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What you do immediately before and during your workouts can drastically impact your recovery, which in turn impacts performance. There are a few things you can do before and during your workouts to improve recovery.
A good workout starts before you ever pull in the parking lot. We already discussed what you can do in your daily routine to optimize workout recovery last week but today I want to focus on what happens immediately before and during your workout.
Pre-Workout Routine
Focus and Relaxation
Focusing on one task at a time yields the best results for practically every task imaginable. Working out is no different. If you show up to your workout stressed about work and thinking about what you need to do when you get home, how can you expect to perform your best?
Prior to your workout, tune everything out. Stop work. Clear your mind. Focus on the workout that you’re about to crush. Put on your favorite workout tunes on the way to the gym. If for some reason you can’t do those things, at the very least, take a moment before you begin your session to just close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, focusing only on your workout.
Pre-Workout
If you need that extra pick-me-up before getting started with your workout, you can use a pre-workout supplement. A pre-workout can give you the extra boost you need to crush your workout.
That said, pre-workout supplements are the icing on top. They aren’t enough on their own. What you do to manage fatigue outside the gym is significantly more important.
Also keep in mind that not all pre-workouts are created equal. If you want to know what pre-workout supplement I use, click here.
Intra-Workout Fatigue Management
Rest Breaks
The first thing that naturally comes to mind when discussing intra-workout fatigue is how long you should rest between sets. Luckily, multiple studies have been conducted in search of the perfect rest time between sets. [1][2][3]
Cutting straight to the chase, it seems as though resting approximately three minutes between sets leads to greater strength and muscle gains due to the longer rest periods allowing heavier loads to be lifted, while two minutes seems to be sufficient for isolation exercises. [4] That’s a lot of time though. Resting 2-3 minutes between each and every set would lead to a very long session.
One strategy that can be used to sufficiently rest each muscle group, but also cut down on time, is utilizing circuits. You can group exercises of different muscle groups together and perform them back-to-back.
Example:
Bicep curl
Tricep extension
Leg extension
Hamstring curl
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You could perform each exercise back-to-back, rest for one minute, then go back into the circuit. By the time you complete all the exercises and circle back around to bicep curls, your biceps will have had 2-3 minutes of rest, but you only actually rested for one minute.
I would still recommend keeping your heavy compound exercises, such as squat, bench, and deadlift separate due to the fact that those exercises are globally fatiguing. For example, if you perform a squat, then go straight into a bench, it will negatively impact the weight that can be lifted on the bench.
Beginners vs advanced lifters
One exception to this is with beginner weight lifters. From my experience with clients, beginners are typically able to recover a bit faster due to the fact that they are handling lighter loads and can get away with shorter rests.
Failure Sets
You’ve probably seen a motivational picture online that says something to the effect of, “If you aren’t failing, you aren’t growing.” Contrary to popular belief, going all the way to failure all the time actually isn’t the best strategy for muscle and strength gains.
A 2018 study showed that sets to failure, especially higher rep sets to failure, caused greater and longer decreases in performance than non failure workouts. [5] In other words, if you’re constantly going to failure, the amount of total work you will be able to perform will decrease, which will negatively impact your results and increase your risk of injury.
Further supporting this, a 2016 study looked at two nearly identical programs. The only difference was one group went to failure and the other group went near failure. [6] Both groups achieved similar results; however, the failure group experienced greater fatigue (which would likely lead to the aforementioned decrease in work capacity and increase in injury risk).
Instead of taking all your sets to failure, I would recommend taking your sets to approximately two reps from failure. You can judge this by using the RPE scale, which stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. The scale is from 1 - 10, where 10 means you could not have performed another rep.
Basically, take how many reps you think you had left in the tank at the end of a set and subtract that from 10. For example, if I pushed a set of squats until I was one rep from failure, that’d be a 9 RPE (10 - 1 = 9).
Cardio
Is your primary goal to build as much muscle and strength as possible? If so, doing lots of cardio can interfere with that goal, especially if performed before your weightlifting sessions. [7]
This makes sense when you think about it. Whatever you do first is going to create fatigue that will negatively impact whatever comes after. We don’t want to eliminate cardio altogether though. Luckily, we can mitigate this interference effect by doing cardio after weights or on a separate day altogether.
These tips will help you get the most out of your workouts. Combine them with last week’s tips on how to recover between workout sessions and you’ll really be crushing those workouts!
Thank you so much for reading! If you found this information helpful and want to help the Treadaway Training blogcast grow, simply share this post with a friend. If you like what I have to say, sign up below to become a Treadaway Training Insider or check out my YouTube channel. I will be back here Saturday with another body transformation topic. As always, God bless you AND your family and I'll see you Saturday.
