Lindsay: Guys, welcome, welcome to the Lifting Lindsay podcast.
I am excited.
Last week we had Thanksgiving.
It was awesome.
Um, we decided as a family, we were going to go eat Thanksgiving dinner
where the, the pilgrims originally did.
So it was so much fun going to Boston, spending a few days there, hanging out
with the fam, um, mindfully eating.
Mind you using all of the techniques that I, that I teach, in my mindful eating
course, I just, I used all of those.
My husband used them as well.
It's so much fun to vacation.
To loosen up around nutrition.
And when I say loosen up, let me explain that a little bit because I don't just
go off the rails and start binging.
So a lot of times people have this problem with all or nothing mindsets, right?
They're like, oh Vacation and all of a sudden just this this switch
turns off like or on I guess I should say and they're like, okay I
need to eat everything because it's vacation right and that that's not
true I think just being aware that you do that is really important.
Once you become aware, you can just walk yourself through it.
No, that's a story I used to tell myself.
That's not who I am anymore.
You can actually create a new identity, but it takes time and it takes work
and it takes a lot of thought and pausing and rewiring the brain.
So a lot of times people will say, well, this is just who I am.
It's how I am.
And that's not true.
This is who you have been conditioned to be.
And you're now becoming aware of it, and you're choosing to remain that way.
But we now know that the brain doesn't work that way.
It's not confined to just this is who you are.
This is, um, the person that you are.
You were just born this way.
Now you may be born with some natural tendencies leaning
towards one way or another.
But we now know that neuroplasticity is real and that we can truly change the
wiring in our brains to think and act and believe and behave in new ways, in ways
that serve us, versus, you know, hurt us.
So it's interesting because teaching the mindful eating course and showing
how, look, when you go on vacation, use these principles so that you
can eat till satisfied, but not stuffed, just eat till satisfied.
and then I also teach just staying within a certain range of hunger and fullness.
And the dangers of allowing yourself to get too hungry or too full, and how to
appropriately gauge these things anyways.
So those are things that I teach in that course.
And it's interesting, my husband, for those of you who follow him on
Instagram, he talks about this a lot.
But he, is kind of like a recovering binge and emotional eater.
And it has been really amazing to watch him learn how to be
more mindful with his food.
To not, uh, fall into the usual emotional traps.
And so now, you know, we went on a cruise this year and he used, and I used all of
the mindful eating practices and neither one of us gained weight on that cruise.
Which is mind blowing really.
And then even this, this past week when we got back from Thanksgiving and mind
you Thanksgiving dinner there, I actually, it was pretty easy not to overeat.
It was pretty easy to mindfully eat because we were having Thanksgiving
dinner, um, at Plymouth plantation.
So.
You just kind of got your, your serving, you got your bread, your, you know, it
was actually the same meal that Harvard first had when Abraham Lincoln, made
Thanksgiving an official national holiday.
And he actually wrote out the meal that everybody was supposed to eat.
And it was funny because the guy who was over it was telling us, this is
actually Harvard's, like, when they got that letter, they, they made this
meal and this is what you're eating.
So we have been eating it forever, um, since Lincoln, um, near here.
It was pretty easy because I didn't have, you know, my, Grandma's cheesecake that
I look forward to, or a 24 hour salad.
Um, that's a huge one for my family and it is so yummy, but this is
like, it's, it's fruit that is dripping with melted marshmallows.
I mean, it is like.
It's amazing.
So yummy.
So all of these nostalgic foods weren't there.
So it was actually pretty easy for me.
And I couldn't really get seconds of anything because
you just got what you got.
So with that being said, it was really easy for me to just eat
mindfully, enjoy it, and be done.
Now in the past, when I'm home, it's very normal for me
as a, you know, fitness coach who deals with a lot of clients, I
always would enjoy Thanksgiving and the next day I would weigh myself
because I wanted to show people, look.
The scale goes up and you don't have to be so scared of it.
This is just going to happen.
And guess what?
I'm going to go back to my normal foods.
I'm going to go back to my lifestyle.
