What Do I Do During Rest Periods?

Rest periods can take a long time. I will often rest up to 4-5 mins on my main compound exercises. But these rest times cab really build up and take up the bulk of your training time. So what should you do during these long and monotonous periods other than scrolling through Instagram or YouTube Shorts aimlessly?

I have two recommendations. Firstly, do more supersets! A superset is when you do one exercise, rest for only a small period (30-45 secs) and then go on to a different exercise, and rotate between these two exercises. This decreases rest periods from 3-5 mins to 30-45 secs. Keep in mind that supersets will NOT impede performance if the two exercises you choose work different muscle groups. So for example, you would NOT superset RDLs with leg curls as these exercises both target the hamstrings, and your hamstring swill be very fatigued after the RDLs. Instead, you could superset the bench press (which targets the pressing muscles) with a barbell row (which targets the pulling muscles). In this way, each muscle group is allowed to recover WHILST you perform the alternate exercise. I would only recommend supersets to be done with upper body exercises (ie. horizontal presses + horizontal pulls, isolation exercises) since lower body exercises are generally more fatiguing and will require full rest periods for optimal performance.

So what should you do when you can't superset. I do not recommend you do any sort of prehab work during rest periods as this prehab work will likely be too intense that it may actually impede workout performance (if the prehab work is not that intense, then it is probably a useless exercise!). I would much rather save prehab work for post-workout or later in the day.

Instead, I think you should spend rest periods playing some low intensity games. This can include juggling (an idea which I heard from Will Ratelle), juggling a soccer ball, dribbling a basketball, or doing reaction-time tests with a partner. Whichever game you choose, make sure it is low intensity to not impede performance, but that it is also wakes up the nervous system. This will keep emotions light-hearted and engage more of the sympathetic nervous system for better intra-set recovery. 

Playing these types of games is much better than scrolling on your phone and they also allow athletes to get in some time acquiring athletic-related skills. Doing something like this will ensure high levels of engagement with the workout rather than just going through the motions.

- Hawtsauce