How long to rest between sets: usually one to three minutes

The rest between sets is where the next set is decided. Cut it short and the next set comes up a few reps short, or a few pounds lighter: the shorter the rest, the more load you have to drop to finish the same reps.¹ Stretch it out and you get those reps back, but the session takes longer. The question is where the trade stops paying.

This page covers how long to rest for muscle and for strength, how it changes between big lifts and small ones and between beginners and experienced lifters, and how to fit rest into a short session. What goes in the sets themselves is how many reps.

How long to rest for muscle growth

Longer than the old advice. Guidelines from the National Strength and Conditioning Association have recommended short rests of 30 to 90 seconds for muscle growth.¹ Newer research points the other way:

• The 2024 meta-analysis. Pooling 19 measurements from nine studies, it found that muscle grew across a wide range of rest times, with a small benefit from resting more than 60 seconds and no appreciable difference beyond 90. Taking sets to failure or stopping short didn't change that. Its authors write that the guidelines on rest for muscle growth "warrant reconsideration".¹
• Why longer rest might help. The authors suggest the benefit comes from volume load: with more rest, you lift more weight for more reps across your sets.¹
• In experienced lifters. In an eight-week trial, 21 trained young men did three full-body sessions a week, three sets of 8 to 12 reps on seven exercises, resting either one minute or three. The three-minute group gained more squat and bench press strength and more thigh muscle thickness.²

One limit worth knowing: most of the studies in the meta-analysis were in young, untrained people, and there wasn't enough data to analyze trained lifters on their own.¹ So for muscle, a minute is a sensible floor, and somewhere between one and three minutes is reasonable, with the longer end for heavier, harder sets.

How long to rest for strength

Rest matters less for strength than you might expect, but heavy sets still need it.

• A 2018 systematic review of 23 studies and 491 participants found that strength rose substantially even with rests under 60 seconds. It concluded that trained lifters seem to need more than two minutes to get the most strength, while one to two minutes appears to be enough for people new to lifting.³
• The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand, an overview of the research, found that strength gains didn't differ between rests shorter or longer than a minute.⁴
• The ACSM's 2009 stand recommends three to five minutes between heavy sets of 1 to 6 reps for strength, and one to two minutes for muscle-building sets of 6 to 12.⁵

Read together: you'll get stronger on almost any rest, but if the goal is the heaviest sets you can manage, give them the time to be heavy.

Big lifts vs small ones

A heavy squat takes more out of you than a set of curls, and the rest should reflect it. A 2021 review of time-efficient training advises shorter rests for exercises that train small muscle groups and longer ones for demanding exercises like heavy multi-joint lifts with free weights.⁶ A starting point once you're past your first few months, built from the sources above:

The second row sits between two sources: the ACSM's 2009 stand says one to two minutes for muscle-building sets of 6 to 12,⁵ and the 2018 review says trained lifters seem to need more than two minutes to get the most strength.³ The last row is the ACSM's 2009 advice for muscular endurance: light to moderate loads, more than 15 reps, rests under 90 seconds.⁵ Which lifts count as compound is on compound exercises.

Beginners vs experienced lifters

The 2021 review's advice is simple: one to two minutes if you're untrained, two minutes or more if you're trained.⁶ It matches the 2018 strength review above. Early on, about ninety seconds suits most sets, inside that one-to-two-minute range. As the weights climb, the heavy sets earn longer rests. If your reps drop sharply from your first set to your second at the same weight, your rest is probably too short for that exercise.

Rest in a short session

Rest adds up fast. Fifteen sets with two minutes between them is close to half an hour of resting. Three ways to keep the minutes without cutting the rest each muscle needs:

1. Pair exercises for different muscles. Do a set of a push, then a set of a pull, then rest. Each muscle still gets its rest while the other one works. Supersets covers how to pair, and when not to.
2. Keep the long rests for the heavy lifts. Three minutes before another heavy squat is time well spent; three minutes before another set of curls usually isn't.
3. Time it. Rest is easy to misjudge, in both directions. A timer settles it.

For a whole session built around those rules, see the 30-minute workout.

Common mistakes

• Cutting rest to make it feel harder. A shorter rest makes a session feel tougher, but it costs reps on the next set, and for muscle, rests over a minute did slightly better in the research above.
• Resting by feel on a heavy lift. Rushing the next heavy set is how a good session turns into missed reps.
• Five minutes between sets of curls. Small exercises don't need big rests; that's where a short session's minutes go.
• Not counting it at all. Write the rest next to the exercise in your plan, the same as the reps.
• Training through pain. Sharp pain is not soreness. If you have an injury, a medical condition or a medical question, talk to a doctor before you change how you train.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

A rest timer is easy. Knowing which lifts in your plan need longer is the part a page can't do for you. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: set a timer for your next session and write the rest next to each exercise.