Well, that lifestyle of working out and stuff, it never stopped.
I'll go back and it comes down.
And sure enough, within a week, I'm back to where I was the
day before Thanksgiving, right?
So I really like showing that.
So that is something that naturally happens.
It didn't happen this time.
I couldn't have seconds in all of that jazz, right?
But it was pretty cool coming back from a week of eating out for every single meal.
I kid you not.
I was so sick of it.
I just wanted my regular yummy protein packed foods over again.
Like I just, I wanted them so badly, but a week of just mindfully eating
out at restaurants, having it out of my control, the exact protein portions
and all of that, all of that's out of my control, but I was focusing
just on mindfully eating and it was awesome how me and Alex came back.
Neither one of us gained any weight on that vacation, just using these mindful
eating practices, and just relaxing, enjoying the time with our family.
I think it was a six day trip.
We each worked out once.
So that was it.
Um, because we were going, going, going, seeing all of the sites in
Boston, seeing the sites at Plymouth, we only had access to a gym one day.
It didn't matter.
It was like, it wasn't a big deal.
It wasn't a big deal.
So it was just such a wonderful time though.
And I just kind of wanted to lay out like, this is the life
that you can have and enjoy.
This is it.
me and Alex had some good conversations when we were there.
Like, yeah, we're not
um, getting as much protein as you know, we, we normally get
or normally would like to get.
And if you are somebody who really, really wants to optimize body
composition, maximize how much muscle you can put on, you're going for
this very, very fit strategic look, then living this way all the time.
No, you need to be getting more protein in, right?
But for a week vacation, that's you're fine.
But a lot of people are not trying to optimize to that level.
A lot of people enjoy lifting, enjoy fitness.
But they also don't want to be tied to the scale and you can have that and still
have great health and fitness and still maintain the body composition that you
would like, you know, and, and that's what's so important about learning
mindful eating tactics is we do need to make sure that we are appropriately
lining up your goals and desires with.
Um, what, um, we're willing and wanting to put towards them day to day.
It's really important that we line those things up really well so
that our, um, frustration comes because of unmet expectations.
So when we line those things up, we line up our expectations really, really well.
So we really enjoyed our vacation.
With all of that being said, you can get that mindful eating
course on my Be Strong community.
I'll put a link in the show notes, but let's get to why you're really here.
And that is to learn about rest times.
When you, you scroll on Instagram, what's the optimal rest time for
hypertrophy and for strength.
You are going to get a lot of people saying different things.
So some people are like, you have to rest minimum two minutes in
between every single set, period.
Some people are saying no for hypertrophy, it's, anywhere between 45 and 90 seconds.
That's optimal, that's what you want.
And so it's important to question, well, what is right?
Right?
Like who's, who's not, who's right, but what is right.
So before we jump into this, I do want to share something that I
think is important to understand: Hypertrophy and strength are different.
With hypertrophy can come strength, but with strength
doesn't always come hypertrophy.
So what are the differences?
Hypertrophy is muscle growth.
It is the expansion of either the size of the muscle cell, like sarcoplasmic
type of hypertrophy, or, more of like a myofibular, which is going
to be like new contractile tissue.
The muscle getting bigger when, when women are like, Oh, I really want to
build my delts or biceps or whatever they're when they say they're,
they're really want to build it.
I want to see it.
That's hypertrophy.
Strength is how much weight can you move?
That's it.
So the training between the two are actually different.
Not entirely though.
I mean, you can have a good muscle and strength training program.
In fact, in my app, I do have a group called muscle and strength.
And the rest times for that
are going to actually pair up for what works best for muscle and strength.
When you're reading the literature, when you're reading studies,
they will oftentimes say We saw this work really well for muscle.
It didn't impact strength.
So when you're reading those, it is important.
I just kind of want you guys to know that, that depending on your goal, of muscle
or strength or muscle and strength, the rest times will, um, determine
what direction you're going for that.
Okay?
Now, when you look through social media, you will, like I said, get
a lot of people saying, well, rest times, look at this one study.
This one study showed that when comparing three minutes to one minute,
that there was more hypertrophy with the three minute, uh, rest period group.
