If you lift the same total weight, your quads grow just as much whether you rest 20 seconds or 2 minutes between sets—so you don’t need to feel the burn to build muscle.

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.

Even if you rest only 20 seconds between sets instead of 2 minutes, as long as you do the same total number of reps and weight, your muscles still grow and get just as strong.

When people who’ve never lifted weights before do leg exercises with either 20-second or 2-minute breaks between sets—while doing the same total amount of work—their thigh muscles grow about the same amount.

If you lift weights with either light weights and short breaks, or heavy weights and long breaks—but keep the total work the same—you’ll still build muscle in about 8 weeks. So, there’s more than one way to get stronger and bigger muscles.

You can make your workout feel harder and your muscles burn more by resting less between sets—but you can still lift the same total weight without getting weaker.