How long should I rest between exercises?

You surely know that to achieve your fitness goals, the most important factors are your diet, workout plan, and rest.

Within each of these variables, there are several factors.

Today we’ll talk about rest time between exercises.

Rest time may not be the most important thing in your workout, but it’s something you should monitor and learn more about in order to improve.

With this article, you’ll learn what rest intervals you should use to achieve your goals.

What is the best rest time?

The answer to that question is the much-hated:

It depends.

The “best” rest interval, like everything in fitness, depends on your goal.

If you’re training to gain as much strength as possible, your rest period will be different from someone training for endurance.

As a general rule, you’ll fall into one of the following categories:

Strength Training

When you’re training to increase your strength, the best rest time is between 3 and 5 minutes.

These workouts typically consist of exercises with 1–6 repetitions.

Hypertrophy training

To gain as much muscle as possible, you should rest for 1 to 2 minutes.

These workouts usually consist of exercises with 6–12 repetitions.

Endurance training

To increase your endurance, you should rest for 45 seconds to 2 minutes.

These workouts usually consist of exercises with 15–20 repetitions.

But that’s not all…

The recommendations above work. However, they don’t take certain nuances into account.

As we’ve already mentioned, rest time isn’t the main factor you should focus on.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can rest 5 minutes between exercises if you want to train for hypertrophy.

What we’re saying is that volume, training frequency, and the quality of your reps are more important.

Don’t ignore these factors just to start your exercise 15 seconds earlier, for example. It won’t be worth it.

Try to follow this “rule”:

Rest as little as possible to achieve the most effective workout.

And this varies from person to person. For some, it might be 1 minute and 15 seconds; for others, 1 minute and 30 seconds. Over time, you’ll improve your work capacity and, as a result, reduce the rest time you need between exercises.

What do the studies say?

In this study, athletes were able to lift more weight over three sets after resting for 3 minutes compared to athletes who rested for only 1 minute.

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 increased their strength by 2%.

In this study, among individuals who rested for 1 minute and 3 minutes, a greater increase in strength was observed in the bench press and squat among those with the longer rest period. So far, no surprises. However, the increase in muscle thickness was also greater for these individuals.

Scientists speculate that this result may be attributed to a reduction in total volume over the course of the study.

There is a well-established relationship between volume and hypertrophy, where greater volume equals greater hypertrophy.

Knowing this, we can conclude that short rest periods may compromise muscle growth by reducing the weight you can use in subsequent sets and, thus, reducing your total volume.

What can we conclude from this study?

This study only compared people resting for 1 or 3 minutes. Therefore, it is somewhat limited.

However, we can conclude that this topic doesn’t have to be binary; you can combine different rest periods to achieve your goals.

One viable option is to rest longer during compound exercises, such as squats, bench presses, and military presses. These movements require a lot of energy to be performed correctly. Therefore, longer rest periods are necessary to restore your energy levels so you can maintain the same volume in the next set.

On the other hand, isolation movements do not require the same amount of energy, which allows you to recover more quickly. Exercises like bicep curls or leg extensions are some examples. Here, you can rest for a shorter time and maintain the same volume from set to set.

Conclusion

This is a topic that has yet to be thoroughly researched, and our understanding evolves as new studies are published. Each new study released is a piece that helps complete the puzzle.

Until then, apply the information you’ve learned in this article to your program, and don’t be afraid to experiment with different rest periods.

That’s how you’ll learn what works best for you!

Happy training!

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