Even though you do more reps and keep your muscles under tension longer with the pause method, your body doesn’t produce more lactic acid or muscle damage markers — meaning intensity matters more than total reps.

You can lift almost a third less weight using the pause method, but still do the same total amount of work — and even do more reps and keep your muscles under tension longer.

Adding a one-second pause at the bottom of each bench press doesn’t make your muscles more damaged or sore the next day than lifting heavy without pausing.

Even though one method uses lighter weights with pauses and more reps, and the other uses heavier weights with fewer reps, both make the muscles equally tired in terms of lactic acid buildup.

Both the pause method and the heavy-lift method cause the same amount of muscle cell leakage into the blood after a workout — meaning neither one causes more muscle damage than the other.

The pause method doesn’t make your muscles more sore the next day or two after your workout than the normal heavy-lift method.