Bench press how long to rest between sets

I would say, however, that there is no conceivable situation where you should be resting less than 30 seconds between sets, unless you insist on doing drop sets or super sets. And you could do all of these things between your sets, but I would offer another suggestion:. Picture yourself doing the set, lifting the weight with ease — and squeezing out more reps than last week. For most guys looking to increase their lean muscle mass, I would hands down recommend adopting longer resting intervals.

You want to maximize your strength, and by taking those minutes you will be considerably stronger than if you only rested for seconds. In fact, I would say that this is a crucial factor that many guys are inadvertently getting wrong — simply by not giving their muscles long enough to recover. However, you will often realistically not be able to take as long resting as you might like — due to many of the practical considerations that we talked about before.

If you want to increase your cardiovascular endurance, and get an aerobic workout, then focus on adding some sort of cardio into your routine, instead of limiting your rest time. How much rest time do you like to take between sets? Do you agree with my recommendations? And since metabolic stress was shown in Dr. As with many things, short rest periods come with a price - and it's something you've probably experienced yourself. Which one wins?

Well to find out, it's time to delve into the research. Luckily for us, researcher Dr. Brad Schoenfeld has recently published a study covering exactly what we're looking for. In this study, they took 21 young resistance trained men and randomly assigned them to two groups:.

After 8 weeks, the long rest period group saw better muscle growth AND strength gains than the short period group. This was likely because the long rest period group was able to achieve more total volume during their workout since they were better rested for their sets.

Therefore proving that total workout volume is a more important driver for muscle growth than metabolic stress - a finding that was then replicated in multiple other studies looking at rest periods. Now with that being said, theoretically you could just perform more sets with shorter rest periods to achieve the same amount of volume as you would with longer rest periods.

BUT this is generally unenjoyable, likely takes even longer, AND as previously noted, will negatively impact your strength gains. So for these reasons, longer rest periods are likely the better option. Really enjoy digging into the research? Then you'll absolutely love working with my team of highly-qualified trainers and nutritionists plus myself!

Find out more here:. Click the button below to find out more about the 3-on-1 coaching program:. Find Out More! We know that long rests might be better, but exactly how long are we talking about?

The Question: How long should you wait between sets? Should you try to spend only a few seconds between sets to fully work the muscle and increase the "burn", or should you wait longer until your muscles have fully recovered from the last set? Which way is best to increase growth? Should you ever change the amount of time between sets over time, or stick to one, proven method?

Bonus Question: Have you ever used one of those "intense" workouts with absolutely minimal amount of time between sets just to try to break a plateau or try something different? Something like doing 10 sets of squats with only 15 seconds between sets, until you are on the verge of puking? If so, what was the workout exactly? How often should you do it? Did it help your overall gains?

The "best" amount of time to rest between sets, like most things in bodybuilding, depends on what specific goal you're training for. Do you want to be stronger, more muscular or increase your stamina? Common sense and research tells us that we can only pursue one goal at a time. If we want to be stronger, we should follow a training program that increases our strength as quickly as possible. Likewise for size and stamina.

Not surprisingly, with each specialized program comes a different requirement for rest periods. This is because much of the energy your body consumes during traditional strength training heavy weight, 1 to 6 reps comes from the Adenosine Triphosphate Phosphocreatine system.

Your body has a very small phosphagen reserve, which lasts about 15 seconds. It takes your body about 3 minutes to fully replenish phosphagen stores Fleck, In other words, if you give your ATP-PC system at least 3 minutes to recharge, you'll lift more weight and get stronger faster. In one study, athletes lifted a weight more times in 3 sets after resting 3 minutes compared to when they rested only 1 minute Kraemer, Two more studies that examined very short rest periods 30 to 40 seconds found they caused nowhere near the strength gains from longer rest periods Kraemer et al, ; Kraemer, You'll cool down too much if you rest longer than 5 minutes.