What Is The Optimal Time Between Sets For Muscle Growth?

The Question: How long should you wait between sets? Should you try to spend only a few seconds between sets to fully work the muscle and increase the "burn", or should you wait longer until your muscles have fully recovered from the last set?

Which way is best to increase growth? Should you ever change the amount of time between sets over time, or stick to one, proven method?


Bonus Question: Have you ever used one of those "intense" workouts with absolutely minimal amount of time between sets just to try to break a plateau or try something different? Something like doing 10 sets of squats with only 15 seconds between sets, until you are on the verge of puking? If so, what was the workout exactly? How often should you do it? Did it help your overall gains?

The Winners:

~jAmeZ~ View Profile
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1st Place JAMEZ

How Much Rest Is Best?

The "best" amount of time to rest between sets, like most things in bodybuilding, depends on what specific goal you're training for.

Do you want to be stronger, more muscular or increase your stamina? Common sense and research tells us that we can only pursue one goal at a time.

If we want to be stronger, we should follow a training program that increases our strength as quickly as possible. Likewise for size and stamina. Not surprisingly, with each specialized program comes a different requirement for rest periods.

Let's look at WHAT those different rest periods are and, most importantly, explore WHY they are.

Strength Training

To get stronger faster, the best rest period is 3 to 5 minutes between sets.

This is because much of the energy your body consumes during traditional strength training (heavy weight, 1 to 6 reps) comes from the Adenosine Triphosphate Phosphocreatine system. The ATP-PC system uses phosphagens to produce energy very quickly and without the use of oxygen. Your body has a very small phosphagen reserve, which lasts about 15 seconds. It takes your body about 3 minutes to fully replenish phosphagen stores (Fleck, 1983).

In other words, if you give your ATP-PC system at least 3 minutes to recharge, you'll lift more weight and get stronger faster.


In one study, athletes lifted a weight more times in 3 sets after resting 3 minutes compared to when they rested only 1 minute (Kraemer, 1997). Another study showed a 7% increase in squat strength after 5 weeks of training with 3 minute rest periods.

The group that rested for 30 seconds only improved their squat by 2% (Robinson et al, 1995). Two more studies that examined very short rest periods (30 to 40 seconds) found they caused nowhere near the strength gains from longer rest periods (Kraemer et al, 1987; Kraemer, 1997).

You'll cool down too much if you rest longer than 5 minutes. No-one wants to increase their chances of injury.Hypertrophy Training

To get bigger quicker, the best rest period is 1 to 2 minutes between sets.

Typical bodybuilding/hypertrophy training (moderate-heavy weight, 6-12 reps) draws energy from the ATP-PC and glycolytic system (the glycolytic system gets most of its energy from the carbs you eat). The aerobic metabolism plays a very small part as well.

Think of the ATP-PC system as a racehorse and the glycolytic system as a steady, dependable Clydesdale. Because your glycolytic system has come to the party, your body doesn't need to rest as long between sets as when you're strength training.

Bodybuilders take advantage of shorter rest periods to make their muscles BIGGER. How? Well, one of the key factors in how much muscles grow is the amount of anabolic hormones your body produces after weight training (McCall et al, 1999). Short rest periods of between 1 and 2 minutes cause a greater release of these hormones than longer rest periods (Kraemer et al, 1991; Kraemer et al, 1990).

Short rest periods also cause other muscle-building bonuses like increased lactate production and blood flow to the targeted muscles (Kraemer, 1997; Kraemer et al, 1987). Don't laugh about the blood flow bit. I know it sounds like old-school "pump" talk. But it's been shown that the increased blood flow to your muscles helps the protein get there quicker (Biolo et al, 1995).

Muscle fatigue, caused by lactate production, has also been implicated in short-term strength gains and significant hypertrophy (Rooney et al, 1994).