So therefore three minutes, or I think two and a half, I believe it was, that
is the one that you need to follow.
But we have, and I'm kind of looking through about seven, I believe seven,
um, studies on this, and I'm going to link them all in the show notes,
so if you want to nerd out, by all means, go ahead.
We actually have a lot of studies now looking over this, and I'm excited for
them to continue to do a few more studies on this so we can get a better idea,
but from actually from what we have, whenever the study makes sure that work is
equated, we're getting a different answer.
So let me explain it this way before I tell you what the answer is.
When you have longer rest periods, Think about it.
When you allow yourself, if you're doing a leg press, or if you're doing
a squat, and if you give yourself three minute rests, can you do more weight
than if you're just giving yourself a one minute rest or a 45 second?
Yes, you can do far more weight the longer you rest.
Now, obviously there's a point of diminishing returns.
Don't sit there for like 15 minutes.
People would hate you too.
It's like, get on with it.
We don't got time for that.
Right.
so don't be like reading books in between, but this is why power lifters
are like making sandwiches between sets.
Uh, for those of you who follow, um, biceps after babies,
Amber was telling me one time.
Um, she was doing a lot of power lifting training at the time, she was telling
me like, Oh yeah, in between sets, I'm like up making sandwiches for my kids.
So whenever I think of power lifters, I always think of Amber just going
down doing her three reps and then going up and making like a sandwich.
So So that's why I say that usually power lifters, they're going to
be doing something more along the lines of like seven sets of three
reps with three plus minutes.
I mean, and it can, some, sometimes people will do like five or so with power
lifting because the longer you rest, the stronger you will feel during that lift.
So more rest equals more weight on the bar.
Less rest is going to lower the weight on the bar.
So are you beginning to see what happens.
When the work load was equated?
In the studies that did it, when they would make sure that the work
at the end of, by the end of the day was the same, meaning maybe the
low rest group just did another set.
That's typically what they did to kind of equate the work.
Then the growth was about the same.
So when the work wasn't equated, then the higher rest period, of two and a half,
three up, then they had more hypertrophy and, um, typically had a little bit better
leaning towards better strength gains too.
So this is why it's really important that when we're getting
information, it's not just one study.
Well, this one study said this, so that's, you know, so that's why we
rest for two and a half minutes.
They saw in 2009 greater muscle growth in the strength training
program with the two and a half minute rest period than the same program
performed with one minute rest period.
But it was the same program.
They weren't given another set.
So the workload was actually greater in the longer.
rest group.
Do you see what we're seeing here?
So in 2005, when the work was equated, it didn't matter if it was five minute
rest or two minute rest, they actually had about the same muscle growth.
Later on, we saw that again in 2014, they compared two work matched programs.
It's important to understand.
One was kind of like a power lifting type of program, um, where
it was like seven sets of three reps with three minutes rest.
And the other one was what you would consider more of a traditional
hypertrophy, where it was more of like three sets to 10, you
know, three sets of 10 reps.
It's kind of usually what you find with hypertrophy three to four sets,
um, 10 to 15 reps kind of thing.
And they were given a minute and a half, uh, rest period.
They had about the same muscle growth.
So we are seeing, and um, that, and there was another one too, um,
I believe in 2000, was that 2016?
This one was interesting because this one was comparing three
minute rest to 30 second rest.
Oh my goodness.
Have you ever done 30 second rest before?
Usually that's more metabolic based.
This is what is how I refer to it.
It's more metabolic.
This is pump work.
This is feeling the burn with these low rest periods.
This can be a fun, a lot of people, especially women really lean and
love this type of work as long as the, the work is equated once again.
They found that the short was just as, as effective for muscle growth
as the resting for three minutes.
Now the short group did experience, uh, like I said, more muscle
swelling, um, and they did also get, uh, growth hormone production,
and increase in that post workout.
So what they pretty much did was an AMPK type of training.
So we are seeing that as long as the work is equated, that short rest period,
long rest period, you're going to get about the same amount of hypertrophy.
