We don’t know if resting longer between sets helps people who already lift weights, older adults, or muscles in the chest and back — there just isn’t enough research yet.

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Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy

Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis

Human

2024

This study looked at lots of experiments and found that resting longer between sets (over a minute) does help muscles grow a little, and resting more than 90 seconds doesn’t help much more — so there’s plenty of data, not none.

Source Study

Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy

Score: 55

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1429789

Similar Assertions

Whether you push your muscles to complete exhaustion or stop a few reps short doesn’t change how much rest time between sets affects muscle growth.

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Taking longer breaks between sets of weightlifting doesn't hurt your muscle growth—you might even grow more muscle with longer breaks than with very short ones.

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Resting for 1 to 3 minutes between sets doesn’t seem to build more muscle than resting for 1 to 1.5 minutes — the difference is too small to matter in practice.

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Resting more than a minute and a half between sets doesn’t seem to help you build more muscle than resting for about a minute — it’s not worth the extra time.

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You don’t need to take shorter breaks to build muscle than you do to get stronger—both can be done with the same rest times if you lift the same amount of weight and do the same number of reps.

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