How long should you rest between sets for strength I amount of rest between sets

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to this video. In this video, we are going to be talking about how long should you be resting in between your sets. You've probably heard many different things that you should be either resting longer or resting shorter or keeping your heart rate up or letting your heart rate go back down, or you've probably heard a bunch of things. So in this video, hopefully I'm going to cover every single thing you need to know About how long you should be resting between sets. It's a simple answer, but it's not a simple answer because as always, if you know anything about me, as always, it depends. It normally depends on a lot of things. We're going to talk about what it depends on. We're going to talk about what your goal is, what you're trying to accomplish from the workout, those kind of things. And I'm going to answer some different questions over here that I get asked a ton because I made several different posts about this in the past couple of weeks on my Instagram and my TikTok, which if you don't follow me there, follow me there, Eric Roberts Fitness. Um, so I've gotten multiple different questions on it when I make posts about this. So I want to use this opportunity. That's why I like YouTube. I can go more in depth. I want to use this opportunity to kind of go over those things in depth. So first and foremost, what it depends on is when I'm talking about all of this stuff right here, I am talking about how long should you rest between Your working sets. So I do not mean a warm-up set. So for example, let's say you are doing 3 sets of 5 on squats, right? Let's say your weight that you are going to use is, just for math, 200 pounds. Okay, let's say that in order to work up to that 200 pounds, you do 1 set of just the barbell. Okay. And then you do 1 set of 100 pounds, and then you do 1 set of 150 pounds, and then you do 1 set of 180 pounds. Those sets don't count. They're just warm-up sets. You're just getting your body warmed up to go into your working sets. And so in this video, all of this stuff I'm going to cover here is regarding to working sets, because warm-up sets, like, you know, that's number one, it's probably different for everybody, but number two, you're not pushing Very close to failure. When I say a working set, I mean a working set is when you push your body very close to failure. So if you're doing 3 sets of 5 on a squat and you're, you know, 200 pounds, those last 1 or 2 reps should be really, really, really hard. And you should be getting to the point where you're like, man, I don't know, you know, if I could do 1, 2, or 3 more reps. And so that's what I mean when When I'm going to talk about all this stuff right here, I am not referring to warm-up sets. I am referring to working sets where you push yourself very close to failure. Okay? So that is the first question. Second question is— I mean, that's the first thing. Second thing is going to be it depends. And so it depends on mainly what kind of adaptation are you going for, what kind of stimulus are you sending To your body to create the adaptation you're looking for. So for example, the adaptation is like actually what your body is doing to change. Because remember, when you work out, the— basically what you're doing when you're working out to change your body is you're putting a stress on your body, you're putting a stimulus on your body, your body recovers from that stress, recovers from that stimulus, and then it allows your body to— your body then adapts. and changes because it says, oh shit, we got this stress put on us, we got this stimulus put on us, we got to recover from this first, and then we got to adapt to this to make sure when that— if and when that stress gets placed on us again, we're going to be able to now handle it and grow. Whether it's grow stronger, more defined muscles, or more of a metabolic cardio adaptation, or whatever the adaptation is, that is the adaptation. You're either going for Typically speaking, you're either going for a muscle, like a muscular adaptation to like build more defined muscles, build stronger muscles. So you could have a strength adaptation, which that can be a muscle and a neurological adaptation. So I kind of like link those 2 together. And then I also put in here a cardio slash like metabolic adaptation. Those are typically speaking your 3 main adaptations. And again, that's how your body changes. Okay, so if you are somebody who is going for more of a cardio/metabolic adaptation— and again, metabolic just really just means cardio— when you're going for more of a metabolic adaptation, typically speaking, what you're going to want to do is you want to have your work-to-rest ratio in a, in a situation where you are working More than you are resting. Okay, so let's just say, for example, you are doing a set of 8 reps on shoulder press. Okay, let's just say for easy numbers that that takes you roughly 35 seconds to