What do you do with your time between sets?
Here’s what I usually see: people sitting on a piece of equipment between sets, zoning out, or chatting with people. The sitting around part can be a pain because in a crowded gym, chances are good someone else would like to be using the bench or machine you’re perched on.
Now I’m going to sound like an old crank. But when I first started working out in gyms, in the early 1980s, it was common gym etiquette to allow others to “work in” with you. The person using the bench, machine, whatever, might ask someone standing nearby, “Did you want to work in?” And nobody took offense if you approached someone and asked whether you could work in. That’s a phrase I rarely hear these days.
The other problem with sitting around, as I see it, is that you’re losing focus and losing an opportunity to keep your heart rate up.
What I like to do upon finishing a set: immediately move to another exercise for the same or a different bodypart or immediately begin a few laps (40 seconds each) around the indoor track. I find that staying in motion keeps my energy up, and if I’m walking, I start thinking about the next set and what I hope to accomplish with it.
If I just sit and wait, I can almost feel my energy level draining.
And although I don’t want to be antisocial in the gym, there’s only so much time I’ll devote to chatting with people unless the workout is over. Talking about something other than what I’m doing at the moment also causes me to lose focus and energy.
So what do you do between sets? And are you happy with the energy level of your workout?
