Rest pause training is at once a simple, brutal, intimidating, anabolic, time efficient, and highly effective training principle. This style of training demands total focus, adherence to proper form, a very high level of motivation, and strict discipline. Rest pause carries the highest risk of injury and over training if the advice mentioned above is ignored, you have been warned.

There have been a few variations to this training principle with differing levels of effectiveness. At its most basic, purest level it involves heavy, heavy lifting with reps of one to three for two to three exercises for big muscle groups such as thighs, back, and chest. One to two exercises for medium muscle groups such as shoulders, calves, and maybe triceps. One exercise for smaller muscle groups such as hamstrings and biceps. Abdominals do not need rest pause unless you would like a huge waist.

First off I would suggest reps more in the three to five range on upper body exercises and five to seven on lower body for the following reasons, one: less risk of injury, two: less trauma on tendons, ligaments, and joints, three: better able to maintain proper form, four: better for bodybuilding purposes.

Also I would suggest training the whole upper body in one workout and the lower body in another workout. By training the whole upper body together the deltoids do not have to serve double duty as they would if you trained push and pull muscles separately, leading to overuse injuries and joint problems, two situations that can make training miserable as you are always training in pain.

Now you have choice of three workout setups, one constant from week to week and two others that rotate from week to week.

The first setup is the simplest and easiest to fit into a regular lifestyle due to its week to week predictability. In this scenario you train four days a week in a two way split. The advantages are always knowing when and what you will be training and once you inform others who may be affected by your schedule allowances can be made and accommodated for and taking both your heavy days on the last two days of your work week, that is if you don't work weekends. Train legs heavy on the last of days leading into the weekend, trust me.

The disadvantages of this setup is the rest periods between workouts are constant and the upper and lower body workouts are done back to back.

The second setup is a two way split and a every other day rotation with each upper and lower body workout leapfrogging over themselves and a rest day. If you have a very tightly structured life schedule this will be the least convenient setup.

The advantages are more rest time between workouts, better mental stimulation due to an ever changing workout day.

The disadvantages of this setup are constantly having to inform others of your week to week workout day changes, which can be annoying to someone not in sync with your goals such as spouses, friends, and employers if working late is a possibility and working out on some weekend days.

The third setup is my personal favorite, it is a two way split on a three day triple rotation. The advantages are workout day predictability, more rest between workouts that vary week to week, a rest day between workouts, and the weekends off.

The disadvantages are that there aren't any. Your workout days of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday do not change but what you train, when you train it, and how hard you train it changes week to week, that is where the triple rotation comes in.

One week you train upper body on Monday and Friday and lower body on Wednesday and the next week you train lower body on Monday and Friday and upper body on Wednesday, back and forth from week to week, continuously rotating and on top of that both halves of the split are rotating with a rest pause workout one time and a regular workout the next time, confused yet? Nobody said making gains without over training was simple.

The rest pause workouts will look like this, upper body workout: overhead barbell press, incline barbell bench press, flat barbell bench press, parallel bar dips, shoulder width under grip chins, barbell bent over rows, T-bar rows, barbell curls.

Lower body workout: Barbell squats, leg press, stiff legged deadlifts, standing calf raise. Warm up thoroughly with five warm up sets each for push, pull, and legs. The three exercises to warm up with are barbell overhead press, shoulder width under grip chins, and barbell squat, five sets of ten reps, one minute between warm up sets then two minutes between the last warm up and the first working set.

Rest two to three minutes between exercises of related muscle groups, those being push, pull, and legs. Rest five minutes between the last set of push and the first set of warm ups for pull. Train right through all sets of legs without extended rest periods between quads, hams, and calves.

Each exercise is done for one set of three to five reps or five to seven reps depending if you are working upper or lower body, after you reach positive failure rack or put down the weight and rest 10-15 seconds, then unrack or pick up the weight and do as many reps as you can then rack or put down the weight and rest 10-15 seconds, then unrack or pick up the weight and do as many as you can and rack or put down the weight and rest 10-15 seconds, then unrack or pick up the weight a final time and do as many reps as you can. That is one rest pause set.

You do one and only one of these sets for each exercise. It is okay after the initial set of each exercise if your reps fall to one, only taking off ten to twenty pounds for upper body and calves and twenty five to fifty pounds for quads and hams when even one rep is impossible.

So that is one initial set followed by three more sets with a 10-15 second rest between them for each exercise,only removing a little weight when you can't get even one rep on one of the minisets within the one set you are doing for each exercise, can you say brutal?

So brutal in fact that you should only stay on this for four to six weeks before switching to a less intense program and do not return to it for a few months. If abused rest pause will dig you a hole of over training so deep it could stop gains for months and kill your motivation and drive to train.

Treat it like a deadly weapon, handle with care, you've been warned.

The other workouts should be more normal in nature, nothing excessive and just train to positive failure or almost depending on how you feel, remember this is the nudge workout bridging you from your last rest pause workout to your next rest pause workout.

The regular workouts would look like this, upper body: seated dumbbell press - 2 sets, incline dumbbell press - 2 sets, dumbbell pullovers - 2 sets, bench dips - 2 sets, wide pulldowns - 2 sets, seated cable row - 2 sets, standing cable upright rows - 2 sets, seated incline dumbbell curls - 2 sets. Keep the reps in the ten to fifteen range.

Lower body: seated calf raise - 3 sets, standing calf raise - 2 sets, leg curls - 3 sets, rope squats - 3 sets, one legged squats - 2 sets, seated cable crunches - 3 sets. Keep the reps in the fifteen to twenty rep range on quads, hams, and calves and the fifteen to twenty five rep range on abs.

That is how you handle a bodybuilding heavyweight, with caution, common sense, and respect.


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