When I first started lifting, I often wondered how I could make my workouts intense and full of explosive lifting like my bodybuilding idols.
I thought that their intensity was the key to their monstrous strength and huge muscles.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that intense workouts are not always better.
Decreasing rest period times can make your workouts more intense, but different experts have differing opinions on appropriate workout rest periods/workout length.
I’m going to teach you the real simple secret to creating intense workouts which is doing less and how to apply this tip to your training!
Intense Workout ≠ Great Workout
Intensity is not always necessary.
Don’t get me wrong, your workouts need to be challenging.
Most sets should be approaching or reaching failure to maximize your muscle-building potential.
However, just because you have had an intense workout doesn’t mean that it will lead you to build a good deal of muscle.
If that was true, the secret to building muscle through intense workouts would be not to take any rest breaks.
Rest breaks between sets and exercises lower the intensity of the workout.
Instead of doing 5 sets of 10 repetitions over 10 minutes, you could just do 50 repetitions while taking as little rest as possible.
You would have an insane pump and feel exhausted.
And if you’re exhausted and pumped up from an intense workout, you must be building muscle, right?
Wrong!
Most people can see the faults within this approach.
Fault 1
You won’t complete 50 repetitions with as little rest as possible unless you lower the weight aka drop sets.
Lowering the weight will reduce your muscle-building potential because you won’t be able to get as much tension to your muscles in comparison to completing 5 sets of 10 with heavier weights.
Drop sets are only a great strategy after you finish your main work with heavier weights.
Fault 2
Additionally, workouts that are too intense can lead to a great deal of muscle damage.
High amounts of muscle damage means the time it takes to recover goes ↑
If it takes too long to recover, you can’t maximize how much muscle you can build.
For example, it’s a better option to workout biceps twice a week with moderate intensity, than once a week with high intensity.
Therefore, we want to have intense workouts, but we also want to benefit from them.
A good workout should have some intensity, but the intensity should not be the only defining factor.
In fact, I would argue that intensity should naturally decrease as you work out in order to maximize effectiveness.
The best way I can describe the decrease in intensity throughout my workouts is through my music choice.
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When I start a workout, I’m listening to rap, hip hop, or rock (aka Tupac or Eminem).
This music gets me hyped.
In other words, it neurologically stimulates me, so that I’m prepared to lift weights with maximum effort.
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When I end a workout, I’m listening to R&B, country, or soul (aka John Legend or Adele).
This music serves the purpose of lowering my intensity so that I don’t feel as tired or burnt out as quickly.
This allows me to:
- Focus more on the isolation movements near the end of the workout
- If I’m too hyped up, my focus and discipline ↓, and I’m more likely to speed up the lowering or eccentric portion of my movements and reduce the benefits
- Avoid skipping the necessary core stability exercises
- You know, the exercises like planks, sit-ups, etc. that most people skip at the end of their workouts
Relationship Between Rest Periods and Intense Workouts
Now, let’s talk about rest periods because as I mentioned before, resting less can have a positive effect on intensity.
By resting less and increasing the density of our workout (AKA doing more reps in less time), it makes our workout seem more intense.
However, when we look at this from a scientific standpoint, it seems longer rest periods are more beneficial than shorter rest periods to build muscle.
Allowing a muscle to recover between sets is key to maximizing muscle growth.
This is counter-intuitive to the ideas that shorter, more intense workouts are better because in many cases, longer rest periods = more time in the gym.
However, anecdotally, I find that short (30-60 sec) rest periods work well for some people.
Many beginners don’t need extensive rest times because they aren’t lifting heavy loads.
And many experienced lifters like the feeling of gaining a pump while working out which is easier to do with shorter rest times.
Long Rest Times ≠ Long Time in the Gym
Long rest times equaling long workouts is not a universal rule.
Just because you are resting a lot, does not mean your workout will be long.
Some coaches, like Cal Dietz, fill their rest periods with accessory exercises that won’t interfere with the main lift.
For example, you can do stability exercises for the lower body such as single dumbbell Bulgarian split squats in between sets of heavy bench pressing.
This is a great tip to get out of the gym quickly, but not the ultimate secret to intense workouts.
We’ll get to that later!
Differing Beliefs on Workout Intensity
There are two different camps when it comes to time spent in the gym.
Group 1
First, there’s the people that spend 3 to 5 hours in the gym on a daily basis.
These are people like: Kai Greene, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jay Cutler.
Often, you’ll find that many bodybuilders are in this group because they workout for long periods of time in order to maximally stimulate their muscles.
Additionally, bodybuilders that use drugs, such as steroids are able to endure longer, more intense workouts that damage their muscles more.
This is because drugs can increase the ability for their muscles to recover from exercise.
For that reason, it can be beneficial for them and anyone with an extremely high ability to recover from workouts to spend more and more time in the gym.
