Everyone wants to stay lean while gaining quality muscle, leading many to adopt strict diets and workout plans. While these are crucial, optimizing rest periods between sets can significantly enhance your results. The length of these rest periods, or "inter-set recovery," impacts how your muscles clear metabolic waste and replenish fuel stores, influencing your performance and ultimately helping you reach your fitness goals faster. Just like reps and loads, rest periods can be tailored to help you reach your fitness goals faster.
The Importance of Resistance Training
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of resistance training. Adding muscle to your frame causes your body to speed up its metabolism. For every pound of lean muscle you forge, count on losing an extra 35-50 calories per day, or up to 1,500 calories a month or 18,000 calories per year while resting. Resistance training also burns more calories after exercise. One study found that after a 30-minute full-body workout in which subjects trained with their 10RM weights, resting metabolic rate was elevated by 20% for two days following the exercise session.
General Guidelines for Rest Periods
How long you should rest between resistance training sets will vary depending on whether you want to grow your muscle mass, lose weight, or improve your strength, power, or endurance.
Rest Time for Beginners
If you're new to the gym and your focus is more on learning form, getting used to the dynamics of the space, and establishing a routine, aim to rest for two minutes to 2:30 for big compound exercises and 60 to 90 seconds for accessory movements (like isolation exercises). When you take these rest periods, make sure that you're resting-that means not squeezing in unrelated stretches or other movements to keep your body busy, and not falling into the smartphone trap and scrolling past your allotted time. Instead, focus on preparing yourself for your next set. Get your equipment in order, take a seat if you need, and ready yourself to nail the reps. Novice weightlifters typically benefit from 60-120 seconds of rest between sets. They may change the rest interval depending on their goals as their training progresses.
Rest Time for Hypertrophy (Muscle Gain)
The classic advice for maximizing muscle growth (i.e., hypertrophy) is to rest one minute between sets of 8 to 12 reps. Muscle hypertrophy is best achieved with moderate rest between sets, such as 30-90 seconds. But recent research suggests that three minutes might be the true sweet spot. That’s what scientists found in a small study published recently in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. When they compared the training adaptations between men who rested one minute and three minutes between sets, they discovered that three minutes produced greater gains in both strength and hypertrophy. But it’s also important to remember that every body is different, so don’t hesitate to experiment a bit to find the rest period that works best for you.
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Rest Time for Muscular Endurance
If you’re training for muscular endurance-your muscles' ability to continue to contract before fatiguing-high reps combined with minimal rest is the way to go. You want to train your muscles to clear waste and replenish fuel quickly and to condition your cardiorespiratory system to circulate oxygen-rich blood as efficiently as possible. Muscular endurance training typically involves short rest periods between 20-60 seconds. In this type of training, a higher volume of reps is performed with a lower amount of weight. This is important for athletes of all types of backgrounds who want a balanced approach to their training. To achieve these goals, research shows that you should rest no more than a half minute between sets. This rest time is reduced even more when you’re performing HIIT or circuit training, during which you should typically rest only long enough to transition between exercises in each round. The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends 30-second rest intervals between sets to improve muscular endurance. This was part of a linear, periodized program consisting of muscular endurance, hypertrophy, strength, and power (6). Muscular endurance programs are typically done with short rest intervals either between sets of the same exercise or via a circuit training program. There are also programs such as high intensity interval training (HIIT) that are beneficial to achieve muscular endurance.
Rest Time for Strength and Power
The textbook advice for maximizing strength gains is to lift heavy, do no more than six reps per set, and to rest at least three minutes per set with five minutes being the upper limit. Power training is similar with the exception of reducing your weight to increase the explosiveness of each rep. Strength can be maximized by rest intervals between 2-5 minutes in duration. This allows the muscles to recover enough to produce a comparable amount of force for the next set. Here's why: You want your muscles to recover as fully as possible between sets so they can generate maximum force during each of them. In so doing, you’ll target your type II muscle fibers, which are your largest. These fibers also have the greatest growth potential.
