I Was WRONG About REST TIMES. (NEW Study)

I was wrong about short rest times being bad for muscle growth that's what came out of a recent study I was involved in let me explain why welcome back Dr M wolf here PhD in sports science contary popular belief still involved in actual science no YouTube is not my full-time gig as part of my ongoing work within # science we recently conducted a meta analysis on rest times for muscle building that revealed things I didn't think were true but first let me give you the takeaways from the previous video I made on rest times first

based on the data I said that resting for less than 60 seconds or so for growth is definitely worse on a per set basis than resting for more than 60 seconds between sets I also claimed that resting for at least 2 minutes between sets was probably a good thing for growth at least when it comes to maximizing the potency of each individual set and these takeaways were based on a systematic review by GJ and colleagues on rest times from around 7 years ago I also generally made the claim that 3 minutes of rest between sets

was probably even better than 2 minutes of rest between sets however based on a study by long-going colleagues that compared 1 minute of rest between sets to 3 minutes of rest between sets when in the one minute condition participants did more overall sets to make up for the reduction in volume load by those short rest times I also came to the conclusion within that video that if you do only rest for say a minute or two between sets you can make up for the reduced potency of each individual set by just doing more sets so

those were my takeaways from this pre previous video it turns out though many of those were wrong and let me break down how in the next few days as of the shooting of this video right here there will be a pre-printed met analysis by singring colleagues on rest times one of my roles as part of the publication of this paper was to extract the data from each of these individual studies so I got to take a close look at the results of each individual study we included there were nine studies in total a metanalysis is

basically when you take the results of each study as far as the numbers go kind of crunch them together crunch the numbers and find one more conclusive result that incorporates all of the results from all these studies essentially by pulling all these studies together you're able to have a bit more confidence when it comes to your effect estimate how much of a difference is there for example between resting for less than a minute versus over a minute Etc We performed a few different analyses on this data set first we performed a par wise comparison of

all of the shorter rest time groups to all the longer rest time groups every study included one shorter rest time conditional group and one longer rest time conditional group we just grouped all of those together and then compared them seeing does the longer rest time group generally see better results than the shorter rest time group and that's where we performed a network met analysis where essentially we categorize each group in each condition from each study into how long they rested for and then we plot this out and see how much rest generally resulted across these

studies and the most hypertrophy we categorized rest times into being 1 minute or less between 1 or 2 minutes between 2 and 3 3 minutes or over 3 minutes between sets resting for 1 to 2 minutes between sets resulted in the most hypertrophy on average across these studies resting for under 1 minute between sets resulted in a worst growth out of the four groups when you went above 2 minutes of rest between sets say between two and three or above 3 minutes of rest between sets you maybe saw worse growth the difference was small enough

that I personally wouldn't read too far into it then we also looked at how results differed if we exclusively looked at studies training the arms for example versus the SI essentially upper body training versus lower body training personally I like resting a little bit longer when it comes to light training because I become a little bit more gassed compared to upper body training and although it was a very small potential minor difference generally longer rest times were a bit more beneficial when it came to the lower body versus the arms in this metanalysis we included

both studies that were volume equated and set equated volume equated studies matched for volume load between groups or conditions so that would be sets time reps time weight being the same in the shorter and longer rest time group and so that would generally entail the shorter rest time group doing more sets to make up for the reduced performance in each individual set to arrive at the same total volume load across the session we also looked for studies that were set equated essentially doing the same number of sets with a shorter or longer rest time for

example three sets with 3 minutes of rest between sets versus three sets with 1 minute of rest between sets importantly though only two of the nine studies included were volume load equated so the vast majority of the studies included equated for number of sets this is important because in the real world if you're doing the same number of sets with a shorter or longer rest time one you will likely have a reduced performance with shorter rest times and two if you do use shoulder rest times you're in and out of the gym faster or you

could use that additional time you just saved to do more sets so because most of the studies in this metan analysis were set equated it seems that resting for 1 to 2 minutes between sets is beneficial for hypertrophy even when it seems to result in a slight reduction in performance on each set and even when you don't really make up for by doing more sets and in fact on average across all your muscle groups Etc resting for 1 to 2 minutes between sets might be ideal for growth so if you're resting for less time should

you still be doing more sets to make up for the reduced potency of each set let me break down the results of the two volume loow quid studies to try and get an idea of whether or not that's true cuz ultimately that was one of the takeaways of my previous video on rest times first we have the aforementioned Long Way tole study they had four conditions using the unilateral leg press in one condition they rested for 1 minute between sets in the second condition for 3 minutes between sets in the third condition they rested for

