How Long to Rest Between Sets When Lifting Weights

How Long to Rest Between Sets

Rest time depends mostly on the exercise and the weight.

A compound exercise works several muscles at once: squat, bench press, row. An isolation exercise targets just one, like the curl or the lateral raise. If a set is 6 reps or fewer, take 3 to 5 minutes, whatever the exercise.

These times are a starting point, and your last set tells you whether they suit you.

How to Tell If You’re Resting Long Enough

You’re resting long enough if your last set stays within the number of reps you’re aiming for.

1. Start from the time in the table for your exercise.
2. Does your last set fall below your target, for example 7 reps when you’re aiming for 8 to 10? Add 30 seconds next workout.
3. Do all your sets hold up? Change nothing: resting longer wouldn’t get you much more.

An example on the bench press: 60 kg, three sets, aiming for 8 to 10 reps.

In workout 1, the third set drops to 7: 1 minute 30 seconds isn’t enough at that weight. With 2 minutes, all three sets hold up, so you stay at 2 minutes.

Once you’ve found your rest, keep it the same from workout to workout. Workout 2 has two more reps than workout 1, but they come from the extra 30 seconds. You didn’t make progress between the two. To compare two workouts, you need the same conditions, rest included.

That’s even more true if you follow double progression, where the weight only goes up once all your sets reach the top of your rep range. With too short a rest, the last set never gets there.

This 30-second rule comes from gym practice, and the studies cited below haven’t tested it as such.

Should You Time Your Rest?

Yes, so you have a reference point. Without a timer, your rest lasts one minute one day and four the next, depending on whether you’re chatting, waiting for a machine or in a hurry, and your workouts can no longer be compared.

Nothing says you have to start again on the second. When the timer goes off, if you feel you won’t get your reps again, wait a little longer. If that happens every workout, your rest is too short: add 30 seconds for good.

The research doesn’t ask for more precision than that. No study shows that a fixed rest leads to more progress than resting by feel, according to Henselmans and Schoenfeld in 2014. In a 2026 study, 20 people tried three ways of resting: a fixed 3 minutes, a rest they chose freely, and a rest adjusted to the reps of the previous set. With the last two, they got more reps than with the fixed 3 minutes, at the cost of a longer workout.

What Too Little Rest Costs You

Too little rest costs you reps, starting with the very next set. Two studies measured it, each on about fifteen trained men.

In the first, in 2009, they did the same chest and triceps workout, once with 2 minutes of rest, once with 5. Out of 90 possible reps, they got 71 in the first case and 84 in the second. On a leg workout, the gap was about the same: 67 versus 81.

The exercise matters too. The second study, in 2016, compared an isolation exercise and a compound exercise, over five very heavy sets of 3 reps, so 15 possible.

On the fly, the third minute is worth only one rep. On the bench press, every minute still counts, and it takes 5 to reach 12.9 reps. That’s why the first table gives compound exercises more rest than isolation exercises, and 3 to 5 minutes before a very heavy set.

Those reps matter for two reasons. You judge your progress by them, and a very short rest probably builds a little less muscle precisely because it costs you reps.

Rest Between Sets for Hypertrophy: Should It Be 60 to 90 Seconds?

No. For hypertrophy, meaning muscle growth, no rest length works better than another once you’re past a minute and a half. If the table still recommends 2 to 3 minutes on compound exercises, it’s so that you get your reps again on the next set.

Where That Number Comes From

It comes from the 2009 recommendations of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), which advised 1 to 2 minutes for building muscle, versus 3 to 5 for heavy weights. What stuck was that muscle needed a short rest.

Back then, the bet was on growth hormone. It rises more during the workout with 30 to 60 seconds of rest, according to a review of 35 studies published the same year, and that spike was supposed to help build muscle.

What’s Been Measured Since

1. 2014Short Rest Does No Better

   Henselmans and Schoenfeld go back over the studies that measure the muscle itself. None shows a bigger gain with short rest, and one shows the opposite.

2. 20163 Minutes Beat 1

   Schoenfeld and colleagues put 21 trained men on the same program for 8 weeks. With 3 minutes of rest, they gain more thigh thickness, and more strength, than with 1 minute.

3. 2024Nothing More to Gain After 90 Seconds

   A review of 9 studies finds a small advantage for muscle growth when rest goes past 60 seconds, but no further gain beyond 90. Its authors think a very short rest mostly costs you reps.

4. 2026The Recommendations No Longer Give a Rest Time

   The ACSM revises its recommendations on the basis of 137 research reviews. It judges the data insufficient to say whether rest length changes muscle growth.

Rest Between Sets for Strength

For strength, take more than 2 minutes if you already have some training behind you, and 1 to 2 minutes if you’re a beginner. That’s the conclusion of a review of 23 studies published in 2018, which also notes that strength improves even with less than a minute. Before a very heavy set, go up to 3 to 5 minutes, as in the table.

Not everything is settled, since the ACSM, in 2026, sees no difference in strength between a rest of less than a minute and a longer one. When in doubt, stick with the table and the last-set test.

When You’re Short on Time

Shorten your rest: you’ll get fewer reps, but you’ll keep making progress. The 2018 review finds strength gains even with less than a minute of rest.

Start with isolation exercises, which handle it better. With 1 minute of rest, the fly in the table lost fewer reps than the bench press.

You can also do supersets, meaning two exercises back to back with no pause before you rest. They cut workout time roughly in half for the same number of sets, according to a 2021 review, which finds them better suited to muscle growth than to strength. The 3-day full-body program shows which exercises to pair this way.

Rest Between Exercises and Between Warm-Up Sets

Between two exercises, the time it takes to move to the next station and load the bar is usually enough.

If the next exercise works the same muscles, still rest as long as you would between sets. In the 2009 study, where the rest was 2 minutes throughout, the last exercises of the workout lost the most reps.

Between warm-up sets, a short rest is enough, since they’re light. Save your full rest for before the first working set.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Should You Rest Between Sets to Build Muscle?

The same as for anything else: 2 to 3 minutes on compound exercises, 1 to 2 minutes on isolation exercises. Building muscle doesn’t call for a shorter rest.

Does Rest Time Change Depending on the Muscle?

It changes mostly with the exercise. A squat or a bench press calls for more rest than a curl. For muscle growth, the effect of rest is similar in the arms and the thighs, according to a review of 9 studies.

How Long Should You Rest Between Workouts?

That’s a different question, the one about frequency. For the same number of sets per week, training a muscle once or several times makes little difference to muscle growth. The article on how many sets per muscle group per week shows how to spread out your sets.

Should You Shorten Your Rest to Make Progress?

No. A shorter rest makes the workout harder, not more effective. The ACSM finds no effect of rest length on strength, and for muscle growth the studies lean toward more than a minute. Keep the same rest and go for one more rep, or a slightly heavier weight.