen to some music, if that helps you focus or in many, for some of us not listening to music and just having it nice and quiet is a way to focus, being efficient with your time while you're working. If you're doing other things like taking video. Okay. That's a big challenge. Make sure you've got your equipment set up ahead of time, whether you're putting your camera in a shoe or on a tripod, but things like editing and posting and all that can be done later.

[00:05:56] Don't waste time while you're in the gym. So that's avoiding distractions. From doing the work, but I want to talk about actually doing the work itself. A lot of folks go into a movement thinking, okay, I got to get the movement done. I'm going to just get under the bar, bang out the reps and I'm done. But what I want to suggest is that you have both an attentional focus and an intentional focus on the movement and the results.

[00:06:24] So what do I mean by this? Let's talk about the attentional focus. That is a focus on the outcome. So if you're going to do a set of five squats, you're focused on getting all five squats and you're going to get there regardless, right? I mean, in your mind mentally, you're saying I'm going to get the five squats.

[00:06:47] Now, as you're doing the squats, you're going to have certain cues that help you with the movement. Once you've gotten past the initial. Neuromuscular adaptation muscle memory learning the basic form phase, you know, in the first few weeks of learning. Hopefully, you've got the number of queues whittled down to maybe one or two cues each time you do the movement.

[00:07:10] So you're not thinking of every single little piece of the movement. And instead let's just get the squat done, but you might use a cue or two to do a proper. Um, I think we never perfect these movements. So there's always something you want to think about, but having both an intentional focus on the movement with a cue or two and a cue could be simple.

[00:07:32] If you're doing a, let's say an isolation movement, like a barbell curl, it could simply be every time you bring the rep up, you focus on squeezing the biceps and then going down slowly in the concentric or in the east centric. But you're also thinking. My target here is 10 reps, and I'm going to get to the 10 reps.

[00:07:52] I'm going to train hard when I think I'm close to failure. I'm probably not. I'm going to go for another rep, those kinds of mental games that we played at. Pushing through and getting the work done without of course going overboard without cheat reps, without, uh, pushing past failure, so to speak. But for newer and intermediate lifters, we generally don't train hard enough.

[00:08:15] So that kind of focus can help us train hard enough to get the result we're looking. Now a side tangent to this whole thing is being assertive with our movement. Basically being in control, owning the barbell, owning the dumbbells in such a way that we are not too relaxed. We don't have too much slack that we stayed.

[00:08:37] When we need to, that we keep a neutral spine. When we need to that we're going through the full range of motion and doing it at a reasonable tempo and all of these things. Again are things to think about initially, but eventually become a little bit more automatic. Getting your gym session done efficiently is partly helped by the fact that you are focusing on the.

[00:09:01] And being assertive about it and getting it done so that you don't get hurt, you don't get injured and you can get all the reps done. You're trying to get. Now, before I continue to talk about some techniques we can use in the session itself, let's just take a step back. If you find that the sessions are still longer than you can handle because of not just because of fatigue, but also because of your schedule and because of your commute.

[00:09:27] And now you're, you're in there for two hours, even though you might be going three days a week, they're just way too long. Well, then you can consider, should I go in an extra day or two? But with much shorter sessions. So instead of doing a full body, three or four full body workouts that might take an hour and a half, I'm going to do four or five split workouts, you know, push, pull legs or body part that are only say 45 minutes long.

[00:09:53] And depending on whether you're driving to a gym or doing it at home, that could factor in, you know, if you're at home, you don't have to commute. So you can do a higher frequency. You know, you can have more sessions because you don't have that fixed time of the. So think about that. And you may not quite know until you get into your lifting and maybe even a few months in when you get stronger and you realize you need longer rest periods and longer recovery, you might find that the sessions are too long or too short or too frequent or not frequent.

[00:10:26] And so always consider that as a possible way to tweak what you're doing so that you can fit in with your schedule to remain consistent. The other piece to this is the style of programming you're doing, could also impact the efficiency in the gym. For example, we talked about full body versus split, but also the movements that you're doing.

[00:10:47] So if you are focused on strength and you're going to do a lot of compound moves, Squat deadlift, press overhead, press. And you're going to be working with a high intensity, meaning a high weight on the bar. Then you're just by definition, going to require longer rest periods. And that is going to extend your session.

