Rest Between Sets For Muscle Growth (Science-Based Approach)

Rest Between Sets For Muscle Growth (Science-Based Approach)

There are conflicting opinions when it comes to how long you should rest between sets for muscle growth. Some believe you should rest very little to stimulate growth hormone, whereas others rest longer to maximize performance.

In this article, we’ll discuss the science behind rest intervals. With the use of the available scientific evidence, we’ll look into the effects of different rest times between sets. This will help you make more informed decisions on how long you should rest between sets to maximize muscle growth.

Typical Rest Interval Recommendations

You probably have seen a figure like the one below before on the internet or in an old-school exercise textbook.

Rest between sets for muscle growth

The rest periods for muscular endurance and strength make sense. In line with the principle of training specificity, your muscles need to “endure” more if you have rest intervals of under a minute. So you’ll mostly achieve muscular endurance adaptations if your rest between sets is short.

For strength, the opposite applies. When you rest longer, you are able to train with heavier weights, which then results in strength adaptations that help you produce more force.

Now, when it comes to muscle growth, the typical rest recommendations we see that state you should rest 30-60 seconds are mostly based on outdated theories.

Hormonal Response & Rest Intervals

The idea that short rest periods are beneficial for muscle growth is primarily based on the finding that short rest intervals increase human growth hormone levels (HGH). Since HGH is an anabolic hormone, increasing HGH by having short rest intervals must be beneficial for muscle growth, right?

Well, not really.

First of all. HGH has a weak relationship with muscle growth. HGH is mostly involved in building up connective tissue (tissue that attaches muscle to bone), not so much muscle itself.

Also, temporary increases in anabolic hormones do not increase muscle growth. Even if it’s testosterone. Changes in anabolic hormone levels can only influence muscle growth if these changes occur over the long-term.

Just think about it, cortisol (= stress hormone) and muscle protein breakdown (= breakdown of muscle) also increase after training. But we know this isn’t harmful because it’s not a long-term change, it’s just a temporary spike. The same holds true with temporary spikes in HGH or testosterone, these mean very little.

So just because HGH or any other anabolic hormone is acutely increased after having short rest periods, doesn’t mean this will translate into more muscle growth.

Research on Rest Between Sets

Training volume is the main driver of muscle growth. Volume can be defined as the total of Reps*Sets*Weight you perform per muscle group. Up to a certain point, research consistently shows a positive relationship between volume and muscle growth.

Having short rest intervals directly impairs the amount of volume you can do in a workout. As a simple example, if you rest 45 seconds between each set of your squat, you’ll perform worse than if you rest 2-3 minutes between each set.

rest between sets for muscle growth

So having longer rest between sets allows you to perform more volume in your training. If you consistently can perform more volume, you generally also get better training adaptations. The research supports this.

A 2016 study led by Dr. Schoenfeld randomly assigned 21 trained males to a 1-minute rest between sets (SHORT) and 3-minute rest between sets (LONG) group. After an 8-week training period, the long rest group gained significantly more muscle than the short rest group. Most likely because the long rest group was able to handle more volume in their training.

Another 2009 study had similar findings. In this research, the group that rested 2.5 minutes between sets gained more muscle than the group that rested only 1 minute between sets.  Again, this likely was because the long rest group was able to perform more volume.

Exercise Selection & Rest Intervals

So it’s evident that having longer rest periods is beneficial for muscle growth. But exactly how long you should rest between sets depends on the type of exercises you perform. The goal is to adequately rest so you can perform well again on your next set. On some exercises, you need more rest to recover than others.

Compound exercises like the squat, bench press and overhead press are inherently more fatiguing than isolation exercises like the side delt raise or bicep curls. So it’s a good idea to rest a bit longer between sets when you perform compound movements and a bit shorter during isolation lifts.

A good general rule of thumb is to rest 2-3 minutes between sets on heavy compound exercises and 1-2 minutes on low-stress isolation exercises. For most people, this should be enough to recover properly and hit it hard again when your next set comes up.

Shorten Training Time

A common concern when it comes to resting longer between sets is that the training time increases drastically. If you have only limited time in the gym but would still like to maximize performance, there are a few training tools that can help you. To be specific: Supersets & Rest-Pause Training

Using Supersets

A superset basically refers to alternating between 2 exercises with no rest in between them. If you use exercises that train opposing muscle groups, this can be a great way to save time without negatively affecting your performance.
Rest between sets for muscle growth
A good example is supersetting the barbell bench press with barbell rows. While you train the barbell row, your chest and triceps rest from doing the bench press. While you train the bench press, your back and biceps rest from doing cable rows.
Just make sure the exercises you superset do not train the same muscle groups. If you superset the bench press with cable chest flyes, your performance will take a hit. Also be careful with supersetting “whole-body” exercises like squats, deadlift, and heavy overhead pressing. These exercises by themselves tend to tire you out and shouldn’t be combined.

Rest-Pause Training

The primary reason short rest periods are suboptimal for muscle growth is that they impair training volume. One way you can work around this while still having short rest periods is by performing more sets in your training until you reach your volume goal. This is exactly what rest-pause training allows you to do.

With rest-pause training, you take your first set close to failure, rest for 10-15 seconds and repeat the process until you reach your volume goal.

Rest between sets for muscle growth

For example, you are in a hurry and need to perform 3 sets of 10 reps on cable side delt raises, you can set a volume goal of 30 reps and use rest-pause sets (see picture above) to quickly finish your workout. Recent research shows this is an effective way to accumulate volume for muscle growth.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that a breakdown in form is common when using rest-pause training because of its fatiguing effects. So it’s a good idea to use this training tool with isolation lifts only to minimize the risk of injury.