Now, the longer rest periods, though, do tend to lead to greater strength gains.
So, how do you take all of this information that I just barely shared?
So, does it just not matter, rest periods, at all?
No, it still matters.
It does actually still matter, but it matters on the context and the individual.
And I also have my own opinions about this as well.
I think that when people have been training too long, the same exact way, a
lot of times we can, um, have them shift training methods and, uh, where they maybe
had plateaued before they shift and now they start seeing muscle growth again.
But, but you have to be careful though.
With this idea of, Oh, okay, well, I'm just going to go in and I'm going
to, you know, do 30 second rest.
Well, then you're going to be doing way more sets.
Does that make sense?
Because if you can move, think about the work that you can do, you know, three
sets with three minute rest period, you're going to be moving way more weight.
If you're only resting 30 seconds, that is going to greatly diminish your load.
Now, this can be good for people who have injuries and are coming
back from an injury and they are scared to go really, really heavy.
You don't have to, you can come back, you can do, you know, lower rest periods.
Doesn't mean that you would do necessarily do like an AMPK type of incomplete rest
method, like a 30, but you could do like a 45 to 90 second rest, um, or even 60
probably actually is what I would tell you and the load would come down, but
as long as you make sure that you are working towards failure and staying
within, you know, a three to zero.
You know, the last, uh, three reps in reserve and the last set take to failure
with those lighter loads that are safer for you in your situation, then
you can still see some great progress.
So that really can help with your goals.
Especially like, you know, post surgery or injury or something like that.
So we can see some growth there.
But if your goals are strength, then 30 seconds is going to kill that goal.
And let me just speak on this subject for a little bit because hypertrophy in
and of itself takes a really long time.
I was just barely.
You know, telling my friend, I just like want to get on gear
because this is taking too long.
I have all these goals, like tell me where you got your goods because this is
just taking so long and she's so funny.
She's just like talking me off this cliff, right?
I think anybody who's trained for a long time is just like, just.
shoot me up.
I just want the, the, the gains anyways.
but it takes a really, really long time to really see muscle growth
past your newbie gains, past those first, you know, few years.
And so if you can have a strength goal, it can really keep you on the path.
So when you can link strength and hypertrophy together, I
actually find it very powerful.
Because you're not going to go into the gym every day and see a
new muscle fiber pop up, right?
But you can go into the gym and every few weeks, like hit it.
I mean, not every few weeks, but at least, you know, squeeze out one more rep or
get a little bit more weight on the bar.
Or there's, there's just, when you bring in strength to your hypertrophy goals.
I feel like it can help set you up for showing up every single
day, because otherwise it just, it's so long, it takes forever to grow.
So I really like encouraging individuals to lean more towards incorporating
those strength goals and not just always being okay, you know, with the
incomplete rest method type of training.
We have to be careful assuming that we can just do 30 second rest
and that we're always just going to be seeing, um, hypertrophy.
Because a lot of times what people do is they get addicted to that
pump and the pump comes and it goes within, you know, a day.
Or a few, not even a day, a few hours, right?
And you get addicted to it, and so you constantly are going in
and trying to get that pump.
But the volume of work has to match what the longer rest periods are doing.
And a lot of times, what people end up realizing is that it's not.
So the low rest periods...
are not working towards getting them more hypertrophy.
So I would say if you tend to lean towards low, then maybe your next
training phase, you actually switch it up and get longer rest periods, really
try to push and increase the volume of work that you're doing during your
training phases, obviously while still being able to, uh, recover really well.
But testing that out and a lot of times what happens is I'll see women
come to me frustrated doing too low of rest periods all the time, not
really getting the same volume of work that they could or should be doing.
And we shift them over to a little bit longer rest periods, they're now
really pushing strength and they start seeing muscle growth again, right?
So I think the, the main thing is it is, it is really hard
to kind of equate the work.
And so when we end up doing the really, really low weights, it can end up being
less volume of work that's needed over time to maximize.
I think that's kind of what's detrimental in the end.
Now, I want to talk about one other thing.
