Why is Rest Important in Your Workout Program?

One of the top takeaways from my time at school studying fitness and health promotion was the importance of rest. I had heard for years that it was important to rest, but I never had the scientific explanation for rest that would really help me understand why rest is so important.

After visiting my sister and her boyfriend a while back, he sort of scoffed at the fact that I pay attention to rest times in my workout programs. I write them into the workout program and anyone who I have ever created a workout program for will have seen that rest is always included in the program.

This goes beyond taking a rest day as well. This is about scheduling in rest into your workouts and using it to help you achieve your desired training goal. 

Prilepin’s Chart

I was fortunate enough to have a few highly experienced power-lifting coaches as professors in college and one of them introduced us to Prilepin’s Chart:

Percent is the % of your 1 rep max, something that you can calculate fairly easily with online calculators. Reps/sets is reps per set. Optimal is the optimal volume of reps (ie. the total number of reps across all sets). And then the total range is the range of reps you can aim for within that % of 1RM.

With this, I was then able to apply my workout goal, the reps and weight (% of 1RM) and understand what the optimal rest time was to achieve my goals:

Why does rest time increase when reps/set decrease?

This is a great question, I am so glad I asked it as it is the main reason why I think rest is such an important element of a training program. 

As you can see above, there are different fitness goals. 

Muscular Endurance

Muscular endurance training will help you be able to repeat the same movement for many reps on end with very little rest. Think marathon running or cycling. Your legs are doing the same movement over and over again, pushing the same weight over a long period of time with little to no rest. 

If you want a marathoner body type, this training goal is the one for you. By not giving your body a lot of time to rest, you train the muscles to endure the exercise for a long time. The best way to endure something for a long time is to make sure you aren’t carrying any extra bulk on your body. So your muscles lean out and get light and efficient.

Hypertrophy (muscle mass)

Hypertrophy (muscle mass) training will help you fill out and build up muscle size. What you’re doing with this training is lifting a higher amount of weight, but just enough so you can do enough reps to break down the muscle tissue. That might sound scary, but it is completely natural. 

All forms of weight training will break down muscle, and it is the amount of muscle breakdown that actually determines how much size you can put on. 

The reason the rest period for this type of training is a little longer than endurance training is because you want to give enough time for the muscles to replenish some of their resources before you complete another set. 

Within that 30-90 seconds, depending on how quickly you recover and your fitness level, your body is going to quickly restock it’s fuel sources so you can push those slightly heavier weights again, despite causing some muscle breakdown. You need that rest to be able to do 3-6 sets of a heaver weight for 10+ reps.

Strength Training

Strength is really my favourite type of training. It brings together all aspects of how the body adapts to different stimulus we put on the body and takes practice and an attention to detail that is not necessarily needed in the other previous training goals. The reason rest is so long is because strength requires maximum brain power. 

Your muscles contract when motor neurons (nerve cells that send and receive messages from the brain) tell them to contract. The body is always trying to conserve energy, especially brain resources, so for lighter weights, the brain will only activate some of the motor neurons. It takes some brain energy, but not a lot. 

But for strength training, when you are lifting over 85% of your 1 rep max, your brain is having to activate many more motor neurons to ensure as much of the muscle as possible is contracting to move that heavy weight. This is also why we can only perform strength exercises for a few reps. 

You’re not only using all of the resources within the muscle, but you are also drawing on a lot of brain power. Which is why we need to take longer breaks. In that longer rest time your brain is restocking resources, the muscles are getting a chance to rest and recover before you perform another heavy set.

 If you want to get stronger – ie. move more, lift more, push more weight in an efficient manner, strength training with appropriate rest times is crucial.

Power

And finally power. Power training or power lifting is what you see in competitions. The very muscular, incredibly fit individuals look this way because they have built up their muscle mass as much as possible so there is more muscle that can be trained to be strong. 

The final piece is the explosive nature of power lifting. They are not just moving a heavy weight, but they are also moving it quickly. This explosiveness requires elasticity of the muscles and tendons, mobility to protect the body from injury, and massive amounts of strength. 

This is why you train in the 80-90% range for power. The point is to move a heavy weight quickly, not necessarily lift heavier. When you max out at a certain weight, you increase your strength training and then come back to power training. 

In the same way that strength training requires a longer rest period to help the muscles and brain recover, power training also requires a longer rest period to allow all systems to recover and restore resources to you can perform the exercise with the same speed and technique as the first time.

If you want to achieve a specific training goal, think about where rest fits into your program

I hope I have made it abundantly clear that rest is the secret sauce to a great training program. You can do any exercise you like, for as many reps you like with whatever weight you like, but your rest period will be the final determining factor of what types of results you get from training.

For example, I share in my workout routine blog that I am doing lower reps, mid range sets and heavier weights for my compound movements like the deadlift and my back exercises. In that program, I have scheduled in 2 minutes of rest as I am at the higher end of the rep range (5).

The result? My warm-up set for my deadlifts has gone from 45lbs to 115lbs in a matter of weeks. I can do 135lbs (2 45lbs plates) for 8 reps, and I can do 2 sets of 165lbs for 3 reps. 

This is a major accomplishment. When I came out of the pandemic, I found just lifting the bar was tough. 135lbs would be my workout weight and I would only be able to do 5 reps. I’ve been able to achieve this in 3 weeks of approaching my deadlift workouts using Prilepin’s table and proper rest periods. 

One of the best feelings is getting into the swing of a strength routine and showing up to a heavy deadlift day where you’ll be hitting a new personal best and knowing that your body is ready for it. I feel confident going into my strength workouts because I know that I’ve been using all of the resources at my disposal to train for my goal of strength.

Rest is the secret sauce and now you have it! Happy lifting, ladies!