Nov. 22, 2025
Rest Periods Are Ruining Your Workouts?! Strength Pyramid Level 5 - 22
In this episode of Driven For Health, Coach Brian Parana breaks down Level 5 of the Strength Pyramid: rest periods.
Many men think shorter rest periods mean they are working harder, but Coach Brian explains why that can actually reduce strength, lower training volume, hurt performance, and limit muscle growth.
This episode covers how long men should rest between sets, why growth hormone spikes are not the main driver of muscle growth, how short rest periods can increase fatigue, and why better recovery between sets helps men lift more weight, perform better reps, and get better results.
Coach Brian also explains how busy men can save time in the gym by using antagonist supersets, such as chest and back, biceps and triceps, or push and pull movements, while avoiding poor pairings like heavy squats and deadlifts together.
This is a strong episode for men over 40 who want to build muscle, get stronger, improve workout quality, train smarter, and stop wasting effort in the gym.
Most men rush their rest periods, cut their workouts short, or rely on old rules that no longer help them build strength.
In this episode, Coach Brian breaks down what rest periods actually do for your training and how to use them the right way so you can lift heavier, recover better, and stay consistent as a busy man in your 40s and 50s.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why short rest periods do not build more muscle
- How rushing rest harms strength, especially for men over 40
- The ideal way to judge when you’re rested and ready for your next set
- When antagonist supersets can save time without hurting performance
- Which exercises should never be supersetted together
- How to structure efficient push–pull sessions that maintain strength
- Why full-body lifts like squats and deadlifts need longer rest
- How to balance rest periods with tight schedules so you still train effectively
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Rise Up
Coach Brian
Level 5 references
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24...
http://www.pubfacts.com/detail/251483...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24...
bonus reference from my comment on the lack of effect of physiological effects of growth hormone on muscle growth
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15...
Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?
Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.
Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:
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brian@brianparana.com
Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.
- Too many men believe that taking long rest periods between your sets makes them look like they're not working hard. That belief drains their strength, limits their muscle growth, and cuts into their energy. Rest gives your body the chance to recover so your next set has real quality to it. When you give yourself enough time, your training improves and your results come faster.
- Driven for Health podcast, guys. Excited to have you back. Someone emailed me just the other day asked me what Driven for Health was all about and why I named it that. I'm a driven person. Pretty motivated. I've released, it's been, this is our 22nd episode and a little over six weeks or so.
- I had no idea what I was doing when I started. Just had an idea of what software I was going to use. Riverside, and of course, I knew what my topic was, health, fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, and my target audience, 40 and over. I'm 42. I wanted to speak to guys similar to me. That was easy. But the drive part, a drive, that's what it is. Leadership.
- I've spent my whole career since 200 2003 teaching group exercise, personal trainer, gym owner, and the last 12 plus years been online nutrition, health, lifestyle coaching for shoot young, old, healthy, sick, chronic, Leo, people who know a lot about this stuff and who don't. performancedriven and just people want to take better care of them.
- So they realize that their health actually is really important to them. That's the identity of the person and they want to do it sustainably while juggling a lot. Life, kids, family is super important to me as we'll continue to uncover. But your health is your wealth. You could be the richest person in the world and be miserable if you are going to die of a heart attack sooner than you'd like.
- That's where the drive, that's where the health, that's what the name come from. I appreciate that email and the people who are listening. So, thanks. It motivates me, drives me to make more of these. Driven for health. Today, let's go through this. We have layer one of the strength pyramid is adherence.
- Layer two is the vif bif volume intensity frequency. Level three was progression. Level four is exercise selection. Our 21st was talking about John. I figured I'd just bring him on and have him talk about his experience since I referenced him. And level number five here is rest. And we have one more is tempo. There's our pyramid. We've gone through these fundamental pieces. Rest is something to talk about.
- And it has more impact than you might think it does on your training. And if you do it wrong, then yeah, sure, you're working on your fitness, but you might not be gaining as much strength or muscle mass or potential as you could if you just waited a little bit longer. Before we get into it, let's recap. We started with adherence and why that's consistent across.
- If you don't work out in the gym, you're doesn't matter what perfect plan is. Same thing with the nutrition pyramid starting at episode five on calories. If you're not eating the right amount of calories, say you're never going to lose weight or you're never actually [clears throat] going to build muscle. You have to be in a subtle calorie surplus for that volume.
- the amount of workload that you're doing, the intensity of that workload, and the frequency, the regularity that you do in whether it's a week cycle or even a 10 day cycle or even a month cycle. Maybe one week you're traveling, but in a four-week cycle, you still got 12 or 13 workouts in. Great.
- That means that your total workload is good. progression of not only exercise but whether you're a beginner all the way through advanced your training age or fitness age that is always something I consider when programming exercise for people hey what have you been doing the last one to five years of exercise then furthermore what's your training history did you do something in high school and then continue after or did you just get into life college and then career their family in that progression.