complete or 40 seconds to complete. That's how long you worked for. Again, it could be 40 seconds, could be 50 seconds, whatever. Let's just say you worked for 40 seconds, right? Let's say you then rested for 30 seconds. Your work-to-rest ratio would be in favor of the work because you're doing more work than you are resting throughout the entire, not only that set right there, but the next set and the next set and the next exercise and the rest of the workout. You typically want your work-to-rest ratio to be in favor of the work because you are going for more of a cardio, more of a metabolic Adaptation. And so typically speaking, if you're resting like 30, 40, 50, 60 seconds, you're probably doing more of a cardio adaptation. You're not necessarily getting the physical adaptation in terms of like changing the way your body looks. It's more on a cellular level inside of your body. That's, that's having the adaptations. It's the adaptations happening Either way, it's going to happen inside of your body because that's how we change, but it's happening from more of like— let's just call it for the sake of the argument of this video, let's call it more of like a cardio adaptation as opposed to a physical seeing your body change adaptation. And that's for a few reasons. Without getting too in-depth, think about when you're resting for 30 seconds. Essentially what you're doing is, let's say you're in your car and you're just revving your engine and you're just putting your foot down on the gas 24/7. And those like RPMs are just like skyrocketing towards the red, right? You're just laying down on the gas. You're, you're requiring so much energy from your body. You're requiring so much work from your body. You're not really letting your body recover from the work you're doing because you're resting for very, very, very short intervals of time periods. So you're just pressing down on this gas. And essentially, again, what your body has to do is it has to work very hard. It has to try to create a lot of energy very, very, very hard. And so it is not getting the opportunity to fully recover before you go into your next set. So what's gonna happen from there is your body's not really focused on, like, for example, building muscle or doing those things. It's just you're just trying to create enough energy so you can keep up with the demands of the workout, right? You're really just trying to, you know, create as much energy demand as humanly possible, as well as this can be very taxing on the nervous system as well, because when you're taking very short rest intervals in between your sets, your nervous system is not able to fully recover, even if you are able to fully recover your energy stores. So let's say for example, you know, your energy's at 100%, right? Let's say you do your set of 40 seconds and you're resting 30 seconds. Well, during that 30 seconds, let's say either you were able to get back up to 100 or you're back up to 75. Even if you get close to getting back up to your energy stores being back to normal, your nervous system has not been able to recover yet. And so now you are also taxing the nervous system a bit more as well, which again, you're not necessarily taxing the, uh, The muscular system. You're more so taxing the nervous system and the cardiovascular system as opposed to taxing your muscular system. So for those reasons right there, taking shorter rest intervals and having a work-to-rest ratio where you're working more than you're resting, you're going to get more of a cardio/metabolic adaptation. You are not going to very much get a strength Or a muscular adaptation. So again, you just have to know what your goals are. If your goals are going into the gym and like getting better at cardio, then like that would, that would be one thing. But if your goal is to go into the gym and see your body change and see your physique change and build, you know, more lean, lean muscle mass and build more defined muscle and get stronger over a period of time, shorter rest intervals are not going to lead— are simply just not going to lead to that adaptation you're looking for. Now, I will say if you're a rank beginner, doing anything is going to lead you to an adaptation, but the more advanced you get, the more it's important to lean more towards— if you are going for a strength and a muscle building adaptation, you want to lean more towards longer rest periods in between your working sets. And let me make this very clear, again, working sets, not like your warm-up sets, your working sets. So you want to be making sure you're taking roughly 2 to 4 minutes in between your working sets if you want to be able to have the strength and the muscle building adaptation, if that is your goal. If your goal is to go into the gym, get stronger, build more defined muscle, you want to make sure you're resting between 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets. And I want to piggyback off this right here. Um, not only, you know, talking about the metabolic stress and