Looking for thoughts and scientific backup on rest periods for pressing portion of ROP.
With combined wisdom of bro-science, my available fitness texts, and anecdotal experience I've aimed to keep my total time for ROP to under an hour for each workout. Some of my thoughts and brief research that lead to this goal are below. The math ends up as follows:
10-15min warm-up
>30min C&P ladders
2-12min pulls
3-18min cool-down
For those of you that have worked through ROP, I think you'll agree that the 5 ladders with 5 rungs each in half an hour is ambitious if your weight is challenging. If we do a little rough math and assume 1:00 for 10 reps, the 5x(1,2,3,4,5) requires at least 15minutes of work, leaving <15min for rest, or an average of <36 seconds of rest between each rung.
I'm not even to the full 5x(1,2,3,4,5) yet at my current weight, but I have a feeling if I can keep up I won't be leaving anything in the tank by the last rung of each ladder.
Am I setting myself up to fail as the program progresses by keeping my (arguably arbitrary) timeline?
Should I just let the workout can run as long as it needs to, sacrificing time in order to "stay fresh"?
I fully recognize that ETK says short, long, or somewhere in between you will get stronger for different reasons. Either building muscle through shorter rest or building the skill of strength with longer rests. "Why complicate?" But if I give myself the benefit of the doubt and assume my form is solid (there is certainly some doubt) and my gains available courtesy of skill improvement are limited or at least harder to come by, I would argue that building muscle should be my primary goal to increase strength.
To that end I've spent a little time looking through available material for how quickly I should aim to do my ROP. What I've found is that, generally, it is recommended to keep workout to less than an hour.
1. Bro-science claims that Eastern Bloc scientists determined 45 minutes to be the optimum workout length for testosterone production and strength development, with both measures plummeting after about the 60minute mark. Unfortunately, I could not find the academic article on which this assertion is based.
2. What I could find was that manuals from USAW, NSCA, and Crossfit either explicitly or implicitly adhere to the maxim of 45-60minutes for strength training. With the exception of ROP, the Pavel programs I have ready access to (PM, PTP, GTG, and S&S) are all short and intense with the expectation of huge strength gains given adherence to the program.
3. Anecdotally, I and the people that have written training for me have always stuck to an hour being the ideal.
There are caveats for each of these but I'm choosing to move on without addressing them for the sake of brevity. We can discuss in the comments if necessary.
With combined wisdom of bro-science, my available fitness texts, and anecdotal experience I've aimed to keep my total time for ROP to under an hour for each workout. Some of my thoughts and brief research that lead to this goal are below. The math ends up as follows:
10-15min warm-up
>30min C&P ladders
2-12min pulls
3-18min cool-down
For those of you that have worked through ROP, I think you'll agree that the 5 ladders with 5 rungs each in half an hour is ambitious if your weight is challenging. If we do a little rough math and assume 1:00 for 10 reps, the 5x(1,2,3,4,5) requires at least 15minutes of work, leaving <15min for rest, or an average of <36 seconds of rest between each rung.
I'm not even to the full 5x(1,2,3,4,5) yet at my current weight, but I have a feeling if I can keep up I won't be leaving anything in the tank by the last rung of each ladder.
Am I setting myself up to fail as the program progresses by keeping my (arguably arbitrary) timeline?
Should I just let the workout can run as long as it needs to, sacrificing time in order to "stay fresh"?
I fully recognize that ETK says short, long, or somewhere in between you will get stronger for different reasons. Either building muscle through shorter rest or building the skill of strength with longer rests. "Why complicate?" But if I give myself the benefit of the doubt and assume my form is solid (there is certainly some doubt) and my gains available courtesy of skill improvement are limited or at least harder to come by, I would argue that building muscle should be my primary goal to increase strength.
To that end I've spent a little time looking through available material for how quickly I should aim to do my ROP. What I've found is that, generally, it is recommended to keep workout to less than an hour.
1. Bro-science claims that Eastern Bloc scientists determined 45 minutes to be the optimum workout length for testosterone production and strength development, with both measures plummeting after about the 60minute mark. Unfortunately, I could not find the academic article on which this assertion is based.
2. What I could find was that manuals from USAW, NSCA, and Crossfit either explicitly or implicitly adhere to the maxim of 45-60minutes for strength training. With the exception of ROP, the Pavel programs I have ready access to (PM, PTP, GTG, and S&S) are all short and intense with the expectation of huge strength gains given adherence to the program.
3. Anecdotally, I and the people that have written training for me have always stuck to an hour being the ideal.
There are caveats for each of these but I'm choosing to move on without addressing them for the sake of brevity. We can discuss in the comments if necessary.