Rest-Time Between Sets: 5 Rules Pros Follow

Can your skeletal muscles handle a sharp increase of growth? Can you cope with having a sudden increase of gains, seemingly out of nowhere?

If so.. keep reading. This may be the most unexpectedly valuable article you ever read.

You’re in the gym. You’ve just completed a killer set. You’re waiting to do it again. You start wondering to yourself.. ‘What am I doing now, right now, in this interval?

Am I wasting time?

What should I be doing?

How long should I actually be resting between my sets.. for optimised muscle growth? Hmm, I don’t know.. I guess I’ll just go on my phone for a bit and carry on when I feel like it..’

No no no no no no no.

Rest times are the most over-looked, underrated, under-optimised part of bodybuilding.

They are often the difference between a workout feels amazing, and a workout where feel like you wasted your time.. because you just might have..

HOWEVER.. if you read this issue and educate yourself on these 5 rules, you WILL be a step ahead of most people who gym.. because only a select % of gym-goers actually bother know this stuff.. (which is a massive mistake).

Should my rest period be longer? .. should my rest period be shorter? What about bench press? How many minutes OR .. Seconds.. should I rest?

Knowing the answer to these questions will to sky-rocket your gym gains.  

The following post will explain fundamental and crucial rules you need to know in order to optimise your time in the gym – no more clueless periods, no more time-wasted, no more losing gains.

If you want to feel like every session you have from now one will be completely Optimised..  read on.

1)    Understand why rest time is CRUCIAL

Just to be clear.. I’m not taking to you about Rest DAYS.. I’m talking about the Time Rested Between Sets during a workout.

So you start doing Bench Press.. You do 1 Set, and you and sit there for ‘a bit’. The ‘a bit’ bit, is the ‘bit’ I’m talking about.

In order to build muscle, you need to place the muscle under stress or tension. In layman’s terms: you need to contract and, essentially, break the muscles down so they can be repaired in a way that either makes them Larger or in a way that can deal with a heavier load the next time.

(if you really want to know the super in-depth science shit behind all this.. this is a decent article which explains it all.

So.. in order to optimise the effect of your training, you need to follow slightly different principles. Subtle changes in action. And that includes rest time..

There is a difference in your rest times depending on whether you want to GROW MUSCLE (bodybuild) or INCREASE STRENGTH..

Let’s discuss bodybuilding first..

2)    How long to Rest if your goal is to BUILD MUSCLE..

In bodybuilding, the priority is to build muscle/make them larger/get big.. strength is just a nice side effect. (Strength training is the opposite – increasing muscular strength is the goal, muscle hypertrophy (growth) is the nice the side effect)

If you rest for too long, your muscles will be able to recover and your work in that first set will be kind of.. wasted..

You NEED to keep the tension, you NEED to keep your muscles stressed if you want them to grow.

Therefore.. SHORTER rest times are needed for bodybuilding. Okay great.. shorter rest times.. we’re getting somewhere now. Wait.. But how short?

45 seconds-2 minutes is the general guideline, according to many studies

The important part of this guideline being, crucially, never to have a rest time longer than 2 minutes when bodybuilding/ training for muscle GROWTH.

I’ll say that again: never have a rest time longer than 2 minutes when the priority for that exercise is muscle growth.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

But let’s go more depth.. because most times in bodybuilding, rest times are much less than 2 minutes. In fact, the only time I’d ever recommend resting all the way up to the maximum 2 minutes, when training for muscle growth, is in between SUPERSETS or Tri-Sets.

For example, a common Tri-Set I do (memorably for the Triceps), is a triple cable pushdown set, in which I complete 3 independent sets on cable pushdowns with 10 seconds of rest in between, and then after those 3 sets, rest for 2 minutes before repeating. I only do this TWICE, as its very intense, and essentially you are completing 6 sets of cable pushdowns.

I bet that sounded confusing… so here’s a simple outline of what I just said:

Straight-Bar Cable Pushdown Tri-Set:

Wide-grip cable pushdown x8 reps

10 seconds rest

Close-Grip cable pushdown xAMRAP (as many reps as possible/to failure)

10 seconds rest

(lower weight slightly)

Reverse-Grip cable pushdown xAMRAP

2 minutes rest, repeat whole thing once.