the cardio adaptations and those kinds of things, But studies have shown as well, the shorter rest periods that you have, the less muscle protein synthesis there is inside your body. And the less muscle protein synthesis there is, well, like, how do you think your body changes its, you know, changes its physique, so to speak? It's one big thing, as you can probably imagine just from hearing the term muscle protein synthesis. It's muscle protein synthesis. You're synthesizing new proteins, new muscle, right? So the shorter rest intervals kind of almost like blunt that. It almost like turns that off to a degree. So again, that's another reason why if you're going more for strength and a muscle building and a muscle definition adaptation, change adaptation, if you're going more for that, you want to lean more towards the 2 to 4 minute rest intervals in between your working sets. And again, going back to studies have also shown When you do shorter rest intervals, number one, you're not going to fully recover your nervous system. Okay? So your nervous system can't fully recover at that point. I oftentimes translate it to like something like this. Let's say someone's like, hey, hold your breath underwater as long as you possibly can. And you're like, all right, cool. So you do it for a minute. Let's say that's as long as you could hold it for a minute. You come back up and you're like, because you just literally almost passed out underwater, you got to catch your breath again, right? And then 20 seconds later they're like, cool, go do it again. You're like, fuck, I haven't even recovered from the first one. Like, alright, I guess I'll try. So you go back underwater, hold your breath for as long as you can, but this time it's only 40 seconds because you haven't fully recovered from the first time you held your breath underwater for as long as you can, right? So you come back up, it was only 40 seconds, and then they're like, hey, do it one more time in 20 seconds. And you're like, Jesus, I haven't even recovered from the first one, let alone the second one, but alright, I'll go and do it again. So you go back underwater, hold your breath for as long as you can, and this time it's only 25 seconds. Notice how the first time it was 60 seconds, the second time it was 40 seconds, and the third time it was 25 seconds. What happened? You got worse, right? Every single time, that time that you held your breath underwater for as long as you can went down because you weren't fully recovered yet. That's essentially the same thing what happens with your muscles is If you're taking too short of rest intervals, number one, your nervous system won't be able to recover, which is then going to lead to less workout performance, actual less recruitment of something called high threshold motor units, which is just like— not getting too in depth— your ability to contract muscles and move more weight. So what's going to happen is your performance is going to decrease over a period of time. You're going to lift less weight. You're going to do less reps. That's going to get you less closer to failure. It's going to get you farther away from failure. Your intensity is going to drop. Your intensity is going to decrease. You won't get anywhere near as close to failure and your workout performance is going to go down. But if your main goal is building strength and building muscle, you need your workout performance to be as best as it possibly can. So that's why you want to take longer rest intervals in between your sets. Again, roughly anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes, taking longer rest intervals in between your sets, your nervous system will fully recover, your energy system will fully recover as well. You will have, again, for example, let's say you're working for 30 seconds and resting for 3 minutes. By the time that 3 minutes is up, you better believe all of your systems are going to be ready to go. Your energy is going to be back into the muscle cell, your nervous system is going to be ready to go, you'll be able to push As hard as you possibly can. And this is where I think some people get confused. They think taking shorter rest times like increases their intensity. Remember, intensity doesn't mean like how hard you're breathing or how heavy you're sweating or how high your heart rate gets. Intensity is how close are you lifting to failure. So lift— taking shorter rest times actually decreases your intensity with your workouts and it gets you farther away from failure. All the things I've said thus far. I don't mean to be too redundant, but I wanna make sure you understand all the things I've said thus far. It gets you farther away from that goal and it puts you more towards the cardio/metabolic adaptation. And so if your goal is strength and muscle building, you should be resting anywhere 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets. That's typically what's gonna be the most optimal. Otherwise, you're just gonna have less gains, right? You won't be able to lift as much. You won't be able to do as many reps or, or do it, do it, do as hard of a workout or contract your muscles as hard. 