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Rest More To Lift More · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great day wherever you are, wherever you're listening, whenever you're listening.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Currently in north central Florida at the moment, we are experiencing what is probably one of the best reasons to live here.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: That is this sort of like faux spring in the middle of February, as so many places are very cold.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It is not here.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That is an absolute mood booster for me.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: That is how I'm feeling today, appreciative of the mood boosting qualities of some sunshine and some warmer, or at least not frigid, weather.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Today I've got an episode that is super practical for you and probably something that seems pretty simple but, if optimized, can really get you your results.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Then I have a special announcement at the end of this episode.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We're talking about rest today.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Rest, one of the most poorly managed variables that's what we call them in training variables in terms of people getting their progress, because we have been conditioned to think that rest is the bad part of exercise.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We are a bit obsessed with getting, obsessed with exercise being harder, faster, stronger all the time.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: That comes out of that sort of punishment mentality Particularly.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I only know it as the experience of women that certainly men could also have experienced that, but there's something about marketing to women that is about punishing yourself with exercise.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I don't mean to generalize, and that certainly could be something that men experience as well.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Sometimes men are given the room to think about exercise a little bit more as building, as creating their bigger, better self and, as you've heard in my messaging, probably that's kind of what I wish for women as well.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Rest is sort of this idea that we should try to be avoiding it and that we are more athletic or we are fitter if we rest less.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: But rest is so key in terms of us being able to complete our exercise programs with the kind of intensity that we need in order to see results, in order to get results.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go through what we're getting, what the collective we are getting wrong about rest and how you can change it so that you can do a better job and that you can actually use it to see results.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Some of it is a mindset switch and then some of it is some practical information.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That mindset switch is first in the idea that rest is not a bad thing in exercise, and rest is oftentimes very much what we need.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: If you are familiar with sort of like professional sports, especially those that require short bursts of intense movement for but high level of athleticism thinking of like sort of track and field, if you think of running a short distance race, those athletes are performing sometimes their event for under 40 seconds and the amount of time in practice that they would take as rest before they completed another rep would be sometimes six, seven, ten times the amount of time was like uh, rest to.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: So the work to rest ratio it would be like working for 40 seconds and resting for four minutes.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: That's a large work to rest ratio that is needed in order to be able to facilitate the kind of power output they need.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Same thing goes with strength, so we're gonna talk about that, but realize that and these are thick, strong people with sort of incredible physics are resting a lot.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So I want you to understand that sometimes we have to get over that hump of resting.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Isn't me not doing anything, resting is actually me reloading, refueling, re-energizing so that I do the next set better.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: You know, in the last I don't know exactly, I mean it's probably for much longer, because my I'm not a hundred percent on exercise history of like aerobics in the 70s or something, but at least in the last 10 to 20 years, with the sort of advent of this and I'm putting real quotes on it high intensity, interval training marketed to everyone, there has been an emphasis on this sort of like all out, high heart rate, the whole time, kind of experience and that has its place.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna talk about where its place is and where you might be missing the mark if you're using that mentality and trying to accomplish a different goal.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So what I like to help people with in terms of rest is determining whether or not, or distinguishing between, distinguishing between catching your breath and resting.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: So when we talk about catching your breath, we're talking about that very shallow and maybe it's a little less than shallow all the time, but it is not a complete rest.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It is meant for cardiovascular exercise, endurance-based exercise, something where we're aiming to keep that heart rate elevated the whole time, and or it's meant for those short moments in between supersets where we're not fully resting but we need to gather ourselves.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: The goal is not to be fully recovered, but it is to be able to complete the next task, the next exercise, whatever it may be, to the best of your ability.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So sometimes I'll insist that my clients, if they're doing a difficult superset, catch their breath before they start their next exercise.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But this is not a full rest.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Similarly, if you were doing some kind of high-intensity class and you had to switch exercises, you may take a moment, catch your breath before you start the next exercise, because if you don't you won't be able to complete it and if you don't you could get injured or hurt.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: You want to sort of help yourself regulate a little bit, but it is not full recovery.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: When we want to rest in between sets and that is particularly for goals that include power, strength and hypertrophy Hypertrophy meaning build muscle we want to actually rest and we want to recover as much as possible.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: We want to actually lower our heart rate.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: We want to limit acute muscular fatigue.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So sometimes let's say I'm going to pick a random exercise.