Dumbbell Bench Press
If you are familiar with various methods of weight training, you may run into lifters who do one to three high intensity sets for a body part and seem to think they are not training nearly as much as those who are doing a high number of sets. It’s also true that those who are doing tons of sets for a body part believe they are training way more then those who are doing a few high intensity sets. What I am about to say may seem like I’ve lost my mind, but if you cut out any rest time and only consider the actual workout time, there isn’t nearly as much difference between the two as most people would imagine.
Actual Total Workout Time
For those who may not be familiar with some of the high intensity training methods, it is common to use slow reps for both the lifting and the lowering portion of each rep. When I watched a video of Mike Mentzer coaching a bodybuilder (Markus Reinhardt) through a high intensity workout, he started out with three warm-up sets.
Warm up = 1 Minute 40 Seconds of Actual Exercise Time
Not counting the rest between warm-up sets, Markus (the lifter) performed 1 minute 40 seconds of warm up exercise.
First Work Set = 2 Minutes 10 Seconds of Actual Exercise Time
The warm up was followed by one hard set of pec deck flies which consisted of 2 minutes and 10 seconds of exercise with no rest.
Second Work Set = 2 Minutes of Actual Exercise Time
The final set for chest was a rest pause set on a bench press machine; the total lifting time for benches was 2 minutes when you exclude the rests.
Total for 3 Sets = 5 Minutes 50 Seconds of Actual Exercise Time
When you add up all of this exercise time, it comes to a total of 5 minutes and 50 seconds of actual exercise for the chest. You can see this workout for yourself in the video below.
What I want to point out is that a workout description that simply lists the number of sets and reps does not tell the full story in terms of the actual exercise time as 5 minutes and 50 seconds is a lot of exercise for a body part. In addition, people interpret what it is that constitutes sets and reps differently. In the video, Markus Reinhardt does three warm-up sets that add up to a total of 15 reps, followed by two work sets consisting of 5 reps in the first set, and 8 reps in the second. The high intensity crowd would interpret the workout that Markus did as two sets for a total of 13 reps. They wouldn’t include warm-up sets as part of the workout description because in their mind, sets and reps that aren’t done at a high intensity are not a part of the real workout. Other people might interpret the same workout as five sets that add up to a total of 28 reps because they would count the warm-up sets and reps as part of the workout.
Less Isn’t Really Less
Oddly enough, one of the high intensity philosophies is that less is more when it comes to workouts. For some reason, they believe they are training less because they are in and out of the gym much quicker than someone who does a lot of sets. The truth is that people who use the high intensity method as shown in the video are not training less. They may be doing less sets, less reps, and spending less time in the gym, but if you cut out the rest time between sets and only look the actual exercise time for a body part, they are not doing any less than the people who they criticize for overtraining and doing too many sets. And the people who think that a couple sets of high intensity training is insufficient are only looking at the number of sets and reps instead of looking at the actual workout time.
Do it if it Works
Some people do respond to high intensity training which greatly stresses the lactate system within the muscles. It’s based on pushing yourself while in a state of severe muscular fatigue. If you respond to that type of training, then I recommend it. The Mentzer brothers both used this form of training to become huge and extremely strong. However, if you don’t respond to this type of high intensity training, then I would suggest that you consider Precision Point Training Principles where fatigue is avoided in order to workout in a strong state, rather to workout in a weakened state of fatigue.
Don’t be fooled by the high intensity training philosophy that you will be training less to gain more if you use high intensity training. The actual training time isn’t less. In the next article, I will compare the actual training time of high intensity training methods with the actual training time of people who don’t use high intensity forms of training, but they use various ranges of sets and reps with a faster rep speed. Best of Training to you.
More Articles on actual training time:
Part 2 of Actual Training Time
Click here to see the next article in which Ronnie Coleman does a bench press workout consisting of 74 seconds of actual workout time.