Stefanie Cohen, a world-record-holding powerlifter, knows the importance of balancing intense workouts with proper rest. Recently on Instagram, Cohen emphasized that rest between sets is just as crucial as the reps you’re doing. “The more intense or heavier the set, the longer your rest should be,” she explained. Beyond powerlifting, Cohen is also a professional boxer and incorporates a strict strength training routine, focusing on core work and sticking to a consistent set of exercises for maximum results. She stresses the importance of repetition and progression in her training to achieve muscle growth and strength, sharing that sticking to a monotonous routine helps quantify progress and see real results.
As you can see from her Instagram post’s caption, Cohen makes sure to rest between different exercise sets. She also says that her rest time is dependent on the workouts she’s doing. “One key rule? The more intense or heavier the set, the longer your rest should be so you can continue matching the intensity for all of your working sets.”
In her Instagram video, Cohen is seen doing strength training exercises like tricep pushdowns. Strength training has a lot of benefits. ACE Fitness states, “Strength training with heavy weights improves muscle definition. Muscle definition occurs as the result of muscles remaining in a state of semi-contraction and heavy strength training recruits the larger type II muscle fibers responsible for a muscle’s appearance.”
In addition to being a powerlifter, Cohen is also a professional boxer. She shared this video on Instagram of herself fighting in the ring. Cohen captioned the post, “I started boxing because I felt weak. Not physically- I am the strongest lb for lb on the planet. But I was weak of spirit. Thanks to boxing, that’s changed 🖤”
When it comes to working out, Cohen believes in sticking to her favorite exercises. She talked about this in the caption of this Instagram video. “If you ask any of the greats you’ll realize that one of the main things all their training programs have in common is little exercise variation, and a very short list of exercises on rotation. Why? Because it works. Muscle growth and strength comes from repetition and logical weight progression. The better you get at a movement, the better you get at recruiting specific muscles and thus, the more weight you can add to an exercise, the more reps and set you can do. So instead of randomly changing your workouts daily, stick to a more monotonous routine and you’ll be able to better quantify progress and see results.”
Cohen makes sure to work her core muscles. She shared her tips for doing so in the caption of this Instagram video. “The ‘core’ is more than the muscles you show off at the beach, it’s the foundation of your body. It is also often overlooked by iron athletes due to the misconception that the squat, bench, deadlift, press already involve the core therefore they think there is no need for extra exercises. Beside the ‘abs’ the core involves the diaphragm, transverse abdominis, multifidus, pelvic floor, erectors and rectus abdominis. That’s why doing crunches alone isn’t going to cut it. Some of the benefits of having a stronger/resilient core include lower recurrence of low back injuries, improved running efficiency and weight lifting due to minimizing the leakage of power from the trunk and better transfer of power to the extremities, and finally improved balance, coordination and body awareness. By spending just a few minutes a day doing a core routine designated to target each of these muscles you can improve your performance as well as reduce your injury risk.”