Conclusion: How Long You Should Rest

If we take all points discussed above into consideration, we reach a simple conclusion about how long you should rest between sets for muscle growth.

Long rest periods are more effective than short rest periods because they allow you to accumulate more volume.

This primarily holds true on heavy compound exercises like the squat, bench press, overhead press etc. On these heavy compound movements, rest ~2-3 minutes between sets. For low-stress isolation exercises like the tricep pushdown and side delt raises, you typically can get away with shorter rest periods of ~1-2 minutes between sets.

Make sure you monitor how well recovered you feel after your rest periods. Feel free to rest slightly longer if you think this will benefit your performance or have shorter rest periods if you tend to recover quickly between your sets.

For times when you are in a hurry and would like to reduce your time in the gym, use training tools like supersets and rest-pause training, as described in the previous paragraph.

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How To Warm-Up Before Lifting Weights

How To Warm-Up Before Lifting Weights

Introduction

An often overlooked component of strength training is the stuff you do prior to lifting a heavy barbell: your warm-up before lifting weights. Even though the benefits of a warm-up are oftentimes underrated, it’s not necessary to spend 20+ minutes doing all types of stretches and cardiovascular exercises. The main goal of a warm-up is to prepare you to lift heavy weights, not fatigue you. So your warm-up shouldn’t feel like a workout in itself.

Fundamentally, a warm-up should be short and to the point so that you can achieve all the benefits of a proper warm-up while preserving your energy for lifting heavy weights.

If we look at the current body of literature, we see three main benefits of using an effective warm-up routine:

In this article, we will cover how you should warm-up before lifting so that you can achieve these benefits and get the most out of your workouts. The way we are going to tackle this is by dividing the warm-up routine into three distinct phases: the general warm-up, dynamic warm-up, and the sport-specific warm-up.

The General Warm-up

Once you step into the gym, your body temperature is generally still low. When the goal is to maximize your strength potential in training, one of the first things we should seek to do is increase body temperature.

An increased body temperature has several benefits that are particularly useful for strength training. A higher body temperature results in increased muscle blood flow. This increases the oxygen availability and nutrient delivery to muscles, which basically helps your muscles generate more energy during exercise.

This helps explain why research shows that the rate at which your muscles contract increases when your body temperature is increased.

warm-up before lifting

The most efficient way to increase your body temperature is through aerobic exercise. There’s no need to complicate this. Something as simple as going for a short run on the treadmill or cycling on the stationary bike at a moderate-intensity is effective.

Now, it’s worth mentioning again that a warm-up should not to fatigue you. So keep this phase as short as needed for you to perceive a change in body temperature and mental readiness to train. Considering a warm-up should be short and that we have two warm-up phases to go, doing only 3-5 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise should be sufficient.

Dynamic Warm-Up

After the general warm-up, it’s useful to incorporate a few minutes of relatively explosive dynamic stretching. Dynamic stretches are stretches that involve movement to improve your range of motion. Think about stretches like arm swings and leg kicks.

Dynamic stretches are particularly useful for strength training because they help improve your mobility without negatively influencing your performance. The opposite applies to static stretching, a multitude of studies show static stretching before training negatively influences strength performance.

warm-up before lifting

Picture courtesy of Workoutlabs.com

The main reason dynamic stretches have no negative effect on strength performance is that dynamic stretches are specific to the strength exercises you will be performing shortly after your warm-up. During a dynamic stretch, you go through the motions explosively, similar to the way you produce force during strength training.

Static stretches have more of a relaxing effect on a muscle. After static stretching, the elastic energy of a muscle decreases and its stretch-reflex is compromised (basically, the muscle contracts less forcefully).

Now, this is not to say you can’t do any static stretches. If your static stretches are shorter than 30 seconds, performance is minimally affected. Also, if you wait 10 minutes after doing a static stretch, strength performance recovers again for the most part. So if you feel the need to do static stretching, you can still incorporate it if you consider these points.

But if possible, it’s likely beneficial if you only perform a few dynamic stretches during your dynamic warm-up. In the table below, you can see an example full-body dynamic warm-up.

If you feel like you need more mobility work after your dynamic stretching, consider additional foam rolling. Foam rolling a tight muscle group can increase the range of motion of that muscle without impairing performance.

Sport-Specific Warm-Up

When it comes to strength training, a sport-specific warm-up essentially refers to your warm-up sets.

For example, say you plan on performing 3 sets of 8 reps on the bench press. Instead of immediately loading the bar to your max weight after your dynamic stretches, it’s generally a good idea to have 2-3 warm-up sets. During these 2-3 warm-up sets, you gradually build up to your working weight and practice the movement that you will perform.

Generally, I’d only use a warm-up set on the first one or two exercises you perform since that’s when you need the physical and mental preparation for lifting heavy loads the most. Also during the sport-specific warm-up, it’s important you do not fatigue yourself. Below you can see a simple warm-up structure I use with most of my clients.

warm-up before lifting

Once you’ve finished your sport-specific warm-up, it’s time to shift your focus on the training program you have and performing at your best.

If we take all three warm-up phases into consideration, your warm-up will likely last around 5-10 minutes in total. There’s generally no need to spend much more time in your warm-up before lifting.

Key Takeaways + Example Warm-Up Routine

  1. A warm-up has specific performance and injury prevention benefits for strength trainees.
  2. A warm-up should be divided into three distinct phases: a general, dynamic, and sport-specific warm-up.
  3. Keep each warm-up phase short and to the point. A warm-up should prep your for training, not fatigue you. Aim for 5-10 min for your complete warm-up.

Based on this article, you can design your own warm-up routine before lifting that suits your needs and preferences best. If you would like to have a complete example warm-up routine, subscribe to my weekly mailing list and I’ll send it to you!