- I need to know this to make sure I start in the right spot for the client to be successful. Exercise selection is important, right? Big muscle groups to little ones. And now between the sets, let's get to it. Rest period basics. If you look at an old textbook, even some recent ones, you'll still find claims that hypertrophy only happens inside a certain rep range with a certain rest interval.
- You'll see the classic 8 to 12 reps. That's always one I really enjoy. Or you'll see 30 to 60 second rest between labeled. That's the in quotations hypertrophy zone. could be a little bit misleading because as time change and studies have evolved and research has been made present, rep ranges aren't necessarily magical, just like rest periods aren't either.
- These ideas come from older research that linked short rest periods with higher growth hormone levels after training. Here's the key. Growth hormone spikes from stress, right? We lift the thing off the ground and it puts stress on your body and it goes from dense training, say 30 to 60 minutes, 75 minutes.
- If you're in the gym working 90 minutes, you might just be working too much. Unless you're taking say a strength approach and having long rest periods there, but it does not cause muscle growth in normal range. Okay, I'll say that again. Growth hormone spikes from stress and from dense training, but it does not cause muscle growth in normal ranges.
- We know this even when people inject themselves with growth hormone at high levels, hypertrophy does not increase. So using rest periods to chase a hormone spike is pointless. Old research confuses correlation with causation. It it's like saying ice cream causes crime because both go up on hot days. It's the the same situation.
- So that takes growth hormone off the table as a reason to limit rest periods. Okay. So we don't necessarily need. So again refining the statement shorter periods of rest don't necessarily increase the growth hormone in a way that causes muscle growth. There you go. Now there's a study and a bunch of studies linked in the show notes today that you can reference if you'd like.
- I've got the links to them there. Let's keep moving. What about muscle damage or metabolic fatigue? These are definitely things that we need to think about when it comes to building muscle, developing fitness, developing capacity to do more. Shorter rest periods increase metabolic fatigue.
- Your system wears down the harder, faster, shorter you go. There's no question there, right? Everyone knows a say CrossFit style 30 minute or even a 15minute AM wrap as many rounds as possible. A 15-1 usually is high intensity heavy weights, big large movements that are going to tire you out, leave you on the floor. But that is a way to stress the metabolic system itself or muscle itself.
- We want to use it sparingly and not all the time. Even CrossFit has a old programming from day one was three days on, one day off to allow for your muscle fatigue, muscle damage to recover. And you then mixed up short, medium, long workouts with light, medium, and heavy workloads and variety of different methodologies from body weight, strength training, Olympic lifts, gymnastic lifts, and there's a cycle.
- I programmed CrossFit workouts for seven years. I love CrossFit. I think it's a very potent form of exercise. But let's get back to rest. And I was just explaining a variety of different ways where say bodybuilding is more of your traditional I'm going to lift the thing up, put it down, and rest for a while. Even that can vary depend on again what rep range you're in.
- Usually five or less is very indicative to longer rest periods. Now, with muscle fatigue, it also then forces you to use lighter loads or fewer reps on later sets. That ultimately reduces your total training volume. And the total training volume is one of the main drivers of hypertrophy, of muscle growth, of building your biceps.
- So the question is and becomes does the extra metabolic fatigue make up for the lost volume of work? At least one study shows the answer is no. And there certainly could be more as we go through this. But the review of Menow Henselman and Brad Shfeld makes it clear. There is no requirement to shorten rest periods for hypertrophy.
- If you cut them too short, you can harm your performance and your ability to lift heavier. I'll say that one more time. No requirement to shorten rest periods for hypertrophy. Key factor. If you cut them too short, you harm your performance and ability to lift heavier. Say you're supposed to do 60-second lifts, but you end up short on time and do 30 second rest periods and you're lifting 100 pounds, you will likely not continue to lift 100 pounds.
- Now, does that necessarily impact your fitness levels? No. Your fitness level might actually go up because your heart rate's up. It's working cardiovascular. It's working muscle endurance, but it might not be focus on hypertrophy, and that might be your main goal there. What I'm saying, I'm telling you not to necessarily sit down forever in between your sets, but I'm saying you you don't need to force short rest periods to grow.
- Muscle fatigue doesn't necessarily equate to hypertrophy. when shorter rest can actually help. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Re the research on something called antagonist paired sets, okay? Or [snorts] super sets. That's where you're doing backto back. What it says is when you have an opposite muscle, say biceps, triceps, you don't pair two exercises for the same muscle.
- Instead, you do something like bench press and row, shoulder press and lat pull down, leg extension, leg curl. These are some of my favorite ways to help my busy guys in the gym work out faster, harder. Okay. If we do a bench press, then we row after. Then you take a minute rest. Your chest muscles have rested for approximately two-ish minutes, which then means that you can get back to the bench press and have a big effort.