[00:11:05] Now you may have fewer movements and it may all even out, but let's say you're doing a bodybuilding or I should say power building program where you have compound movements combined with accessories. You could easily get to a situation where you just have too much. In terms of time where, you know, you might be doing five or six movements, but because of the rest periods during the compound lifts, even if the rest periods are shorter for the others, you're now extended into pushing an hour and a half, maybe even longer.

[00:11:35] So consider all of those, consider the split, consider full body versus. You know, compounds versus a conjugate style or power building, whatever it is, and just pick the one that you're going to be able to stick to, um, consider whether it's enjoyable, whether you're going to stick to it, whether it works for your schedule.

[00:11:51] All right. Now, back to the lifting session, I want to talk about. Warmups, and I can do an entire episode just about executing warmups, but what I want to talk about is first of all, do you need them? Um, and the answer is, it depends on how you define a warmup. So the, the old school or a classic warmup. Like that was done in CrossFit, for example, or you think of bodybuilders back in the day where you, you know, do 20 minutes on a bike and then he might do some stretching.

[00:12:23] And before you know, it you're half an hour in and you haven't even started to work out. That is not the type of warmup we need. We also know that the evidence shows potentially deleterious effects from warming up the muscles too much with stretching when you lift, uh, In colloquial terms, it kind of makes you too flexible if you will.

[00:12:43] And we actually want to be a little bit tighter and stronger when we get into that movement. So the there's a couple of types of warmups that are beneficial. The first type is one that literally warms you up. That is it raises your body temperature. It gets the blood flowing, gets your heart rate up. And that could be just a very short bout of cardio or a dynamic workout.

[00:13:04] So for me, that would be a couple minutes on an assault bike, and that's it. You know, I work out in the morning, it's cold here in new England, I'm over the garage. So it's even colder there. And I jumped on the bike a couple minutes, that's it? And it warms me up and I'm ready to go. And, and all of a sudden it feels 10 degrees warmer when I hit the Barbeau.

[00:13:23] You could do a dynamic workout and going to do some pushups, jumping jacks, whatever you want to do, really just, just to get you warmed up, but don't take too much time on it. Uh, don't tire yourself out. Now, the real warmup that I would suggest is warming up using the movements themselves. So, if you're doing compound lifts focused on strength, you're doing, let's say a squat is your first movement.

[00:13:47] Then you warm up with the squat. It's as simple as that, where you take, for example, let's start with a squat and let's say your average strength, and you're doing a set of five and 2 65. The way I would suggest warming up is start. An empty bar, especially on the squat. Maybe not as much for the other movements, but the squat.

[00:14:08] Do you have this, uh, complex movement that requires some muscle memory, and it's good to start with the empty bar to stretch out your elbows, stretch out your shoulders, getting get into that slightly awkward position and feel the range of motion, you know, for a set of five or maybe a couple sets of five.

[00:14:24] And then you start adding weight to the bar. And what you do is you do a certain amount of reps. You take a short rest. Uh, maybe very short, you add weight to the bar and you do fewer reps, add weight, do fewer reps. And so you're doing something like 5, 3, 2, 1 or 5, 4, 3, 2. Um, if you have a higher weight that you're going to get to, you might have to throw in some singles in there at incrementally higher weights until you hit your working set.

[00:14:52] So what does this look like at two 60? And the way I would do that is, you know, warm up with the empty bar, maybe a set of five, just get the field gets stretched out. Then I might jump right to 1 35, but you could jump to 95 and then 1 35, the key is try to use the big, the bigger. You know, start with the 40 fives, but if you need to use 20 fives, if the weight isn't fair, if the final target working weight, isn't that high, you're going to have to jump up with the 20 fives and the 40 fives, then 20 fives and 40 fives.

[00:15:23] So let's just keep it simple. You're going to put on the 40 fives and now you're at 1 35, do a set of five. You can put. Now the 20 fives and you're at 180 5, set a three, and then do you know, replace those with the 40 fives and nine to 25. Do a double. Now you could pretty much jump to 2 65 at this point.

