THE WEIDER QUALITY PRINCIPLE

This tenet prescribes reducing your rest periods between sets to less than one minute. Around the time this advice was popularised in the ’70s, bodybuilders believed doing faster workouts was a pre-contest strategy for heightening definition and muscle shape. During the off-season, they trained heavy on compound lifts  with long rest periods to build mass. Pre-contest, they did more reps, more isolation exercises, and rested less. One of the main reasons we’re revisiting the Weider principles is to examine the reasoning behind them in light of today’s science and practical knowledge. Today, most competitive bodybuilders don’t radically alter their training when on a diet. They lift weights in the most efficient musclebuilding manner in the final weeks
before a show, just as they do in the off-season, to keep as much size as possible, and they use their diet and cardio to shed fat. Definition and improved muscle shape will appear when fat is stripped away. Nevertheless, resting less between sets, as the quality principle prescribes, is a valuable technique whether in the off-season or pre- contest. A recent study in trained male lifters had one group train for eight weeks using a two-minute rest period between sets. The other group started week one using a two-minute rest period but reduced rest by 15 seconds each successive week until they were down to 30 seconds of rest between sets. The group decreasing their rest time increased arm size by 21% and
leg size by 28%. The group keeping their rest the same increased arm size by 14% and leg size by 19%. In the first group, the extra expansion occurred because exhausting a muscle with minimal rest between sets can lead to the natural production of a variety of growth factors.