Continuous Sets or More Rest For Muscle Building Purposes?
In my last article on this matter, titled “Are Continuous Sets Better For Muscle Building?”, I raised the issue of two different angles of approaching how to perform sets within a specific workout session aimed at building muscle mass naturally.
Basically, some will rather stick to a specific amount of time to give themselves between sets, for example, 1 minute or 30 seconds, which will cause them to have to lower the amount of weight being lifted, yet you get the sets down in a faster amount of time. The other side of the coin would be to perform a set and then take however long a rest is needed to then be able to lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps as the sets before. This will allow the weight trainer to lift more weight, yet it will take him longer to complete the same amount of sets as the first technique.
Now, I’m raising the question here looking from the perspective of someone wanting to gain and build more muscle weight, NOT pure strength. So, don’t let the fact that taking more rest between sets allows you to use more weight per set. Sure, that may be good if what we are looking to do is to simply lift more weight. But that’s not the focus here. The one and only goal being presented in this article is to actually put on visible size, regardless if we get stronger or not.
Now, on the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily mean either that taking shorter rests is the better of the two options for muscle building purposes.
So, which of the two techniques for weight lifting is superior?
Well, this is where paying attention to what is happening INSIDE of your muscles is more important than what is happening outside of the muscle. To clarify my point, you must not worry about “outside-of-the-muscle” factors, such as how much weight is being lifted (aka paying attention to the “numbers on the plate”), since, again, we are after changes in muscles mass and size, not strength. We want to focus on “inside-of-the-muscle” factors, such as what kind of pump are you getting, how deep is the burning sensation of lactic acid formation, or how cramped the whole muscle that’s being trained is feeling.
Those are the key factors, regardless if you are lifting 10 pounds or 1000 pounds.
See, the mistake everyone seems to make is to worry about lifting a lot of weight, yet not how the muscle being trained feels. This isn’t for powerlifting purposes……this is for muscle building purposes and quality weight gain.
So, back to the question, which of the two techniques is superior?
That’s a question that only you can answer, my friend. You must try both and see which of the two gives you:
1) The greatest and fastest muscular pump
2) The deepest and most painful lactic acid burn
3) (*optional) The strongest cramping sensation
Go with the one that hits 1 or all 3 of these factors the best, and then stick with that one. Yes, it’s that simple!