[00:15:47] If you were, deadlifting say 4 0 5, you might just use 40 fives to jump up. You might do, you know, 1 30, 5 or five to 25 for. For for, uh, you might do then three 15 for a triple or even a double. Then you might go to 365 for a single, and then finally do you're working Senate for. So it doesn't have to be perfect.

[00:16:11] Just take reasonable jumps and do fewer reps for each jump. As you warm up the rest, doesn't have to be very long between them until till you get to very high weights. You know, if you're a powerlifter you're working in the higher strength range and you have to have some singles on the way. And then you might need a little more time between your warm-up sets.

[00:16:31] Uh, but that's it. And then you get to your working set. I take a little bit extra time, right before that working set. And then you do your normal working set with the full rest periods between each. Now, if you're doing accessory movements or isolation movements, you can probably just jump right into that movement potentially with the, the called four reps, just go right into the working set.

[00:16:59] If you're in, say the eight to 12 or higher rep range, you may not even need to warm up. Uh, it's kind of your call. If it's the first movement of the workout, you may need one warmup. Like halfway there to the final weight or maybe three quarters of the way toward the weight, you know, even if it's something like barbell curls, but you're working down in the say four to eight rep range.

[00:17:20] Yeah. You may want to put on two thirds of the weight. Hang on a set of five and then do the working. Wait. So in general, for isolation or accessory type movements, you could probably jump right in, uh, the bigger they are, the more compound they are, the more you're going to need to warm up. Like if you're doing a, let's say a close grip bench press for your triceps, that's a compound movement.

[00:17:43] That's very much like just a bench press and you should be warming up. Now here's the exception. If you just finished a movement, that's very similar. It uses a similar muscles as the next movement where you are warmed up. An example of that might be you just. A bunch of bench bench pressing. Now you're going to do shoulder pressing.

[00:18:04] You could, you can still do a little bit of a warmup, but you're, you're mostly warmed up. Or if you're going to go from an overhead press on the barbell and then to an incline shoulder, press a dumbbells, you're totally warmed up for that. You don't even need to do another warmup assuming you haven't rested for 20 weeks.

[00:18:21] So where I'm going with all of this is that you can save time by being intelligent about your warmups. Don't take 20 minutes doing a dynamic CrossFit style warmup, just warm yourself up with a little bit of cardio and then use the actual movements to warm you up. Don't warm up movements that are, you know, in the higher rep range, don't need them.

[00:18:42] You don't have to warm up movements that have already been warmed up because of similar movements before them. And these are all ways to save. Hey guys. I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you find it valuable, you would be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media. Just take a screenshot, share to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally thank you.

[00:19:06] And we can talk about what you found helpful in how I can improve again, an incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the. Now there's another technique to save time. It's more of a, maybe a bodybuilding approach, but the way we're going to discuss it is, is a smart way to use this, to save time, not a way to get certain muscle groups faster to fatigue, and that is super sets.

[00:19:33] So you may be familiar with a super set it's basically doing at least two different movements back to back. So let's say. Uh, bicep curls, and then hammer curls, both of which work, the bicep you do set of bicep curls. You know that let's say barbell curls, and then with very little rest at all, you go right into hammer curl.

[00:19:54] So you've fatigued the muscles. Now you're hitting them at a different angle. You kind of go back and forth. That's like a bodybuilding style approach. I'm not a huge advocate of that because I believe in sufficient rest periods and recovery, even when doing isolation movements to get the full amount of reps and really get the full muscular failure that we're looking for across the range of sets right across.

[00:20:18] You know, if you're trying to hit 10, getting 10 in, rather than just getting six or three in, because you're just so fatigued. So the super set approach we're going to talk about is the antagonist muscle approach, mainly for accessory or isolation movements. And that would be. If you're doing, let's say a bicep movement, you then super set it with a tricep movement.

[00:20:41] So it's the, the, the antagonist the opposite muscle, so that you're not really fatiguing one or the other in between the others set. And you're effectively getting two movements for one within that time period. Now, even doing that, I would suggest a short rest period. So if you were normally gonna rest three minutes, Between sets, you might rest say 45 seconds to a minute before you do this super set alternative and kind of back and forth.

