Hello. Basically, in PE, our coursework is to design a 6 week weight training programme to complement our main sport in o ne of 3 sections - power, strength or endurance. I'm given a sheet which tells me sets and reps, as well as rest periods. This is where the problem starts... For max strength, I am told to use 4-5 minutes rest between sets!!! This seems way too long, but I wanted some other opinions. I'm not even going to so into the set/rep guides given. Thoughts?
For purely maximum strength, you want a lot of rest, no point doing the lift when you haven't recovered from the last one.
I've heard anywhere from 2-6 minutes suggested. Maverick's right, it's to avoid muscle fatigue, and ensure maximal muscle unit recruitment on each set. Pavel's 3-5 program works on this concept (3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, with 3-5 minutes rest between each set). However, I read somewhere (I'm waiting to get it confirmed) that the Westside monsters keep rest periods around 1 minute. I suspect that's only on DE days though. I'm interested in what your course suggest for sets and reps. Do share, do share. In fitness, as in life, there's always some, shall we say "discrepancies" between textbooks and practical application. So, study what they tell you to study, answer the questions like you're expected to, and then, when you're on your own, making your own decisions, do it your own way.
Off hand, I can't think of them (don't have the book with me. I can remember it saying something along the lines of "3 or 4 sets to failure with 30 seconds recovery between sets" for muscular endurance", though. Again, going to failure 3-4 times seems a little steep ? Add to that, I picked an "enrichment course" (basically something to do in my free time) in weight training. I did this to save travelling to the gym after college. We are made to do either 3x10 (power ) 3x8 (strength) or 3x15 (toning). We have a little log sheet and if we don't get through a certain number of exercises in the lesson we get told off
hmm, 4-5 minutes does sound kind of long, im guessing the longer rest period is used so that the PC-ATP system is given enough time to recover(which is the system primarily utilized in max strength), but that recoveres in ~3 min.
BeWater, I think you're right. The Westside gang uses 3-5 minutes between max effort movements when they get up in the triples. On DE days they rest around 60-90 secs max. Nothing like short rest times to promote hypertrophy. Bodybuilding usually advocates a lot of fatigue in a short amount of time. My advice-if you're studying to take a test, learn to answer the questions the way they want them answered. If you're doing a class and you're asked to do something, just go along with it; breaking and doing your own thing is not as important as maintaining good relationships with your teachers. It's okay to bring up such topics like increasing power output and training parameters that might differ. Just remember, even if you're doing 8 reps, you're going to get stronger. Sure you're absolute strength won't go up nearly as fast as if you were doing near-maximal lifting but a person would still get stronger. Here's a bit of food for thought...yes, the 5X5 is popular for part of the off-season training for football and field event athletes but typically you'll see most athletes running in ~8 rep scheme. Most athletes and coaches won't advocate tons of maximal lifting except during testing and most often they're more worried about vert leap, 40 yard dash time, and etc. Running in the ~8-10ish rep range is a way to get stronger without injury.
I didn't - the teachers did If it were merely part of a test, I'd write down 500x6 if it kept them happy. However, this is a written/practical coursework with me carrying out the programme. I don't particularly want to spend a long time doing something which doesn't work just to keep my teacher happy.