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Let's say you're doing a bent over row.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: If you're familiar with it, you do a set and then you rest.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: When you do the next set, you want to feel like your grip is ready to go, your core is ready to go, your back is ready to go.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, depending on the exercise we're doing, there are elements of completing that exercise, elements of the technique that can sort of fall apart.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: First we are our weak link and we want to let our weak link recover as much as possible so that we can move as much weight successfully as possible, especially when we're talking about and maybe not move as much weight when it comes to power, but be able to generate as much power.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: And then, when we talk about strength and hypertrophy, we are trying to move as much weight for the amount of reps that we have prescribed for us.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: This is important because if we are not doing that and if we are not recovering fully, what we ultimately end up working more is our cardiovascular system, which has its advantages.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to get cardiovascular exercise, we want our heart to be working, but we have to look at the goal of that particular session and for many folks who want to build muscle or strength, it is going to be more beneficial for you to separate those two things Really focus on building muscle or building strength within that training session.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: So resting enough, being able to move enough weight, and then doing complimentary cardiovascular exercise at a different time.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: When we try to do too many things at once, we do a whole lot of nothing, so to speak.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So resting fully is really important.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: We want to help, we want to get those energy stores as much back as possible.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Now it doesn't mean that you're not going to fatigue during the workout.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: We want to minimize the excess fatigue so that we can perform to the best of our ability.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: When we rush the rest, we do less weight, we get not as strong as we could.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: It's a hard thing to do when you are used to feeling like you should be feeling every moment of your workout with movement, and so when you see somebody sitting down and I remember pre my exercise knowledge I used to wonder why people sat between sets, like what a waste of time.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It's actually not a waste of time, it's so helpful.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It's so helpful for you.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: You may find that if you aren't doing an aerobic style form of training or a more metabolic conditioning kind of training and you want to build muscle, build strength, you're actually going to have to sit down or at least stand relatively still.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: You're not like trying to do jumping jacks in between sets.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: That is for something else.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what your goal is there, but that's not going to be all that useful when we're trying to build muscle or strength.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: So here are some things to think about.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: In those especially resistance training workouts that are meant to build muscle or strength, what you need to do in your rest period you need to let yourself rest completely.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Don't hold the weight, don't run around.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: No need to do a bunch of planks in between, unless your trainer suggested it.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: No need to do a bunch of jumping jacks.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: No need to do a bunch of even stretches Like let yourself rest.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: There might be moments where you need to do some of these things to facilitate your goals, but in terms of rest, we're really going to try to minimize any extra movement, any extra effort.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: You're going to focus on slow and controlled breathing.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So when I spoke about that catch your breath sensation, that's a little bit of a hyperventilation kind of vibe.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: We're not aiming for that.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And even when you're trying to just catch your breath quickly, you're going to try to slow your breathing as much as possible but realize that you're like, especially if you're doing some sort of high intensity training, interval training, or let's say you're doing some sort of cardiovascular training.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Think about somebody who's training for a marathon.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I don't want them to rest and fully rest in their workouts.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I want, maybe, if they're doing some like supplemental strength training but for their goal of completing the marathon, I want them to only be able to catch their breath, not fully rest.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I want them to be able to train the mechanisms that allow them to catch their breath enough to push through that next mile.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: To push through that next mile when you are trying to lift weights and get stronger, you're not going for 26.2 miles.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So that catch your breath sensation.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, we're trying to bring some regulation to our body to slow the breath down a little bit, but it's a little bit different than when, in that rest period, we're actually really trying to slow the heart rate and we're trying to bring our nervous system as much to a place where it's in its parasympathetic stage.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: So it's rest stage and we do that by inhaling through the nose, primarily, taking slow and controlled breaths.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: When you are really resting for strength and hypertrophy work, you're gonna keep an eye on the clock and you're gonna resist that urge to jump in early.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Now there is a point where we start to rest, maybe too much.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And resting too much isn't necessarily like the workout isn't good anymore, it's just that you're gonna be there for days and like are you going to give up at some point?
