This traditionalist's priority list can take you just so far. Eventually, as you become more seasoned you have to look beyond those basic ideas of muscle building and also look to the more subtle nuances. Perhaps the single-most over looked, yet worst thing you can do to utterly waste your time in the gym is to have the wrong pace of repetitions in each set. What I see all too often are guys coming to the gym with regularly and pushing themselves hard, but not making gains simply because their reps lack explosiveness when contracting against the weight (the so-called "concentric" phase of the exercise). This is often peppered by a ridiculous pause between repetitions. The idea of avoiding explosiveness and pausing between the reps results from a compunction of wanting to preserve strength for another repetition or an extra set, as well as fear. Indulging the habit is a big mistake. Remember that the reason you are in the gym is to build muscle, not test yourself. Leave that to powerlifters. So, preserving energy by avoiding explosiveness and taking long pauses between repetitions does nothing more than unload the muscle and reduce the amount of intensity generated. Your goal should be exactly the opposite. You should be strictly interested in how to make the situation as intensified as possible for the muscle you are training. Growth, or muscular hypertrophy as it is called, will not occur unless the muscle is subjected to a stress that goes beyond what can be regulated or beyond that which it has become accustomed. So lacking explosiveness and pausing between reps goes completely against the logic of needed intensity and load. Your repetitions should be smooth and rhythmic throughout the set, with a machine like cadence and a clear explosiveness with speed generated during the pushing or pulling phase against the resistance. Forget the pause; get off the top of the repetition and get into the next one and find a nonstop pace. As the weight becomes more difficult to move with each rep, obviously the rep pace will slow. Even so, keep pushing that concentric contraction against the weight as strongly and powerfully as possible. Don't pause to take breaths and wait to gather more energy. That's not your mission. Your mission is to blast the muscle and you can't do that by unloading the muscle with a pause. It takes some getting used to, but after a while you will get used to it. If you have never trained with much explosiveness and also incorporated a pause, you may initially experience a short-term drop in strength and a great deal of delayed onset muscle soreness as you build back up. But therein is the point that you in fact are weaker and smaller than you should be because of not paying attention to repetition pace. NEXT