How Long Should You Rest Between Sets?

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If you opened my old personal training textbook, you’d find the following recommendations:
 

• When doing 1-5 reps: Rest 3-5 minutes between sets
• 6-12 reps: Rest 1-2 minutes
• 15+ reps: Rest 30-60 seconds

 
These are pretty common to this day.

You might also be familiar with the claim that shorter rest intervals of around 30 seconds are better for hypertrophy (muscle growth) because they result in a greater increase in growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1––all of which theoretically make a positive contribution to hypertrophy––than longer rest intervals.
 
How accurate is any of this? Read on to find out!

What does the evidence suggest about the relationship between rest interval length and hypertrophy?

To answer this question, researchers have recently published the pre-print version of a meta-analysis of nine studies.

First off, there seems to be a small benefit to resting more than 60 seconds compared to resting less than 60.

Specifically, resting for 1-2 minutes appears to be the sweet spot.

When compared to resting for 1-2 minutes, it’s unclear whether longer rest intervals, like 2-3 minutes or more, would be even better, but it doesn’t look like they’re any worse.

On the other hand, the subjects resting for less than 60 seconds got worse hypertrophy results than those resting 1-2 minutes.

In an attempt to explain this difference, the authors pointed out that, while the number of sets performed per body part was similar between studies, the subjects resting for 60 seconds or less experienced a reduction in volume load (sets x reps x load).

In other words, they couldn’t do as many reps when they were resting for less than 60 seconds as subjects who were resting longer.
 
Therefore, the authors suggested that, by performing additional sets when adopting short rest intervals of 60 seconds or less, you may be able to make up for this reduction in reps and roughly achieve a similar volume load as you would if you were doing fewer sets and resting longer between them, thus potentially attaining similar hypertrophy outcomes.

So, if you were really pressed for time or if you hated waiting longer than 60 seconds before doing another set, you could do more sets and possibly get similar results.

Finally, an interesting feature of this meta-analysis is that, in addition to analysing whole-body hypertrophy, the researchers tried to assess the effects of rest intervals in the arm and leg musculature separately.

What they found seems pretty intuitive to me: it appears that the legs benefit from longer rest compared to the arms.

In my experience, most people who train legs properly need longer rests between sets of deadlifts and squats than between sets of bench presses and biceps curls.

How can you apply this in your training?

The following approach has worked really well for myself and my clients:

1. Rest for as long as you need for the target muscle to be the limiting factor of the next set.

Some people recover faster between sets, whereas others take longer.

So, while I do give my clients some general suggestions on rest interval duration, I also encourage them to auto-regulate their rest to ensure that their cardiovascular system doesn’t stop them from taking their target muscle close enough to failure in the following set.

2. In general, 2-3 minutes is a good rule of thumb for more technical, more demanding compound exercises, whereas 1-2 minutes may be more appropriate for less technical, less fatiguing compound and isolation lifts.

For example, I normally suggest 2-3 minutes for barbell Romanian deadlifts, 1-2 minutes for dumbbell presses, and 60-90 seconds for biceps curls or triceps extensions.

3. Consider longer rest intervals for heavier-load, lower-rep sets compared to lighter-load, higher-rep sets of the same lift.

For instance, when programming a dumbbell press, you could rest 1-2 minutes for sets of 8-12 reps and 60-90 seconds for sets of 15-20 reps.

4. If you’re really strapped for time, you can condense your set volume (that is, your hard sets for a certain body part) into a shorter period of time using efficiency techniques.

These include, but aren’t limited to, rest-pause sets, myo reps, and drop sets. This is an example of how to perform rest-pause sets and this is a link to a podcast interview with Dr. Eric Helms, in which we covered all of these techniques in depth.

What about growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1?

The claim that resting less is better because of the greater release of these hormones isn’t a complete myth, as research does show that resistance training triggers a temporary elevation in these hormone levels.

However, researchers have also demonstrated that this increase doesn’t seem to result in greater hypertrophy over time.

In other words, unless you’re taking anabolic steroids, thus spiking these hormones well beyond natural physiological levels, any fleeting increase within the natural range––like what you’d get from resting less than 60 seconds––is unlikely to promote more muscle growth and, in fact, could be deleterious.
 
Practical Takeaways

1. Based on the most recent research I’m aware of, resting for 1-2 minutes may be the sweet spot between sets.
2. However, consider the lift in question, the number of reps you’re performing, and your own individuality recovery rate when setting your rest intervals.
3. The best approach is likely to rest until you’re confident that the target muscle will be the limiting factor of the next set rather than your cardiovascular system.

 
Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
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