Absolute killer for your triceps. You’ll be walking round looking like you just ate a couple bowling balls through your elbows.

Hmm.. maybe I should rename this entire article ‘How to Get Massive Fucking Triceps’ because I’m telling you, this thing changed my triceps’ career. It’s a joke.

You know what..

CLICK HERE FOR MASSIVE TRICEPS

So.. anyway.. do you remember/get the point? This tri-set isa rare example of resting 2 minutes during a bodybuidiling set. That was the point.

In normal circumstances, and for pretty much all conventional sets in bodybuilding, I would recommend following the following rule..

3)    IF IN DOUBT.. FOLLOW THIS..

When resting between ACCESSORY exercises (for example, movements that only 1 or a specific muscle group, like lateral raises, chest flyes, bicep curl, face-pulls, leg extension)..

REST for 60 SECONDS

And..

When resting between big COMPOUND movements (bench press, overhead shoulder press, dips, squats)..

REST for 90 SECONDS.

Remember.. this rule applies to bodybuilding only, and if you follow it, you literally cannot go wrong. If in doubt, 60-90 seconds. Never over 2 minutes. (When the goal is muscle growth).

Now.. strength athletes/people. It’s your time..

4)    How long to rest if your goal is to INCREASE STRENGTH..

The short way of saying this would just be.. longer.

But I guess, since you’ve wasted so long for this.. I better provide a tad more detail than that..

Training strength.. whether it be Powerlifting, Strongman or Weight-lifting, is different to bodybuilding. Muscle growth is just a happy side-effect of increasing strength.. which means that rest times do not have to be as short and strict.

In strength training, you’re lifting extremely heavy in a very short rep range.. (1-6) you are putting massive demands on your body: not just your muscles, but everywhere.. It’s obvious longer time is needed to rest.. but how long exactly?

AT LEAST 3 minutes. but ideally..

3-5 minutes– is a good basic outline.

You need to give your body enough time to properly recover before your next set.. and 3-5 minutes is the ‘safer and most reliable method’ (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19691365).. but also the most effective.

Building strength isn’t like bodybuilding. In bodybuilding, the rest times are purposefully restrictive, because it is in your interest to over-work your muscles – keep them under tension.

But with strength, that’s not what you want. You need to be more loving and caring towards your muscles.

Bodybuilders want to beat the shit out of their muscles, whereas strength athletes want to prep them and bathe them and be nice.

Strength is BOUT performance, not a pump for the mirror.

(this sounds like I’m hating on bodybuilding.. but I’m not. I love bodybuilding really. I love getting that dirty pump, altering the lighting, snapchat filters. That’s definitely me)

Anyway..

The basic outline of rest time for strength (3-5 minutes) is a lot more subjective. It depends a lot more on how your body feels.

When training Deadlift, for example, I would recommend rest times of 5 minutes+.

It is a lot more dependent on how you feel, rather than testing your body unecessarily before its ready.

For strength – go longer. And if you’re going for a PB, go longer than that. And put some oasis on. It never fails.

(not Wonderwall).

5)  Form a HABIT

One day the habit of rest-time will be so innately ingrained into your soul, you too, will be capable of resting the PERFECT amount of time, without even having to count on a stopwatch. It will be natural, organic, pure rest-time. The kind of rest-time the cavemen used to do when benching with rocks and stones.

But first you have to make sure.. for the next 3 months.. you track every single rest-time you have between your sets. Every single one.

Even if you’re doing some silly tri-set thing like I showed you earlier—time everything.

And after a while.. 3 months or so.. you’ll get used to it. You’ll build a habit, and it won’t be necessary to time so vehemently

It’s a lot like tracking your calories. At first you MUST track everything.. but eventually, once you get the idea of the your reoccurring foods on your diet and their calories.. you can start to ‘eyeball’ it.

Resting between sets is the same.

Time EVERYTHING for a few months. Watch your gains go mad. Do it.

Done.