'Cause you haven't fully recovered. You have to fully recover going into your next working set in order to make sure you get the most out of that set, in order to make sure you see the adaptation that you are looking to see. Now, with that being said, I know you probably have some questions, so let's go over them. Number 1, different muscle groups. Let's say you're doing legs versus arms versus shoulders versus this versus that. Again, typically speaking, there's always gonna be some sort of like, it depends, and maybe caveats here and there, but for the most part, if you are going for a strength In a muscular adaptation, you want to be resting 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets. That's what's going to allow your nervous system to fully recover, and it's going to allow your actual energy system to fully recover in order to make sure going into that next set, if you are doing a working set where you're pushing very close to failure, you are recruiting as many muscle fibers as you can. You're recruiting as many high unit— high motor unit thresholds as you possibly can. High threshold motor units as you possibly can, you're improving your intensity and you're keeping your intensity as high as it possibly can be, as opposed to letting it plummet because you're not fully recovered. So no matter what the muscle group is, yes, essentially yes, 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets. That, again, if your goal is that adaptation right here, that's what's gonna be best. Now, number 2, some people are gonna ask me, well, what about a superset? Listen, if you're doing a superset, which again, a superset is just You are doing 2 exercises back to back, right? You don't have to do the first exercise, rest 2 minutes, and the second exercise, right? If you're doing a superset intended to be a superset, you're gonna do those 2 exercises back to back and then rest 2 to 4 minutes. Do the 2 exercises, rest 2 to 4 minutes. If you're doing 2 separate exercises as 2 separate things, well then yes, you're gonna rest 2 minutes, do it again, rest 2 minutes, do it again. Yes. So you would do, let's say for example, you are supersetting a shoulder press and a squat. Okay? Let's say you're supersetting those 2 things. You're doing 3 sets of 10 for a squat and 3 sets of 10 for a shoulder press. What you would do is, you would do your shoulder press for 10 reps, squat for 10 reps, rest 2 to 4 minutes. Shoulder press, 10 reps, squat, 10 reps, rest 2 to 4 minutes. Shoulder press, squat, rest 2 to 4 minutes, move on. To the next exercise, right? So that's if you're supersetting. But if you're doing just dumbbell shoulder press, you do a set of 10 reps, rest 2 to 4 minutes, a set of 10 reps, rest 2 to 4 minutes, a set of 10 reps, rest 2 to 4 minutes. So it just depends on how your program is currently set up. But if you're doing a superset, a superset is intended to do those 2 exercises back to back with minimal time in between and then rest 2 to 4 minutes. So that's what you would do for supersets. Now, I wanna go to this really quickly because, again, if you're somebody who thinks that resting 2 to 4 minutes in between your set is too long, you are not lifting anywhere near close enough to failure and you need to push yourself more and lift heavier weights. And this is really important because with the rise of, like, HIIT boot camps and Orange Theory and all this kind of stuff and HIIT workouts and YouTube videos and all this kind of stuff, Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with those and, like, it's definitely doing better than nothing. So if you're doing those things, something is better than nothing and you're exercising, which is awesome. But, like, with the rise of those things, we think, like, oh, the more I sweat and the higher heart rate and the shorter rest periods, I'm working harder and I'm pushing more and doing these things. No. If you get done your set and you don't need 2 minutes after your set, you need to lift heavier weights. There's no other way around it. You have to lift heavier weights. You have to increase your intensity and you have to push yourself closer to failure. If you've ever taken a set that is either to failure or very close to failure, you're going to quickly realize, oh wow, I need these 2 to 4 minutes in between my set because the next time I do this again, oh man, I'm absolutely trashed right now. If you can just keep going, keep going, keep going after 30 seconds, you're not lifting anywhere near close enough to failure. And again, wouldn't When you talk about creating a strength and a muscular adaptation, you've got to be lifting close to failure. You have to get done your set and basically saying, hey, I maybe could have done 1, 2, or 3 more reps max. Again, I have an entire video on my YouTube channel on how to know if the weight you're lifting is heavy enough, so feel