It's so easy to get bogged down in the minutia of working out that you lose site of what you're not doing, quite literally the times when you're doing nothing, or more specifically; the timing of doing nothing.
The truth is, exactly the same workout on paper can produce drastically different results and tap into entirely different energy systems very easily. Just by paying attention (or indeed not paying attention) to your rest periods, you can take an amazingly well programmed, hardcore, burner of a workout and turn it into something your Mum would be advised to do by a newly qualified instructor who's previous fitness experience was Sunday (pub) league football and that one time he won the sack race at sports day. (No offence to your mum. All offence to grossly under qualified fitness professionals.)
Timing rest periods is probably the single most overlooked facet of working out. Which is criminal, as it's critical.
If you religiously hit the start button on a stopwatch between your sets, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about; you walk to the fountain, change your weights, answer various questions about your beard and before you know it 2-3 minutes have passed on the clock, your muscles are fully refreshed and you're ready to rock. If you're NOT timing however, those 3 minutes can very easily become 6 or 7. That's a very different type of workout, and unless you're lifting near your max or going for big PB's a much easier and less effective one.
I more often than not train with little to no equipment, however the G-Shock never leaves my wrist (your Rolex wouldn't last a day around here.)
A simple practical example- 10 press ups, easy stuff right? 10 sets of 10 press ups? Barely even a warmup for most of us, a bit boring even. If you auto-regulate and leave your rest periods up to instinct, you'll probably wait 30-60secs between the first few sets and drift out towards the two minute mark towards sets 7 or 8, maybe you'll keep below that; it's fairly easy stuff. Right? Now let's bring the watch into the equation...
If you follow my workouts on Instagram you'll know I'm a big fan of doing work 'every minute on the minute' or 'EMOM', performing my prescribed reps every time the clock ticks over to a new minute. This way your rest periods aren't standardised, the faster you perform your set the longer you'll have to rest, the slower you go... Let's just say I've had some workouts where initially I felt the rest was too long, but by minute 10 or 20 I'm barely finishing my sets in time to go again. This is what we mean when we say 'this one really catches up with you' it sucks, it will burn your lungs, you will sweat and you will go to places you wouldn't if you were to set your own pace, 'naturally'.
Let's apply this to our press ups; ten reps on the minute every minute for ten minutes. A much more streamlined warm up, that will fatigue and stimulate your chest, shoulders and triceps as well as bringing your heart rate up. Spend the remainder of every minute doing some medium intensity skipping, keeping your eye on the clock and you've got a pretty sound interval session that will probably burn in excess of 200 calories in ten minutes. Take the ten minutes out to 30 and you've got a fairly effective pressing workout. Take it out to a HUNDRED minutes and suddenly those humble 10 press ups you scoffed at earlier are pushing you to your absolute limits.
This is what they refer to as a 'Single Movement Mind Fuck' at Gym Jones. Trust me, the name is apt.
Seriously, take any exercise and weight you can do for a tough ten or twenty, half the reps and perform them 'EMOM', it's no joke. This is one of cornerstones of The Nomad Way as it allows you to perfectly streamline and plan for an arse kicking, fibre screaming workout in less time than most people spend warming up.
On the other side of the intensity spectrum, timing longer rest periods is the only way to keep all of the variables in check, if you're lifting in the low reps (below five) it's easy to get overexcited going to new records and miss because you didn't rest long enough. As a good rule of thumb, if you're getting close to maxing out give yourself a solid 3 minutes between your heavier sets, if you have the time. Conversely if you have a good hour in the gym and you're training for hypertrophy, 60-90 seconds is perfect to ensure you're rested enough to make the next set a good one but short enough that you'll have to tap in to muscle fibres that weren't properly stimulated on previous sets.
To wrap up, it's a pretty simple tool that EVERYBODY should be utilising in their arsenal. Try some EMOM's or just start ensuring you're not hanging around longer than 60 seconds between your sets and let me know how you get on.
I guarantee you'll notice the difference from word one.
Have you dug that old Casio out yet? Get on it peeps!
AT
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