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Are you going to cut your workout short because you rested too much?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: So we have to find a happy medium, and it kind of depends on what you're doing.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I would give you like times, but I don't necessarily want to prescribe rest times for you without knowing what you're working on.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Typically, though, for like hypertrophy, we're looking at 90 seconds to two minutes rest in between sets, sometimes two minutes to three minutes rest in between sets, and that can sometimes be even from side to side, so you might be used to doing like a single arm something and then going into the second arm on the other side.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you could really benefit from resting in between sides because, again, that brings you back to that state where you aren't fatigued and you're able to maximize results.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: If you're always starting with your left and then you run into your right, your right is always getting that little bit of lower energy version of yourself.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna keep on an eye on the time and then you're gonna use your ability to jump back in after the rest period as a way of knowing whether or not you are challenging yourself enough.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So if every time the rest period is over and you are like ready and raring to go, or you're trying to go 15 to 30 seconds early, it is time for us probably to amp up the intensity, meaning either adding some more reps, adding some more weight, slowing down your reps to add time under tension, whatever that might be, if you are recovering quickly and able to go again.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: We probably need to increase the difficulty because we want to use those prescribed rest windows as a tool for self-evaluation, determining whether or not we are working hard enough.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Many people ask am I working hard enough?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Am I working hard enough if you are able to jump into the next exercise and the next exercise without a lot of rest?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: My answer is no, you aren't working hard enough.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So that's a good tool for self evaluation when so much of this.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: You know I'm giving you, like all the quote-unquote best practices.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: So much of this is self-perception and and determining for yourself whether these things are right in that given moment.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: So certainly there's a lot of variation, but these are just things to be thinking about, and the more tools we have to assess how you're feeling in a given moment and to assess what you did last week versus this week and to kind of give us more data points, the more likely we are to be successful as we increase the difficulty.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: So that tends to be the next best, that tends to be the best indicator.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: So that's the deal with rest that's so important to understand.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: There are certainly times where you want to minimize your rest.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: That's with metabolic conditioning, that's with cardiovascular training, that's with anything endurance based.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: We likely are going to minimize rest because we want to actually train the systems that keep us working hard for a longer amounts of time where we don't have the opportunity to rest fully when we are trying to build strength or muscle or increase our power output.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: We want more rest time so that we can recover as fully as possible.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: We can recover fully, as fully as possible.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: That just does not sound right.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: We want to recover so that we can maximize our working sets.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's really important.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: If there's anything you take away, we want to be thinking about high-quality sets.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: When I say high-quality sets, that means high-quality form, enough weight and enough energy to complete them with that weight and that form to be able to elicit the kind of results we want.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I know you want them and I'm here to give them to you.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that's helpful in terms of the understanding of rest.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions about that specifics to your training, you can always reach out to me at foster underscore strength or you can email me, betsy, at the letter bfosterstrongcom.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Here's my exciting announcement.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I wanted to announce it on the podcast first.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: In April, I'm starting my small group coaching program, built Bodies, a 12-week program that's going to help you build visible muscle, increase your strength and have you feeling the most confident in your body you ever have for this summer.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: It is going to be a program that includes your training, workouts, your nutrition guidance all of the elements in order for you to successfully do all those things build that visible muscle, build that strength and experience that confident body.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited about it I'm going to post the waitlist link in the show notes, because I'm going to keep it small.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going to cap this one.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I really want to make sure that if you're listening and you want to get the first information that you do, I'm going to put the waitlist link in the show notes.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You can hop on the waitlist link.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: As always, the waitlist is no obligation, it's just so you get information first.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: It'll have all the details so you can determine whether or not this is the right thing for you.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited about this program.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I know that it is going to get you where you want to go.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited for you to stop wasting time on workouts that don't work and experience what it's like to feel successful and see and experience the change that working out in the gym can do for you.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I will leave it there for now, but you can go down to the show notes and hop on the link.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: If you have questions for me, let me know.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have taken enough of your time.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I hope you have a great week.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Reach out if you need me.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Until next time, go build your strongest body.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Talk to you later.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Bye.