free to check it out. But you're kind of already getting a concept here. If you're someone who's like, oh my God, that's too long. What am I going to do? You're going to actually push yourself harder in the set you're doing so that when the set is over, you're going to see you actually do need 2 to 4 minutes of rest in between your sets to be able to fully recover, to be able to fully push yourself into that next set. Because going back to what we talked about earlier with like kind of like the concept of going underwater, let's say you're doing dumbbell shoulder press and let's say you did 30 pounds for 10 reps, right? Let's say you rest 30 seconds and now you got to drop down in reps and And let's say you do 30 pounds for 6 reps, and then you gotta drop down again and do 20 pounds for 6 reps because you're not fully recovered, right? Think about that versus 30 pounds for 10 reps, rest 3 minutes, 30 pounds for 10 reps, rest 3 minutes, 30 pounds for 10 reps, rest 3 minutes, and move on to the next exercise. You had better workout performance over a period of time. You actually lifted more weight, you did more reps, you pushed yourself harder, you put more stress on your body. You stressed your muscles more because you actually rested longer, but you're actually pushing harder. So this is where if you're someone who really struggles with that mindset, I really challenge you to push yourself more in your weights and lift heavier weights. Do more, you know, and push yourself harder. You will need that two to four minutes. I promise you. I promise you. I promise you. Now last but not least, I often get some pushback. Like wow! Well, how long is my workout going to take? And I got to do this. No, no. Listen. If you're following a good workout program, it shouldn't take you any more than, you know, 30 to 90 minutes. Again, it just depends so much on your workout program, it depends so much on so many things, but like, if you're following a properly designed program, it shouldn't take you more than 30 to 90 minutes. And what I see sometimes is people think you have— like, you think you have to do like 12 exercises in a workout. This is where probably people go wrong, 'cause like, oh my God, well, I gotta do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Let's take a leg day, for example. Let's say you're taking a leg day and let's say you have the first exercise is a squat. The next exercise is a superset of a Romanian deadlift and a hip thrust. And let's say the last 2 exercises are a walking lunge and some sort of like plank, right? So that's 5 exercises. You can get that done with resting 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets. You can get that done pushing yourself close to failure, seeing amazing progress, seeing amazing results in anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes. Again, depending on reps and depending on sets and depending on, you know, so many things, but 5 exercises, like you don't need to do 10 exercises for leg day. That's why you're probably not seeing the progress you want to see because you're doing so many exercises and so many reps and you're not resting long enough in between those sets and reps. And now what you're doing is you're just creating junk volume. You're, you're doing the workout, but you're not going anywhere close enough to failure in order to see progress. You're all of your— basically all you're doing is doing warmup sets because you're not pushing yourself close enough to failure. And so stop trying to do 10, 11, 12, 15 different exercises for your workouts. Do 4 to 8 exercises max. Like the, the, the programs that I create for my Clubhouse members or my clients or whoever, we're doing 4 to 8 exercises and like we're getting things done in, you know, 30 to 90 minutes, somewhere in between there depending on a few things. But like anywhere in between that time period, we're getting it done. So, you know, you should not be spending 2 hours, 3 hours in the gym just because now you have to rest 2 to 4 minutes. No, if you're following a good program, you should be able to get it done within 30 to 90 minutes. And if you're not following a good program, feel free to check out my Clubhouse. I'll put it here below, or I have an entire video on YouTube on how to create a workout program. So feel free to go check it out there. But that's what I'd say, guys. So if you have any questions, please feel free to drop them below. But that, again, remember, it's all about what you're going for. If you're going for a cardio adaptation, like, mazel tov. That's good. That's perfect. But if you're going more for that, like, seeing your body change effect, you want to be able to rest 2 to 4 minutes in between your sets, and that is going to maximize and optimize your muscle/strength building workouts. If you have any questions, drop below. If you enjoyed the video, give it a thumbs up. If you liked the video, share it with somebody. Subscribe. Subscribe to the channel, and I hope it helped, and we'll chat soon. Okay.