Set/Pause/Resume – To Get An Extra Rep Or 2 Using New Fibers

This article is a guest post written by Darrin Clement with World Fitness Network.

Many of you are new to bodybuilding/weight lifting.

Some of you have been working hard and diligently for months or years.

But all of you will reach a level where you aren’t progressing the way you once were.  We call this a “plateau”.

To get past it, often you don’t need to do anything special.  If you are following a respected program, stick with it and you’ll likely work through the plateau naturally.

But sometimes you just get stuck.

When you’re stuck, and not seeing the results you want, you get annoyed.  You get discouraged.  And so your workouts become slightly less intense.

And that just starts the death spiral of a self-fulfilling prophecy where you actually halt progress o regress.

There are many ways around this but today let’s talk about the Set/Pause/Resume approach.

It’s brain-dead simple.  Though you’ll likely never hear this from the trainers who appear on Oprah because they can’t market this – it’s too simple!

How To Do Set/Pause/Resume

Do your set, with maximum intensity, just like normal.  Remember, maximum intensity can mean slightly different things to different people depending on their fitness level and their goals, but it always means working that set as hard as you can, mentally and physically, so that you just barely get that last rep out.

Ok, have you squeezed out that last rep for the set?

Good.

Now, put the weight down.

Count to two.

Pick up the weight again.

Bang out two to three more reps.

That’s it!

Now, if you can get out more than 3 reps when you resume, then you either rested too long or you didn’t really do the original set at maximum intensity.

If you can only get 1 more (or none!), then try a slightly longer rest.

And don’t get confused by “put down the weight”.  If the exercise is pull-ups, for example, then the weight is your entire body so the instructions should be obvious that you let go of the pullup bar and stand there for 2 seconds before jumping back up to bang out a few more reps.  In my opinion, for pull-ups, this is much better than resorting to wrist straps unless you are doing pull-ups with extra weights.

Why This Works

It’s no surprise that you can bang out a couple more with a brief rest.  But why does this help you get past your plateau?

Keep in mind that any particular muscle has many, many fibers that comprise it.  Your main set likely fatigues and tears many of those fibers.  But not all of them.

With such a short rest, when you resume you are most likely not going to use the main muscle fibers that were already torn.  You’ll recruit additional fibers that were only lightly fatigued in the main set.

Thus, you end up with a more full exposure of the muscle group and after you take a day or two of recovery, you’ll come back stronger.

Set/Pause/Resume With Compound Movements

Keep in mind, we advocate compound exercises, that involve many muscle groups.  While the Set/Pause/Resume phenomenon is easier to visualize if you think about a single muscle (like your triceps), the benefits to this approach are even greater when you realize that compound exercises involve different muscle groups.

When you do compound movements, there may be 2-3 main muscle groups but lots of secondary muscles also are involved.  Sometimes, those secondary muscles fail earlier than the main muscles which tend to be larger.

So when you resume, you are likely to not only recruit additional fibers in each muscle, you’ll also work the those main muscles even harder.

I guarantee that if you are stuck in a rut, this technique will break you through your plateau within 1 week.

This article was written Darrin Clement with World Fitness Network. World Fitness Network focuses on the art and science of building lean muscle mass – and an awesome physique. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to the World Fitness Network Blog and get a free ebook.