How long should you rest between sets?

It depends on what the set is for. If you are lifting heavy to get stronger, 3 to 5 minutes. If you are training for size, at least 60 seconds, and there is no measured benefit to resting more than about 90. Most people reading this are resting too little, not too much.

Is 2 minutes too long between sets?

No. 2 minutes is a good default for almost any set. The research found a small advantage to resting more than 60 seconds for muscle size, and no further gain past about 90 seconds, so 2 minutes sits safely above the point where the benefit arrives.

Is resting 3 minutes between sets too much?

Not if you are lifting heavy. 3 minutes is what the strength research supports, and a trial that compared 1 minute against 3 in trained lifters found the 3 minute group got stronger and gained more thigh muscle. For lighter work it is more rest than you need, so it mostly costs you time.

How long should you rest between sets to grow muscle?

At least 60 seconds. A 2024 review of 9 studies found a small advantage to resting longer than 60 seconds, and no measurable difference once you rest more than about 90. So 90 seconds is enough, and longer is not wasted, it just buys you nothing extra for size.

Why does resting longer help at all?

Because it protects your reps. Come back too soon and you finish fewer reps on the next set, so you do less total work in the session. The 2024 review linked the benefit of longer rests to exactly that. It is not about a hormone window.

How long did old school bodybuilders rest between sets?

Much less, and that is where the 30 second advice comes from. Short rests were thought to matter because they raise growth hormone right after a workout. When the comparison was finally run head to head, the group resting 3 minutes gained more muscle in the thigh than the group resting 1 minute.

Should I rest the same on every exercise?

No. Match the rest to what the set costs you. A heavy squat or deadlift takes far more out of you than a curl, so it needs longer. A useful habit is 3 minutes on the big lifts you load heavily and 90 seconds on the smaller ones.

What if I do not have time to rest that long?

Rest properly on your heaviest 2 exercises and shorten the rest on the rest of the session. Short rests still build muscle, they are just slightly worse for it, and a short session you actually finish beats a long one you skip.

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How long to rest between sets

For strength, 3 to 5 minutes. For size, at least 60 seconds, and no measured reason to go past 90.

Last updated 20 August 2026

That is the short answer, and for most people it means resting longer than they do now. The rest of this page is where those numbers came from, because the number you have probably read is a third one, and it has not held up.

The short version

What the set is for	How long to rest
Getting stronger on a heavy lift	3 to 5 minutes
Building muscle	90 seconds is enough. Under 60 is worse.
A smaller exercise late in a session	90 seconds
Short on time	Rest fully on your 2 heaviest lifts, cut the rest

Where the 30 second rule came from

Nearly every page on this subject prints the same table. 3 to 5 minutes for strength, 30 to 60 seconds for size, under 30 for endurance. It is worth knowing that this is one paper.

It is a 2009 review by de Salles and colleagues, which read 35 studies and pulled them together. The strength half is well supported. The size half came with a reason attached, and the reason is the part that gets left out: short rests were recommended because they produce higher levels of growth hormone right after a workout.

So the advice was never a direct finding. It was a step taken from a hormone reading to a training rule, and the pages repeating the rule dropped the step.

What happened when someone tested it

In 2016 Schoenfeld and colleagues ran the comparison properly. 21 young men who already trained were split into two groups for 8 weeks. One rested 1 minute between sets, the other rested 3. Everything else was held the same: 3 sessions a week, 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, 7 exercises.

The group resting 3 minutes came out stronger on both the back squat and the bench press, and gained more muscle at the front of the thigh. That is the opposite of what the table says for size, tested head to head.

One trial is one trial, and this one was young trained men only. It is worth reading as the first crack in the rule rather than as the last word on it.

Where the returns stop

The most useful answer came in 2024. Singer and colleagues pooled 9 studies on rest length and muscle growth in healthy adults. They found a small benefit to resting longer than 60 seconds. They also found something more practical: past about 90 seconds, they could not measure any further gain in muscle size.

That gives you a floor and a ceiling. Under 60 seconds you are giving something up. By 90 you have taken what is on offer. Beyond that, extra rest is not harming your results, it is just no longer buying you any more of them.

Two honest notes about that review. The studies disagreed with each other a lot, and the size of the advantage was small enough that the true value could still be zero. It is the best available answer, not a settled one.

Why resting longer works at all

Not through a hormone. The 2024 review tied the benefit to something much simpler: how much work you finish.