Group 2
Then, the other group believes in spending a max of 45 minutes to an hour in the gym.
This group is full of people like: Cory Schlesinger, Dorian Yates, and Alex Leonidas (Alpha Destiny).
Often, you’ll find that this group is full of coaches and other people with multiple priorities aside from building muscle such as Cory Schlesinger and Alex Leonidas.
Collegiate strength and conditioning coaches in particular, like Cory Schlesinger, former strength coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, tend to train their athletes with a short, intense workout.
This is because the athletes have multiple priorities and can’t afford to spend many hours training in the weightroom during a day.
The job of a strength and conditioning coach is to merely train them in a way that boosts their play on the field/court.
While strength and conditioning is very important, it’s not very high on the overall scale of importance for most athletes.
It is far more important that they spend time actually playing their sport and attending classes.
For these reasons, it can be beneficial for natural athletes and those with average recovery times to train with shorter, more intense workouts to build muscle.
Take a look at this chart for a quick summary of the lifters and coaches mentioned above.
The main takeaway is that both groups make good points.
People that spend a long time in the gym often say that they need that time to finish their accessory work and to work out with high volumes.
They are focused on damaging their muscles as much as possible in order to maximize their muscle-building potential.
This doesn’t work for everyone because if your muscles are damaged for too long, you can’t exercise effectively.
People that tend to spend a short time in the gym often say that long workouts are unnecessary for the majority of benefits of exercise and have a poor effect on a person’s hormonal profile.
They are focused on not damaging their muscle too much with long, draining workouts.
Either approach can work, it just depends on the person!
The Real Secret to Intense Workouts
Do less!
That’s the secret to intense workouts.
Sounds simple, right?
But few people (including myself) heed this advice.
For a variety of reasons, many people have workouts that drag on and on for hours.
They take preworkout supplements and drink coffee to help them maintain their intensity for longer periods of time.
But this isn’t the simplest, most time effective option.
The simplest option to increase intensity is to do less.
This allows you to maximize the work that you do.
I recommend a max of 5-8 exercises per workout for intense workouts.
Every Workout Doesn’t Have to be an Intense Workout
In reality, workout times will vary from the amount of accessory work or the amount of sets of main exercises that you do.
For example, powerlifters that may bench press 8 sets of 2 reps with a heavy weight, may take just an hour to finish bench press (including warm-up time).
Also, the goal of every workout should not always be to maximize muscle building.
For example, calisthenics athletes that want to get better at handstands, normally spend the first 15-30 minutes of their workout practicing their handstand.
This doesn’t maximize their muscle building potential, but it helps them improve at the skill that they want.
How I Set Up My Workouts
Some days when I’m working out, I try to do more volume or more sets and reps.
These workouts normally take anywhere from an hour to two hours.
On other days, when I’m lifting heavy and focusing on training a particular movement, I may simply do my main exercise and 2-3 three accessory exercises and be out of the gym in 45 minutes to an hour.
If you want to jack up the intensity on your workouts, this is the way that I recommend you train.
What Does An Intense Workout Look Like?
As I said earlier, most people need to perform a max of 5-8 exercises to maximize intensity.
The majority of these exercises should be compound movements like pull-ups or squats that train multiple muscle groups.
Towards the end, sprinkle in the use of smaller accessory movements like bicep curls or calf raises to round out your workout.
Depending on what kind of workout split that you choose, the intensity of your workout may be affected.
Personally, I use a full body split when I workout.
I know that this can cost me some intensity towards the end of my workouts because after the first hour, my motivation to workout may be lower.
In past years, this has led to me skipping certain accessory movements and core exercises that could have helped me get stronger and stay healthy for longer periods of time.
However, I like to workout only 3-4x a week, so this works out well for me.
Different Training Splits for Intensity
Bodybuilding training splits where a person focuses on one muscle group every day throughout the week is an option people often use to increase intensity.
This really works to maximize intensity because if you isolate a muscle group you can easily train it hard with three to five exercises within an hour.
However, this may not be best to build muscle due to low training frequency.
It’s normally best to train a muscle group more than once a week to maximize hypertrophy.
The best training splits to maximize intensity and build muscle are upper/lower, push/pull, or anterior/posterior.
These training splits allow you to train multiple times a week without spending a ton of time in the gym.
In a full-body workout, you have to train the main body parts such as:
- Back
- Shoulders
- Chest
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
before you can isolate these body parts and other smaller body parts like calves and arms further.
However, if you tried an upper / lower split you can train:
- Back
- Shoulders
- Chest
on Day 1 and
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
on Day 2
If you like training with intense workouts every day, splits like these are the best for you to build muscle!
Did you find this article on increasing the intensity of your workouts helpful?
Make sure to comment down below the techniques you use to intensify your workouts!
Peace!
