Do You Overlook Rest Periods While Weight Training?

While enjoyable for many, weight training isn’t easy. It takes hard work to reach your goals, whether you are trying for more mass, weight loss, or a combination of the two. When you start a workout, there are a variety of factors that can enhance the effectiveness of your training. One that’s overlooked by many is the amount of time you should rest between sets.

Optimal rest periods between sets are going to give you the recovery you need before going at it again. Keeping it going without resting too long is essential as you don’t want to cool down too much. Depending on your goals, you may not be fully recovered before your next set. This is especially true if you like to keep your weight training intensity at a high level.

There Is No One Answer

How long you should rest between sets isn’t something that has a concrete answer. It comes down to what your personal weight training goals are. Training for as much strength and power as possible has different requirements than increasing muscle hypertrophy and endurance.

Obviously, you can always go by feel and do your next set when you feel ready. If you’ve been weight training and know your body, you should know when you are or aren’t prepared to do another set. However, tracking your rest times can prevent you from taking too much, or not enough time between sets.

Benefits Of Tracking Rest Periods

One great benefit of tracking your rest times between weight training sets is to get your workouts finished in less time overall. There’s no doubt that you may lollygag more in the gym if you aren’t sticking to timed periods of recovery. If you keep to these time limits between seats, you should find that you are finished with your workouts in less time.

This isn’t to say that you should ignore everybody in the gym and not talk to friends when you see them. However, you can quickly go through a workout for a muscle group and socialize before going to the next muscle group in your workout.

Rest Periods For Strength

It looks like the consensus is that more rest between sets is better when you want to increase your strength and power. The research I’ve seen shows that if you are going for strength gains you should be taking rest periods of anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. This is going to make the most sense for super-heavy sets for low reps of exercises like squats, deadlifts, and power cleans.

Rest Periods For Building Muscle

If you are going for mass gains, shorter rest periods than you would do to increase power are best. According to research, the rest periods done here can be as little as 30 seconds to 90 seconds. This may not sound like much, but the goal is to start your next set before full recovery from the prior one.

Personally, I go for the higher end of 90 seconds of rest when I do sets for a medium rep range. This is especially true for compound exercises like bench presses, squats, rows, and pull-ups. However, for exercises like curls and triceps extensions, I’ll take less rest ranging from 60 to 75 seconds. When the calves and forearms are trained, rest times as low as 30 to 45 seconds will be taken.

The rep range for sets done for size gains is typically gonna be between 10 and 15. Due to the relatively short rest period, the weight will have to be decreased between sets to keep the reps up. Otherwise, you won’t hit as many reps on your subsequent sets after your first one.

Rest Periods For Endurance

While you may not think of weight training for improving endurance, it can certainly be done. Endurance training with weights will require a very low amount of rest between sets. This makes sense as you are trying to increase your level of endurance, which should have you constantly moving. The rest periods in this case should only be about 30 seconds.

Weight training sets for endurance are meant to be done for high reps. This can mean as many as 20 reps or more per set. With the extremely low amount of rest between sets, you will certainly have to decrease the weight you use on each subsequent set.

Try Different Rest Times

Let’s face it, many of us are looking to improve in multiple areas when it comes to weight training. Maybe you want to increase muscle mass and still get more powerful as well. It’s possible you’d like an improvement in endurance along with building the musculature of your physique. Also, your goals may change over time. So what does this have to do with rest periods between each set?

Once upon a time, a younger version of myself wanted to be as big and strong as possible. I mixed up my rep ranges, and it worked pretty well. Rest periods were never tracked, but they seemed to be just right for what I was doing. Now, keeping track of my rest between sets has me keeping the intensity level high and the workouts are done in less time.

Changing it up and never letting the body get used to always doing the same things is essential to continuous success. To me, this holds true for exercise rest periods as well. You can take advantage of a range of them to keep your workouts fresh.

Try Different Rep Ranges From Workout To Workout

One great way to do this is to follow a light, medium, and heavy workout routine. This is done by changing the rep ranges and weights you use at each workout. You end up with a light workout, followed by a medium workout, and finished with a heavy one. If you do this, you can use the appropriate rest periods for each type of workout you do.

Use Different Rest Periods During Each Workout

One thing I like to do is to start my workouts with a lighter weight on my first exercise and go heavier on each subsequent set. As the weight is increased, so will the rest periods between sets. When I get to my second exercise, I’ll start heavy since I’m warmed up, and go down in weight on each set from there. The rest periods are then decreased between each set. This is something I’ve been experimenting with, and I like the results so far.

Purchase A Fitness Tracker

Of course, you need a way to track between set rest periods. The most convenient way to do this is with a fitness tracker. The best fitness trackers will have a timer and stopwatch. You can use either one to track your rest periods. Investing in a nice fitness tracker is definitely worth it.

In Closing

As you can see, it doesn’t have to be difficult to keep your rest periods between sets at an optimal time for your fitness goals. In fact, it should actually save you wasted time. Also, it’s great for boosting your intensity. Make it a priority to track your rest times and you’ll reap the fitness benefits.