Rest period length manipulation on repetition consistency for distinct single-joint exercises

The purpose of this study was to verify the influence of different rest periods between sets for single-joint exercises. Ten trained men (24.3 [+ or -] 2.8 yrs; 75.8 [+ or -] 9.1 kg; 174.4 [+ or -] 7.0 cm) performed 3 sets of 10RM for the machine chest fly and the biceps curl. Each exercise was performed with a different rest period (1, 2, and 4-min) using a random cross-over design. There were reduced total number of repetitions for the machine chest fly with 1-min compared to 2-min and 4-min ([DELTA]% = -17.29; 34.3). As for the biceps curl exercise, the shorter 1-min also decreased the performance when compared with rest periods of 2min and 4-min ([DELTA]% = -13.3; -31.7). In addition, there were also important differences between the 2-min and the 4-min rest for both exercises (machine chest fly, [DELTA] = -21.3; biceps curl, [DELTA] = -21.1). We concluded that short rest periods resulted in early reductions in repetition performance and training volume over multiple sets for both single-joint exercises. Key Words: Muscle Strength, Weight Lifting, Physical Fitness