Should I rest longer make more gains?

How long should I rest between sets?

Well, if you’re in Built By Annie (BBA), you know, because I always tell you. But for those of you not in my program, here’s some edu-muh-cation for ya. We’re getting into the science behind it. Mainly just SWIPE AND READ 👉🏽

As for my answer….

IT DEPENDS. We can look and the science and say: If your goal is strength and hypertrophy, stick to 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Lower end (30-90 seconds) for hypertrophy, higher end (2+ min) for strength. For shorter strength sets (3-5 reps) you’re mainly depending on your phosphagen system for powering your muscles (hello ATP + PC). Re-synthesis of ATP takes 3-5 minutes. From 30 sec to 2 minutes you transition to predominantly using your glycolytic system. Yay muscle glycogen. Yay CARBS.

Your goal in using this system for hypertrophy is to DEPLETE IT. Not to recover. This is why we use a shorter rest period! Now, this is NOT black and white. Like muscle fibers, your body is not using ONE energy system at a time or one muscle fiber at a time. But certain systems and fibers are used more predominately at different times, intensities and so on.

My guess is that you’re:

1. Not using enough weight.

2. Not resting long enough between sets.

Ultimately do whatever gets you the best individual results. But we can use these guidelines as a starter.

Makes sense? Makes sense.

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