Rest Between Sets for Weight Loss
While most people frequently change the weight they lift or the number of reps they perform from workout to workout, week to week, and month to month, few consider modifying their rest periods - and that’s a big mistake. Don’t spend your time between sets chatting up the chick on the treadmill. To add a calorie-burning element to your weight training, limit rest periods to 30-45 seconds. Resting 30 seconds between sets has been shown to increase caloric burn by 50%, compared to a three-minute rest period. To help amp up your calorie burn between sets - and accomplish more in less time - incorporate supersets or drop sets on weight-training days or perform your exercises circuit-style. You can also maximize time by doing your ab moves between other exercises, rather than waiting until the end of your routine. Don’t get stuck in a rut with the same exercises and weights. Expect that after 4-6 weeks, your body will have adjusted and will be starving for something new. Aim to make incremental increases to your weight loads, try new exercises, shorten rest periods, incorporate advanced techniques like supersets, change from barbells to dumbbells…anything to keep your body guessing and improving. Build your routine around multijoint movements like presses, rows and squats to recruit the most muscle and burn the most calories. If your goal is to have a slimmer waistline, don’t train your abs with heavy loads. Use a weight that allows you to get at least 15 reps per set, allowing minimal rest between sets (less than 60 seconds). Add 5%-10% more weight to your lifts and perform sets in the 6-8-rep range to shock your metabolism. Resistance training can positively affect body composition. However, it’s important to remember that pairing a nutritious diet with resistance training is most important for weight loss. This ensures that calories consumed are less than calories expended. Both strength and hypertrophy training have been shown to aid caloric expenditure; the rest interval duration isn’t as big a factor.HIIT training has also been shown to positively affect weight loss when compared with moderate intensity continuous training. The two had similar effects on whole body fat loss and waist circumference. But HIIT training took about 40% less time to complete (7).Resistance training and HIIT resistance and cardiovascular training have shown similar positive benefits on weight loss when paired with diet modifications. The rest between sets doesn’t have as much influence as being consistent and making lifestyle changes over time.
Progressive Overload with Rest Rundown
Rest Rundown is a simple way of applying progressive overload without adding resistance. Progressively Reduce Rest Periods: Each week, reduce all rest periods in your workout by 15 seconds. This strategy is tougher than it sounds! You might not always hit the “same reps, same weight” target in every workout, but the challenge itself will trigger metabolic changes in your muscles, leading to greater endurance, strength, and growth. The beauty of Rest Rundown lies in its flexibility. You can start with shorter rest intervals, such as 90 or even 60 seconds, and reduce by 15 seconds every one or two weeks. Incorporating Rest Rundown into your workouts can be a game changer in your training routine.
Additional Factors for Optimal Results
To repair itself (which is where the real gains occur), the body needs rest. Get at least eight hours of sleep per night to allow your body to recover and grow muscle, which ups your overall calorie-burning potential. And depending on the volume of your training, allow a few days before working the same muscle group again. Keep a training log. Proper biomechanics increase your movement efficiency and decrease your risk of injury. How long it takes to perfect your form is relative and varies depending on the exercise. For example, Olympic-style weightlifting focuses on skilled movement with rapid speed of performance. Conversely, the amount of complex movement in a bench press is much less and requires less coordination of multiple body parts. Nevertheless, when trying to perfect your form, you should focus on a lighter training load - in other words, less weight. Recovery should be enough to allow your body to undertake the movement again with good mechanics. Typically a 1-2-minute rest interval will allow adequate recovery. Still, you can focus on form while promoting muscular breakdown to induce improvement. Many people can perfect their form and progress in their training program with 1-2 minutes of rest between sets. When working toward your strength goals, force production and training volume are important, but so is rest between sets. Rest between sets should allow enough recovery to reintroduce the stimulus while maintaining good form.
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The Science Behind Rest Intervals
Muscles are fueled by three energy systems: the phosphagen system, the anaerobic (glycolytic) system, and the aerobic (oxidative) system. As your muscles work, these systems take turns leading the way to synthesize adenosine triphosphate, providing energy to your muscle cells. The first two systems are shorter duration systems, meaning they provide high force production for a short amount of time. The phosphagen system provides muscle energy for up to 30 seconds of muscle work and is involved in high force production activities. After that, the glycolytic system provides energy for work from 30 seconds-3 minutes and is involved in moderate force production activities (1, 2). These two systems are involved in most resistance training activities focused on strength and muscle hypertrophy. As exercise duration exceeds 3 minutes, the aerobic system takes over and is involved in lower force production activities (1, 2). These energy systems are constantly at work during all types of activity to supply your body with the energy it needs to perform activities. For example, if a person is lifting heavy weights, they will produce a greater force for a short period of time, but they will need a period to recover to be able to repeat the same activity with the same force. Nevertheless, the amount of time you rest to recover enough to repeat the same performance can be adjusted to help meet specific training goals. Whether your goal is to increase muscle size or increase endurance, rest periods between sets can be tailored to achieve each type of goal. Muscles use specific energy systems for very short-duration or high-force activities. The rest periods between sets of resistance training can be changed to achieve certain goals, such as strength or weight loss.
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