- Now, you certainly could superset same muscles, but that's going to increase your fatigue factor and the weight will go down faster, thereby affecting your overall volume of the workout. The other one classic one I always do, I usually break up my workouts into chest, back, shoulder, legs, and core. Sometimes cardio, that would be six variables that I can work with.
- Some days I just do say chest day. Others I'm always mixing up to have this antagonist paired set where I say do chest and legs or back and shoulders or shoulders and abs or back and cardio or heaven forbid legs and cardio. Nothing like doing a bunch of squats and then going to run. That reminds me very much of boots camp styled or crossfit style workouts.
- When you do this, the muscle you just trained gets an active recovery while you work the others. Performance on the main lift does not drop. These are what studies show. In case you can even perform more reps when you return to the first exercise because there's a longer rest time for those. The movement might actually feel smoother due to active recovery.
- Say pulling in the opposite direction of the movements. You should save a ton of time because you're working while you normally be sitting there. And in today's really busy lifestyle, that's time is of great importance for an upper body day. We could look at antagonist supersets to be great options. Here's a example of different movement patterns that you can [clears throat] move in.
- There's six of them. Are we ready? A horizontal push. Think of you moving arms straight forward like a push-up or a bench press or dumbbell press. We have a horizontal pull. Think of a seated row. Think of a barbell row. We have a vertical push up overhead like a shoulder press and a vertical pull down from hands raised up all the way down like a pull up or a pull down.
- We have a vertical push down like a dip and a vertical pull up like an upright row. Those are the six factors. And of course, we do bicep, tricep, or delt to be some auxiliary focused efforts that you can mix in. Meaning, you could do it like this. Bench press row, bench row, bench row. Works great because they're in opposition.
- Or chin-ups/pull-ups and overhead press. Chin-ups, overhead press, chin-ups, overhead press, or arms, biceps, triceps, biceps, triceps, biceps, triceps. You're getting the gist here. This keeps your performance high, cut your work time down, increases total volume without sacrificing your body's ability to get work done, get volume in, train yourself in an effective, efficient way.
- Hopefully, this is giving you some ideas on how to train better if you're not already implementing some of these simple strategies around rest saving, rest sparing type modalities for you to be successful with. Again, I will do bench press and heck bar squats or pull-ups and shoulder press as the example is there. Those are common things.
- Or occasionally I'll just do abs in between to get those in. If you think think of this too. If you did 10 sets of 10 reps for abs in between 10 exercises of whatever you're doing. That's a 100 sit-ups as an example that you'd sneak into the workout thereby always getting in your abs and not having to worry about anything else here which would be perfect which would be ideal. Okay.
- Now, what we have next is when not to super set. Situations that mean that you shouldn't would be squats, deadlifts, heavy lunges, or any movement where your entire body is involved to create stabilization. Now, if if you're focusing on hypertrophy, this is an important one because say deadlifts recruit back, shoulders, grip strength and it has a major overall impact on your full body.
- Same thing with squats or if you walk around with 50 plus pound dumbbells, unless you're a beast, that's going to wear you down pretty quick. Now, if say we're doing CrossFit or boot camp style workout, these generally would be lower weight and mix into the process to create that type of response of you're going to focus on muscle fatigue and that type of a workout more so of a priority over strength gain.
- Studies show that pairing supersets with full body lifts actually can detract performance from the main lift that you're doing. If you do want to get stronger with squats or build squat muscles, we just squat and rest. They require a lot of recovery. The rule is simple. Use anti [laughter] antagonist. Use antagonist supersets for upper body training.
- And unless you're doing a superset style workout with lower weights, maybe higher volume, a boot camp style, then we don't necessarily need to do full body or lower body movements that create a lot of effort. Here's the truth on rest periods. You don't need to force short rest for growth. Short rest can lower your performance and your total training volume.
- Antagonistic supersets can be a very smart way to save time and maintain performance. Avoid paired anything with squats, deadlifts, or high stability leg work unless it's purposely snuck in there. Rest long enough to hit the same load reps that you plan for. And then we'll talk about tempo, the speed of the bar.
- There's a lot to time under tension. That's it for rest. I hope that that was really informative. You got some ideas about how to improve rest recovery for hypertrophy for muscle gain for overall fitness. Whether you do have actual rest or you use it to help burn body fat, burn calories, and have less rest and focus on muscle fatigue. Just remember the simple thing.
- If you are trying to control calories, be careful. The simple question is when are you more hungry? After an hour walk or an hour run? After a 45 to 60 minute typical bodybuilding workout or a 20 minute CrossFit? Go as hard as you can. Those higher intensity outputs are going to cause hunger to come in and force you to not not force you, but your body is going to be hungry.
