Rest pause

[butrybench555]

What exactly is rest pause training? what does it do to your muscles?

 

[R1balla]

its like a rested version of drop sets. you do your set, take about 12 breaths, then do the same weight again but lower reps.

 

[bla55]

Yep, as mentioned above.

It makes your muscle work harder in a smaller timeframe, which usually leads to less time spent at the gym and, from personal experience, a much harder workout than you regularly would with the standard 3x8, or whatever it may be.

Reason being - and this is my opinion - you are always working out until failure, so you don't give up on the 8th, or put less weight just in order to complete 8. You are always pushing yourself to the max, you are always improving and increasing your overall performance, it's like a "beat your best" every workout. You start with what your last personal best was, or more, and you motivate yourself to do better since you're always working out until failure.

It's a great approach if you ask me, it's been great, cut my gym time a lot shorter and I see much better results, will not be switching out anytmie soon.

 

[R1balla]

OP, that's a good question though. Various websites online have the tendency to over explain things like this so it's always good to get a brief description first then read up online for more info

 

[mattsams89]

What exactly is rest pause training? what does it do to your muscles?

We use something similar with our athletes called clustering. Especially when the load is high or we want to limit intensity, straight reps can rack the nervous system on more complex movements, so we insert a 20-30 second rest between reps or sometimes a double (rarer).

Basically, it allows you to recover a little, which allows you to maintain a higher level of effort across the set, and in your case, would allow you to move more total volume. I've used it a few times on overhead presses with good success.

I would somewhat limit its use, as it will affect overall volume/intensity and fatigue, but it's a useful tool when applied correctly.