What about, people just kind of self regulating, kind of feeling it out.
when you feel like you have rested enough, then go at it again.
I think that that works really well for my male clients and more
of my well trained female clients.
I don't think that it works very well for newbie lifters because they have
a lot harder time gauging recovery between sets and so what they end
up doing is they end up not resting enough they can't even like wait 30
seconds and they're back at it again.
So that's one thing that I've noticed is with less trained individuals,
they have a harder time gauging whether they're fully recovered.
So if you can't do another set showing up in relatively the
same intensity as the last.
Because with shorter rest periods, what's going to happen is the intensity
is going to, um, you're going to hit that fatigue wall a lot faster.
And a lot of times it prevents you from hitting the required reps that you
want to for the load and the work that you want to do during your training.
So, do you see why I keep saying don't get suckered into this really, really
low, but I do want you to see that there is far more flexibility than what a lot
of people are saying, but I do find merit in what's being said because I do find
that some people need to be instructed, especially newbies on, do you know what?
You just did a squat with really heavy loads because you're
trying to push your strength.
Give yourself two to three minutes.
And depending on the individual, you know, it could be three to four,
depending on how well they're recovering.
Um, in between those sets, um, women tend to do, I believe,
especially with lower body,
that they recover faster in between sets than men do.
It's it's actually one of the reasons why and I talked about this a little bit
with do cart does cardio hurt your gains.
It's why we don't see an interference effect as much with women with lower
body muscle growth, and cardio.
We don't see as much interference and the idea might be, it might
be because women recover faster than than men and depending on the
conditioning of the individual, they might recover a little bit faster too.
So this is usually my general rule that I'm just going to throw out there for you.
If your goals are you really want to maximize hypertrophy and strength
and strength, then a two to three minute rest period on multi joint
exercises is going to be important.
So I'm talking about those bigger lifts.
So your deadlifts, your RDLs, your, squats, your leg presses,
like you're going to be wanting to give yourself more rest.
I actually find for me, the sweet spot for RDLs and for, um, like leg
presses is actually three minutes.
That rest works really well for me for hypertrophy and strength.
Those goals that are kind of, um, combined.
So I find for single joint, it can be like 90 depending on the like size of
the muscle, and the complexity of it.
You know, if I'm doing leg extension, we're probably going to be doing
more of like a 90 minute rest.
If it's kind of just finishing touches on a, on a quad day, I might
do it 60 second rest in between.
Then, like if I'm doing lateral raises, something like that depending on what I
did before, cause when I'm programming, I look at primary, secondary, and accessory,
and that's kind of how I gauge things.
So for example, if I'm doing glute work, my primary movement may be, that's
going to be more of the multi joint.
Um, so I'm going to be doing probably like a, a leg press
and then a secondary could be.
A, um, hip thrust or glute bridge, right?
So I'm going to give my primary probably two to three rest.
My secondary usually can be 90 to two minutes, 90 seconds to two minutes.
And then if I were to finish off with maybe kickbacks, I
could do something like 60 to 90
for those.
So as I kind of move through primary to accessory, I may lower the amount
of rest period, which to be honest is fine because the amount of recovery
that my body needs from a squat versus a kickback is very, very different, right?
A squat, we are working the glutes and a lengthen mid position.
We're heavily loading the spine.
The nervous system needs to recover a lot from that movement versus the kickback.
that may not need that, that two minutes.
Does that make sense?
So main takeaways is two minutes, a make or like bust for hypertrophy.
No, the literature clearly shows when you are looking at all of the studies
and not just your cherry picked one that when the volume of work is equated, we're
getting relatively the same hypertrophy.
If you want more strength than higher rest periods.
So if you want strength and hypertrophy, higher rest periods.
If you only care about hypertrophy, then volume of work really is the main thing.
We have to make sure that you are getting enough.
And if you are leaning towards lower rest periods all the time,
and you're frustrated because you're not seeing the growth you want,
then increase the rest periods.
And hopefully that will kind of change it so that you're actually
increasing the load of work as well.