Come back to the bar too soon and you are still tired, so you get fewer reps on the next set. Do that on every set and the session adds up to less work than it looks like on paper. The older review found the same thing from the other side, that 3 to 5 minutes let people complete more reps across their sets.

Rest is the variable that protects the other ones. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the answer is a floor rather than a target.

Strength keeps its 3 to 5 minutes

Nothing above overturns the strength half of the table. If your set is heavy and the point of it is to lift more, rest 3 to 5 minutes. Both the 2009 review and the 2016 trial agree, and they agree for the reason already given: a heavy set is only useful if you can repeat it.

This is where people cut the most and lose the most. A deadlift at a load you have to brace for asks more of you than any other set in the session. 90 seconds is not enough to answer it.

What to do in your next session

Rest 3 minutes on the heavy compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, presses, rows.
Rest 90 seconds on everything smaller, like a curl or a lateral raise.
Stop resting under 60 seconds unless you are deliberately training for endurance.
If time is tight, take the full rest on your first 2 exercises and shorten the rest.

One catch worth naming. Rest only counts if you actually keep it, and almost nobody counts it accurately by feel. 90 seconds of scrolling is usually 4 minutes, and 3 minutes of feeling rushed is usually 70 seconds. The workout builder here runs the countdown for you and logs what you lifted, which is the honest fix for a number you are supposed to hold to.

Common questions

How long should you rest between sets?: It depends on what the set is for. If you are lifting heavy to get stronger, 3 to 5 minutes. If you are training for size, at least 60 seconds, and there is no measured benefit to resting more than about 90. Most people reading this are resting too little, not too much.
Is 2 minutes too long between sets?: No. 2 minutes is a good default for almost any set. The research found a small advantage to resting more than 60 seconds for muscle size, and no further gain past about 90 seconds, so 2 minutes sits safely above the point where the benefit arrives.
Is resting 3 minutes between sets too much?: Not if you are lifting heavy. 3 minutes is what the strength research supports, and a trial that compared 1 minute against 3 in trained lifters found the 3 minute group got stronger and gained more thigh muscle. For lighter work it is more rest than you need, so it mostly costs you time.
How long should you rest between sets to grow muscle?: At least 60 seconds. A 2024 review of 9 studies found a small advantage to resting longer than 60 seconds, and no measurable difference once you rest more than about 90. So 90 seconds is enough, and longer is not wasted, it just buys you nothing extra for size.
Why does resting longer help at all?: Because it protects your reps. Come back too soon and you finish fewer reps on the next set, so you do less total work in the session. The 2024 review linked the benefit of longer rests to exactly that. It is not about a hormone window.
How long did old school bodybuilders rest between sets?: Much less, and that is where the 30 second advice comes from. Short rests were thought to matter because they raise growth hormone right after a workout. When the comparison was finally run head to head, the group resting 3 minutes gained more muscle in the thigh than the group resting 1 minute.
Should I rest the same on every exercise?: No. Match the rest to what the set costs you. A heavy squat or deadlift takes far more out of you than a curl, so it needs longer. A useful habit is 3 minutes on the big lifts you load heavily and 90 seconds on the smaller ones.
What if I do not have time to rest that long?: Rest properly on your heaviest 2 exercises and shorten the rest on the rest of the session. Short rests still build muscle, they are just slightly worse for it, and a short session you actually finish beats a long one you skip.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure on this page comes from one of 4 papers. We store the fetched record for each one, so the author list and the population you are reading are the ones the paper actually has.

de Salles BF, Simão R, Miranda F, Novaes Jda S, Lemos A, Willardson JM, 2009. Rest interval between sets in strength training. Sports Medicine 39(9):765 to 777. A review of 35 studies. The source of the table everyone prints.
Schoenfeld BJ, Pope ZK, Benik FM and colleagues, 2016. Longer interset rest periods enhance muscle strength and hypertrophy in resistance-trained men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 30(7):1805 to 1812. 21 young trained men, 8 weeks.
Grgic J, Lazinica B, Mikulic P, Krieger JW, Schoenfeld BJ, 2017. The effects of short versus long inter-set rest intervals in resistance training on measures of muscle hypertrophy. European Journal of Sport Science 17(8):983 to 993. 6 studies.
Singer A, Wolf M, Generoso L and colleagues, 2024. Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living 6:1429789. 9 studies, healthy adults.

What this page does not claim: that short rests do not work, that growth hormone is irrelevant, or that 90 seconds is enough when you are lifting for strength. None of those 4 papers tested the first two, and the third is a finding about muscle size only.

If a lift hurts rather than being hard, stop and see a physiotherapist.