[00:21:10] That's still going to save you a ton of time, but it's gonna give you a rest from the general fatigue you get from the movement, you know, not the specific muscle that's targeted, but the general fatigue. So that you can still get in your full sets. All right. I wouldn't suggest super setting big movements.

[00:21:26] I wouldn't do squat. And then, oh, it's my rest period. I'm going to do a full, heavy working set of deadlifts. Now I wouldn't do that. I would just focus on doing this for antagonist accessory movements. And that could save you a little bit of time. If you've got some power building or bodybuilding in there, uh, you might be able to save, let's say three or four minutes on a movement because you've combined it with another.

[00:21:52] All right. And finally, we get to rest periods and I saved this for last, because I think there's a lot of opportunity here to save time or sabotage ourselves either way. And I wanted to make sure it was the last thing you remembered before the podcast ends. So I think rest periods or something, there's a lot of misconceptions about a lot of misunderstanding and I've spent probably more time than I wanted to learning about reading about and thinking about this topic, because it is so important when it comes to recovery to getting your sets completed, to doing the work, to going to failure, you know, all these other concepts I grew up in Brazil.

[00:22:32] Um, the bodybuilding concepts, like rest, pause sets, super sets, et cetera. Uh, rest periods are kind of the glue that binds all of these, and it can have a big impact on your results, but also the time in the gym. So I think in general, for most people, rest periods need to be longer than you think. I know that's a very general statement, but I think a lot of.

[00:22:57] I think rest periods are just, you know, take a few breaths, wait 30 seconds. Do the next set. Now for some isolation, bodybuilding movements, there's a time and place for that. For example, there's something called rest pause sets or Mio sets where you do a set of, let's say eight to 12 and then you rest 30 seconds.

[00:23:17] And then you try to do as many as you can again, and it's, you're going to get half as many sets or half as many reps. You wait 30 seconds, do it again. You're, you're fatiguing yourself and not letting yourself recover. And so you're just pushing toward that upper limit of failure. Um, more and more quote, unquote efficiently, which does save you time.

[00:23:36] But there's a value to getting the full set of reps in, uh, as supported by the evidence supported by the literature. And it's why you don't want to just use rest pause sets for everything. So let's take a step back and talk about rescue. If we're talking about compound movements, the big compound movements, and if you're a newer lifter, I strongly suggest focusing on strength, focus in the lower rep range, higher intensity, you know, around sets of five with the compound lifts.

[00:24:05] I think it's efficient. I think it gives you a great stimulus. I think it really helps you develop and learn the movements before you start branching out into these accessories and bodybuilding style exercises. So for compound. When you're fairly new, they don't have to be extremely long. I would say around three to four minutes, you know, maybe two to five, if you want to stretch that out, could work for your rest periods between sets of five on squats, dead lifts, press bench press, but before long.

[00:24:39] And, and I mean, as little as two to three months, as you start to get stronger, you realize that the stimulus and the fatigue or. The weight is higher. They're harder to get the set's done. You're going to need extra time. So it generally starts to stretch up into more of the four to six, four to seven minute range.

[00:25:00] And of course, when you get really strong, you could be waiting 8, 9, 10 minutes or more between between sets, but let's focus on, you know, the average person, which is probably my listener. Is reasonably strong are getting they're working toward that between your squats, between your deadlifts. You want to give yourself more than enough time so that you can get the entire next set completed without the reason for you not completing it, being that you simply didn't rest enough.

[00:25:27] So we talk about all the things that are important. We talk about food, nutrition. We talk about sleep, uh, In this session itself, rest periods are probably the, the biggest factor in you failing a rep on the next set, all things equal, you know, assuming you're strong enough to get it done. If you fail a rep, it could very well be because you did not rest long enough.

[00:25:49] So think about that. And if you are finding that you're not making progress. If you're plateauing. It could be your rest periods, try longer rest periods and see what happens. You can't really rest too long. I mean, I say that with an asterisk. Of course, if you, if you wait 20 minutes and you totally cool down, I mean, that's ridiculous.

[00:26:08] And that's also going to just cost you hours and hours in the gym that you don't need to spend. What I mean is you don't, you know, you can't really go too long as in, if you wait seven or even eight minutes instead of five, you might find that that's just what you needed at this point in. Uh, trajectory, like let's say, you're squatting now you're getting up to 3 0 5, 3 15.