So that's something, it's just one of many things that, that I look at, but honestly,
that's, that's usually how Um, I gauge things to, if I want more sarcoplasmic, if
I want more metabolic work, I'm going to be leaning more towards lower rest period.
If I want more hypertrophy now, it's like a spectrum, right?
Now I'm going to be leaning towards the more, if I want strength even more.
So it's actually a spectrum that we can work on, and depending on the outcome
that we want, the stimulus that that we want will lean towards lower or higher.
Okay.
But it is not this two minute or die thing
like I'm seeing everywhere on Instagram.
Like I saw one guy, I mean, he was so dogmatic in his approach.
Everybody's stupid unless they rest for two minutes for hypertrophy.
I'm like, and, and then he tags one study, conveniently the one that
doesn't equate volume, that points towards what he's trying to prove.
And the same individual, I wasn't shocked when he was like, all like,
supersets are stupid if you want to grow hypertrophy, I'm like, wow, you really
literally have to be looking away from the literature to make those absolute
statements like that, because we see that when it's done wisely, we can super
set and it doesn't impede muscle growth.
For example, one of my favorite super sets is for hypertrophy is actually leg press.
Because like I said, I like resting about three minutes between, well, if I'm doing
that, that's a lot of time in the gym.
If I'm doing three to four sets, that is a lot of time just
sitting there twiddling my thumbs.
So I rest for a minute and then I go over and grab dumbbells
and I do lateral raises.
Then I rest for a minute and about that time I get back to the, the
leg press and it's been about three minutes and I'm able to push it.
Believe me.
My medial delts that are being worked in my lateral raises are not impeding,
by any stretch of the imagination, my glutes in that leg press.
So yes, you can, it drives me nuts when people are so dogmatic about these things.
Yes, you can, when wisely done, and wisely paired, you can still get
maximal hypertrophy gains and super set.
And this isn't gospel according to the Lindsay.
This is, we actually have studies showing this, that it's not going
to impede and that we can do this.
And there are so many people out there that are so grateful for
that because they're like, awesome.
Yeah.
Cause I didn't have two hours to spend in the gym.
Right.
So now I can cut it down to an hour.
Awesome.
That's better for normal people.
My dad always says normal mammals.
That's like the greatest compliment you can get from my dad, guys,
by the way, if he meets you and he says, you're a normal mammal.
He just barely met my, my sister's, husband.
It happened fast.
Okay.
He just barely got to meet him in person and he came, it was so cute.
He came over to my house yesterday and he goes, Lindsay, he's a normal mammal.
And I'm like, wow.
Good job, Ian.
That is like the best compliment you could ever get from your dad.
Normal or my dad, normal mammal.
Anyways.
So hopefully this, um, episode has helped clear things up for you
guys that, you know, as long as the work is equated, as long as we are.
really pushing and trying to stay within, you know, a range of failure, making
sure that the intensity levels are up, making sure that we are spending, you
know, appropriate amount of time in the lengthened position in these exercises.
We can hit and maximize hypertrophy with various rest periods.
It doesn't have to just be this magical two to three minutes.
Okay.
So it's always really fun to sit down and write new programming and look at
the workload that I'm trying to have people do, um, look at the volume
that I'm trying to have them hit.
And then pairing the rest periods appropriately and in a way with supersets
in a way where it's like they're not going to be spending two hours in the gym.
Now, usually hypertrophy programs because of the rest periods and the amount of
work that we have to get done to see maximal growth, it's very common for
hypertrophy programs to be 60, 75 minutes.
Like very, very common.
So just keep that in mind, um, when you're writing your own programs, thinking about
these things and hopefully that helped.
Thank you so much for joining me today on the Lifting Lindsay podcast.
If you have any questions, you can always send me a DM, um, on
Instagram at Lifting Lindsay.
I just barely launched my, inner circle, my, um, community Be Strong.
I'm super excited this month in December, our focus is going to be learning mindful
eating tactics, so that we can maintain body composition throughout the holiday
and stay present with family, friends, parties, food, all the good stuff, and
really teaching people how to hit that
satisfied without being stuffed so that you can maintain.
You guys have an amazing week.