- So many times I remember this. I would get done deadlifting. Oh, and heavy is for me. I've shared my stats before of my best, but wow, I was starving instantly. I needed food right then and there. There's so many times I'd get done with a workout because I did CrossFit or I ran really hard.
- I remember I tried to do 10 miles in under an hour. Six minute miles. That's a lot of work. I think I was very close. I don't know if I actually broke it, but I think I was 62 minutes. I had to stop at the the bano. That's a lot of fast speed over a hard time. But that's a I was instantly hungry because I had used so much my muscle glycogen and my energy stores for those efforts.
- Fast five, here we come. I find people really enjoy this. I've gotten so many emails of that. This portion is just really fast, easy information to dive a little bit deeper on the subject topic at hand. I'm I'm glad you appreciate this. This is a very forwardthinking section that I put into the podcast. Question number one, what's one rest period mistake that kills strength gains for men in their 40s and 50s? The biggest mistake is rushing your rest and feeling like you're not working out if you're just sitting there. Now, for
- the love, don't pull up your phone and start texting and getting lost and doom scrolling in between sets. That's a horrible idea, guys. be present wherever you're at. That's just a general takeaway that I'm going to have for you with this podcast. It's something that we all need to work, myself included.
- Be present where you're at. If you're working out, work out. If you're at work, work. If you're at home, be at home. Try not to blend those because they will take away from your overall life experience in each of those areas. Give yourself enough time to be able to do the next set at its original intention and real quality behind it.
- Question two, how do you know you're resting long enough between sets? It's pretty simple. If you can hit the same reps at the same load as the previous set, you're ready to go. If you drop off fast, you didn't rest long enough. You could simply rest longer to try to build that energy reserve back up.
- Think of it in a video game when you get hit by the bad guy. You have to get your energy bar to slowly come back. Whether you grab the the health little things or the food or whatever is in the game to get more health, the the potion to drink. Most guys do their best with two to three minutes on big lifts, one to two minutes on accessories.
- Number three, if time is tight, what's the smartest way to structure a 45minute workout? Antagonist workouts, right? Super sets, push and pull, upper body, lower body. That's where the bang for the buck is. And if you really want your say arms to grow, you could always finish maybe two days a week, focus on a little bit more bicep and tricep action to just get a little bit more.
- say five sets of 10 biceps, 10 triceps as an example. When should a man use antagonistic supersets instead of straight sets where you just bench press five sets of 8 to 12? You use them when you want to save time without losing strength. Upper body days work amazing. accessory works amazing. And any session ideally that you're not doing full body big lifts.
- Again, there's caveats. Let me explain that. We've got number five. What lifts should you never be paired or superseted together? Well, squats and delus wouldn't necessarily go well. They work the same muscles and usually they would be pretty fatiguing as you go. And this wraps up today's breakdown on rest periods.
- I hope that this was informative and you got some great ideas. It might seem like a very small detail or something you should just overlook, not talk about, but we're almost 30 minutes in. I hope that you understand how to use your rest time the right way. your training becomes more efficient and your results come quicker. Remember, give your body enough recovery to keep your reps load where you want and need it to be.
- Get done with the workout for total volume of work that you want to be done and accomplished. If you want to save time without losing performance, then again, pair your upper body movements together, antagonistic, and opposing muscle groups. Simple, effective, easy way to train, especially if, say, you're in a hotel room traveling a bunch.
- That's what I'm going to have you do if I were to prescribe you a workout. If you're ready to take some of the guesswork out of all of this, the training, especially the nutrition, that's why I spend so much of my life talking nutrition with my clients of what to eat, when to eat, how to eat. Think of it as eating the right foods at the right times in the right amounts.
- That's the basis of what I do. And it's even more important than the exercise piece. That's why the nutrition period was in the first 10 episodes and now we're close to 20 for the strength. Yes, if you don't lift weights, you won't build a body. But if you don't control your calories, you will never actually have real transformation, your calories, your macros, your nutrition.
- That's what I do with my guys in the call to rise. It's a 100 day fat loss challenge to dramatically change your body, change your life for the better. John is a great example of it. Zach is a great example. Had plenty more guys that will be coming on sharing their stories about how we were able to make a very positive impact in their day-to-day life.
- That's why I coach my guys to lose 20 plus pound. Even if you don't have to lose weight, there's so [music] many other things. Chronic disease for the love. If you're walking around with bad blood panels, you need to change. You will die sooner. If you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, you're at risk of a heart attack, of just like literally early death.
- And I don't want to do that to my family, and I know you wouldn't either, especially if you gotten this far into the podcast series. So check out the calltorise.com. See if it's right for you. Uh the website is very specific and talks a ton about all the things that you can manage there. All right, guys.
- Next up is Tempo on the Strength Pyramid. Looking forward to it. Have a great day. Thank you for listening.