[00:26:31] And all of a sudden you get stuck. You may need to stretch out your rest periods. Rest periods can be shorter. However, for accessory movements and bodybuilding movements, that's for sure. So if you're doing something like a compound or compound ish, um, accessory like lying, tricep, extensions with an easy curl bar, you know, you might be able to rest two to three minutes or even four minutes.

[00:26:53] Uh, the point is wrestling with. To get the whole set done. It's better to rest a little longer than a little shorter is my opinion. Unless you were specifically trying to over fatigue the muscle with a special technique that requires shorter rest periods. Or if you're trying to train cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, and that sort of part of your programming, and you want to have a few sets of isolation movements.

[00:27:18] Bang, bang, bang, bang them out with very short rest periods and get your heart rate up. And it's more of a cardio workout. Fine, but that's a specific application that has nothing to do with developing strength or muscular size. It's more for in. Now here's a trick with rest periods. I'm telling you to make them longer than you think they need to be, but there's also a benefit to this.

[00:27:40] So if you're doing a strength-based full body workout, you probably have two or maybe three compound lifts in there. At least you can warm up the next movement during the rest periods for the current movement. It's perfectly fine. If you're going to squat and then deadlift, for example, you get your.

[00:27:58] Squats none. And yeah, it was hard. And your heart, rate's a little bit high. You're taking a breather. Um, you know, wait 30 seconds, maybe a minute, you still have a good four or five, six minutes left in your rest. Period. Go ahead and warm up your deadlift. You're going to be in a very lightweight, it's not going to be taxing at all.

[00:28:16] You're simply trying to get the, the movement, you know, burned into your brain. You're trying to get the blood flow to the right places. Get the right. Or I'm sorry. Get the warmup set done. Then you've got three, four or five more minutes of rest. You get back to your second set of squats of working at your working weight.

[00:28:35] Can you get that done? Yeah, it's really hard. It's really heavy. It should be should be tough. You get them done. All right. Again, now you go up a little bit higher weight on your deadlift warmup and you do your next warm-up set. Then finally you do your final set of squats, and then soon after doing another warmup set for deadlifts and before you know it now, Ready to hit your working set of dead lifts and without spending another 5, 6, 7 minutes just warming up.

[00:29:00] So that's your big technique to take advantage of rest periods while keeping the longer rest periods that you need and not feeling that you're just twiddling your. Now earlier in this episode, I talked about avoiding distractions and rest periods are where those distractions really rear their ugly head.

[00:29:16] You sit down on the bench, you pull out your phone, you start browsing. And before you know it it's been 12 minutes, 15 minutes. That's, that's where the rest period can get too long. And you get distracted. Maybe you start talking with people and you just cool down way too much or worse. And this happened to me.

[00:29:34] Uh, last year is I was deadlifting and I got distracted talking to someone, took a little bit too long, forgot to put my straps on for the next set. And I also didn't get tight. Like all of these things were a result of getting distressed. And that goes back to the attentional and the intentional focus.

[00:29:52] So what can you do during your rest period? You can just rest and listen to music. You can walk around. It's a great way to get extra steps in, or you can throw in your warm-up set for the next movement. Like we talked about. There's also other things you can do. You can go around and get your next movement set up.

[00:30:11] Even if you're not going to warm it up, you might be able to. The machine or the plates or what have you. Um, if you're at a home gym, you know, I like to plan ahead to the next movement or to move my stuff around. You know, you can't always do that in a commercial gym kind of hog space and hog equipment, but in a home gym can so pay attention to your rest periods.

[00:30:32] They're very important for recovery, but you can also use some techniques to save time during your rest periods without making them too. All right. That is my list of ideas to help you maximize your time during lifting sessions. All I ask is that you take a step back and consider your current approach to training.

[00:30:53] If you can incorporate better planning, use of downtime and rest periods, other approaches like warmups and super sets, you might experience more. But more time efficient workouts so that you can get back to all the other important and urgent things in your life. And if you have any other ideas to be more efficient, just send me an email at philip@witsandweights.com or DM me on Instagram.

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