Even though short rests make your body release more hormones like testosterone right after lifting, that doesn’t help you build more muscle — longer rests work just as well or better.

Even though lifting weights with short breaks makes your body release more growth hormone, that doesn’t mean you’ll grow bigger muscles over time.

Adding stretching between your weightlifting sets can help you build more muscle faster than just resting normally, without making your workouts take longer. Research suggests this method can lead to about 10.5% more muscle growth compared to 6.7% with regular rest over two months.

Even if you lift heavy or light weights for 12 weeks, your body’s short-term hormone spike after each workout doesn’t change—and that means those hormone surges probably aren’t why your muscles get bigger or stronger over time.

If young men lift light weights with very short breaks between sets for 8 weeks, their upper arms grow more than if they lift heavy weights with long breaks—even if they do the same total amount of lifting—because the short breaks create more muscle-burning stress that helps muscles grow bigger.

If young men lift weights with the same total effort—whether they use heavy weights with long breaks or light weights with short breaks—they’ll still grow about the same amount of muscle. So, different ways of lifting can both work.