Just because short rests make you feel more tired and your muscles burn more during one workout doesn’t mean they’ll make your muscles bigger over time—you’d need to study people for months to know that.
Scientific Claim
The study’s findings on acute physiological responses to inter-set rest and hypoxia cannot be extrapolated to long-term muscle hypertrophy outcomes, as no measures of muscle growth, protein synthesis, or chronic adaptation were assessed.
Original Statement
“Results suggest that the reduction in inter-set rest intervals from 120 s to 60 s provide a more potent perceptual, cardiovascular and metabolic stimulus in all environmental conditions, which could maximize hypertrophic adaptations in longer periods of training. ... These results cannot be extrapolated to longer training periods.”
Evidence Quality Assessment
Claim Status
appropriately stated
Study Design Support
Design supports claim
Appropriate Language Strength
definitive
Can make definitive causal claims
Assessment Explanation
The authors correctly acknowledge the limitation of acute design, and the absence of hypertrophy measures makes definitive claims about long-term adaptation invalid—this claim accurately reflects the study’s scope.
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
The study only looked at short-term effects like heart rate and tiredness during one workout, not whether muscles get bigger over weeks or months, so it can't tell us if this training style builds muscle long-term.