In the last article, I discussed the fact that high intensity training is often advertised as being brief but intense. A lifter only needs to do a few sets at the most for a body part and they’re quickly out of the gym. While it’s true that a slow rep high intensity workout may only consist of one to three sets per body part and a short time in the gym, the actual workout time for a given body part may be over 5 minutes when you exclude rest time between sets. This is often as much as someone who does up to 20 sets for a body part.
Not all high intensity lifters use extra slow reps; some simply go to failure or beyond with faster reps. These high intensity lifters would have a lot shorter actual training time than the slow rep high intensity lifters, and the lifters who do tons of sets.
20 Sets Equals 5 minutes of Exercise
If you are wondering the actual training time of bodybuilders and lifters who use faster reps and a lot of sets, we can start with Ronnie Coleman. When I timed Ronnie for five sets of the bench press, the time of each set was as follows:
1st set took 21 seconds
2nd set took 16 seconds
3rd set took 13 seconds
4th set took 12 seconds
5th set took 12 seconds
Total of 5 sets = 74 seconds of actual exercise time!
If you add up the actual workout time of all five sets combined, Ronnie’s total workout time without rest is 74 seconds. If Ronnie did 20 total sets for chest exercises using a rep speed similar to his bench press speed, then twenty total sets of chest exercises would take about 4 minutes and 56 seconds. I’m guessing he would do exercises such as flies or cable crossovers at a slower rep speed, but it’s doubtful that he would spend more than six minutes actually exercising if he did 20 sets.
If I understand Ronnie’s training correctly, he does closer to 15 sets per body part which would put him at just under 4 minutes of actual training time using the rep speed he used in the training video. Even though it may take Ronnie up to a half an hour or 45 minutes to do 15 sets for his chest, his actual training time when you exclude rest between sets is probably only four to five minutes. If you compare this to the actual workout time of a slow rep high intensity workout, there’s very little difference.
An Extreme
At the high end extreme of training volume would be someone like Jay Cutler who has said there are times he has done workouts consisting of 30- 40 sets of back exercises. His sets usually take between 15 to 20 seconds. If he were to do forty sets, his actual training time would be between 10 to 13 minutes on back exercises.
15 Seconds of Deadlifting
We can go in the opposite direction from high volume training and look at the actual training time in regard to the way powerlifters commonly train. Powerlifters often blast out a few fast reps for each set of a given exercise and stop to rest. The deadlift workout on the following video consists of 8 singles. The actual lifting time of all singles combined is approximately 15 seconds, although powerlifters often do other assistance exercises for lower back, glutes and hamstrings with their dead lift workout.
18 Sets Equals Just Over 1 Minute of Chest Exercise
Another powerlifting workout for a speed bench workout shows a lifter doing 16 sets of 3 reps which equals a total of 48 reps. Believe it or not, his actual workout time when you combine all 16 sets is approximately 36 seconds which he accomplishes in 7 minutes and 24 seconds when you include rest between sets. He follows this with two sets of 15 reps for incline dumbbell presses. Louie Simmons, the lifting coach in this video below, says to use a weight that allows for 25 reps if you were to go to failure, but use that weight for two sets of 15 reps. Each set of fifteen reps takes the lifter about 14 seconds. When you add these two sets on to the 16 sets of speed bench, the actual lifting time of all 18 sets of chest exercises is 64 seconds. That’s right around one minute of actual exercise time.
The point is that focusing on the creatine phosphate energy system in short bursts is the primary way that a lot of powerlifters gain strength. It doesn’t take hours of annihilating your muscles every day in order to get strong. You may find it helpful to evaluate your training to see how much actual exercise time you are spending on each body part. The harder and faster you lift, the less time is needed. Best of training to you.
To see the previous article on actual training time in which Mike Mentzer takes Markus Reignhardt through a high intensity chest workout that takes 5 minutes and 50 seconds, click here
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