When we talk of training in the gym, this does not mean that we are to work like labourer and keep lifting, pushing, pulling, hanging, gripping and handling the load for giving punishment to the muscles with an idea to strengthen them.
In the ancient past people use to spend hours on dund beithaks at other laborious activities in the Akharas. These activities, so called exercises, used to the digging the fields, lifting heavy moonglies, running for hours, doing thousand plus beithak (free squats) push ups and many unusual movements which normally were done for power, stamina and strength. But if we watch the history and we will find the most of the old wrestler, died young or suffered from deranged walking style and swollen joints in the elderly age. This was due to over using of joints for single movement, where the muscular benefit is minimum, but the stamina benefit used to more. Like labourer who can lift moderate quantity of weight throughout the day but always need combined effort to lift a heavy single weight. This proves the laborer are not strong, bigger and healthier. Most of the laborer hardly go to work straight for more than 7-10 days. If they try to work more they normally fall sick and go to the Doctor for some of the problems relating to over work and over use of body which leads to lowering of immunity and tolerance to infections.
On the other hand people who trained with heavier weight for short period at one time for fewer sets, they are bigger, stronger and healthier. One gets better muscular and get power benefit with 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions of weight Squats then 300-500 free pehalwani beithaks. Similarly shorts spell of 100mts running makes your stronger and bigger than long spells of 5-10 thousand running. Just observe sufficient quantity of rest before and after every set of exercise, so that you can perform the next set with greater force and greater power. And recover from the previous powerful set , you have performed earlier.
Its like your force to take 5-10 minutes rest after an all out 100 mts sprint for the next set of an all out sprint, and you need little rest after you complete light slow spells of long distance running. I have made it clear that doing laborious long and low capacity and low intensity exercise, will lead to shrinking of muscles lowering of body weight and invitation to unwanted over used joint injuries. Whereas high intensity short heavier workouts can help to you get stronger, bigger and leaner.
Keeping in your above statement we should avoid spending more time on the exercises like treadmills, cycling, cross trainer and rowing etc. this can lead to over use of joints and ligaments, painful joints and muscle baileys, monotony and finally drop off. One should do the above exercises on alternate days and increase the duration and intensity slowly from five minutes to 10 minutes in a period of 2-3 months. This will help you to use all the apparatus and gazettes covering most of the joints and muscles related to all the body parts. It will be blunder if you spend 30 minutes on treadmills alone daily, which can lead to various injuries to majority of the users and ultimately the drop of from the exercise.
My purpose in writing this article is to guide all fitness freaks to follow the perfect theory of rest and pause, which can help them to remain into the fitness life style for many years, without getting any injury. Avoid labour (over training, over use of joints, high repetitive - low intensity training, unwanted breathlessness activities, tiring and exhausting workouts).