After a set you rest for a while, so that you can perform optimally during the next set. But what is the ideal rest time? Is 3 minutes better than 2 minutes?

1 MINUTE OF REST IS NOT ENOUGH

Provided: 1 minute of rest between sets is still often preached, but for bodybuilding purposes that is just a bit too little. This is evident, among other things, from a study by muscle growth expert Brad Schoenfeld. In it, 21 young trained men followed a training program, in which one group rested only 1 minute between sets and the other group rested 3 minutes. The result: the 3-minute group built up significantly more muscle growth in all muscle groups trained than the 1-minute group.

In addition, several studies on training volume have shown that you need to do fewer sets for a certain amount of muscle growth if you rest longer. Short rest periods therefore undermine the effectiveness of sets, probably because you can do fewer (stimulating) repetitions than if you wait a little longer.

But why is it that 1 minute of rest is usually not optimal? Well, doing a set (close to muscle failure) creates several types of fatigue, which are closely related: local fatigue (in the muscle), central fatigue (in the central nervous system) and cardiovascular fatigue (concerning the heart and blood vessels). After a set it takes a while before all these fatigues are sufficiently resolved. And you should only start your next set when you feel completely ready physically and mentally: you should be able to give all your available power and establish a good mind-muscle connection. Usually 1 minute of rest is not enough for this.

The conclusion is that you do not train optimally with only 1 minute of rest. After all, your fatigue has not yet been sufficiently resolved, so that you can show less quality in your next set (in particular, you can do fewer repetitions).

Short rest breaks (< 1 minute) are, incidentally, common in metabolic strength training, where you do not train primarily for muscle growth, but for fat loss. This type of strength training also includes supersets, for example.

2 OR 3 MINUTES?

1 minute of rest is therefore not enough, but what is the difference, if any, between 2 and 3 minutes of rest? Unfortunately, in the study by Schoenfeld mentioned, only the results were measured at 1 minute and 3 minutes. In some other literature we found the following:

• A 2020 study shows that there is hardly any difference in the number of repetitions you can do with 2 minutes versus 3 minutes of rest between sets of a compound exercise (the leg press). Muscle growth was not measured, by the way, only the acute training performance was looked at.
• A 2023 study shows that resting for 2 minutes is more effective than 1 minute for muscle growth, especially when looking at the loss of number of repetitions. However, 3 minutes of rest has no added value compared to 2. Also striking: it makes no difference whether you do a compound exercise or an isolating exercise.

Purely on the basis of these studies, you can therefore say that 2 minutes of rest time is enough and 3 minutes has no added value.

However, the practice is more complex. Yes, with isolating exercises you are usually sufficiently recovered after 1 to 2 minutes of rest. But with compound exercises you sometimes need longer than 2 minutes, because the central and cardiovascular fatigue are greater and because synergistic muscles must also be sufficiently recovered. Now it may well be that you only have to rest for 2 minutes after a set of barbell squats, for example if it concerns a small set of six heavy repetitions. However, if you train in a higher rep range, for example 15 reps, you will experience much more central and cardiovascular fatigue, as well as more fatigue in the synergistic muscles, so that you may need 3 to 5 minutes of rest. Most reputable coaches therefore recommend longer rest periods than 2 minutes for large compound exercises (especially squat and deadlift).

GUIDELINES

How much rest you need between two sets is mainly a matter of feeling. That is not always easy, hence the following guidelines:

• 1-2 minutes of rest in isolation exercises;
• 2-3 minutes of rest on most compound exercises;
• Rest 2-5 minutes on barbell squats and barbell deadlifts.

Resting longer than 5 minutes is not normally necessary for bodybuilding purposes. It only causes you to cool down too much and actually have to do another warm-up set.