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More on Rest Periods between sets.

Discussion in 'Training' started by Zillagreybeard, Nov 18, 2020.
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Zillagreybeard
Zillagreybeard
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  • Nov 18, 2020
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A common question I receive is how long you should rest between sets. In today’s post, let’s look into the science behind rest intervals and muscle growth!

When you train with short rest between sets, you temporarily increase human growth hormone levels [1]. Some people see this as a reason to start having short rest intervals between sets. But keep in mind that *temporary* spikes in anabolic hormone levels do not influence muscle growth [2]. Just like the short-term cortisol (stress-hormone) increase that happens after training doesn’t make you lose muscle.

Instead of focusing on increasing HGH, focus on maximizing performance if muscle growth is your goal. Volume is the main driver of muscle growth [3]. Resting longer between sets allows you to handle more volume and provide more overload. This helps explain why research shows better muscle growth with rest periods as long as 2-3 minutes compared to resting only 1 minute between sets [4, 5].

For most people, a good guideline is resting 2-3 minutes on heavy compound movements and 1-2 minutes on isolation exercises. If you’re in a hurry when you are at the gym and can’t afford to rest that long, you can consider supersets (alternating between 2 exercises that train opposing muscle groups) to shorten training time.

References:
1. https://www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/jappl.1990.69.4.1442
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215636/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27433992
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19077743
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26605807

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