1 minute between sets but equated for volume load by performing additional sets until the same total volume load was reached as in the 3-minute condition and finally in the fourth condition they rested for 3 minutes between sets but only did as many sets as it took to match for volume load with condition one resting only 1 minute between sets so essentially comparing condition 1 and two is a comparison of rest times while being set equated meanwhile comparisons of condition 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 are comparisons of rest times when the volume load is

being equated by doing more or fewer sets to make up for it 3 minutes was better than 1 minute between sets when it came to maximizing hypertrophy on a per set basis however doing more sets with 1 minute of rest negated this difference altogether so resting for 1 minute or less May indeed reduce the potency of each individual set and that's basically what our analysis found as well the second study is a study by Hill Hassen colleagues and here's what they found they compared around 20 seconds of rest between sets to about 80 Seconds of

rest between sets once again in the 20se second rest group they did more sets to make up for the loss in performance on each set and if anything when making up for the loss and volume load they saw slightly better hypertrophy when resting 20 seconds between sets as opposed to 80 Seconds between sets so in the volume load equate studies things didn't consistently favor longer rest times which makes sense and this is all well and good but one common claim is that trained lifters will need to rest for long or between sets and there's a

couple of rationales there on the one hand as you become stronger you're able to lift more weight for the same number of Reps for example your squal goes from 135 for 10 to 315 for 10 thereby increasing energy expenditure and increasing Central demands for example on your breathing your heart blood flow Etc on the other hand as you become more trained even lifting will make you more cardiovascularly trained and so while you might be lifting more you should also be fitter so there's kind of two rationals that contradict each other what does the evidence on

trained LIF Ros actually say well we have three studies that were included in this metanalysis looking at trained lifters first a study by shonfeld and colleagues in both the upper and lower body generally found more favorable muscle growth and resting for 3 minutes versus 1 minute between sets second we have a study by the suan colleagues in both the upper and lower body once again comparing 80 Seconds of rest between sets to about 120 seconds of rest between sets in this study if anything the hypertrophy slightly favored the lower rest group resting only 80 Seconds

between sets and finally we have a third study by Souza junor and colleagues also finding the same thing broadly speaking in the upper and lower body when resting 80 Seconds versus 120 seconds between sets more favorable hypert was seen with 80 Seconds over 120 seconds so two of three studies generally favor the shorter rest time condition when resting about 80 Seconds versus 2 minutes and the final study found greater hyper resting for 3 minutes versus 1 minute in train lifters so once again when you take the overall picture here it seems that 1 minute or

less probably not ideal for hypertrophy even in train lift res however when you get to rest times of say 1 to 2 minutes as in the studies by theza and Souza Jr that seems to be very effective so even in somewhat trade lifters it seems like 1 to 2 minutes is really effective for hypertrophy so it seems I was wrong about rest times and here are my recommendations based on this most recent paper as far as individualizing rest times here's what I would do I would break down exercises into four categories upper body isolation upper

body compound lower body isolation and lower body Compound on average for for upper body isolation movements I would rest for about a minute between sets for upper body compound movements I would rest for about 1 and 1/2 minute between sets for lower body isolation movements I would rest for about a minute and a half between sets and finally for lower body compounds I would rest for about 2 minutes between sets this is all in the context of muscle building because most of the studies in this met analysis were set equated meaning the shorter rest time

group likely saw a decrease in their performance by taking shorter rest times this means that you likely don't need to be perfectly recovered or even most of them recovered to get a good hypertrophy stimulus from the subsequent set so just because you don't feel perfectly ready to go for your next set doesn't mean you're missing out on hypertrophy if you're resting for less than a minute between sets on average there is a decent chance you need to do more sets to make up for the reduction in performance however if you're resting for 1 to 2

minutes between sets there's a good chance that you don't need to do more additional sets to make up for the reduction in volume load it's still a possibility and we don't have a ton of evidence there yet but I would say you're probably fine to not do any additional sets if you're resting for 1 to 2 minutes between sets this paper's conclusions for hypertrophy is great news for people who are short on time you can see great hypertrophy even resting for less than a minute between sets and you'll probably see your best hypertrophy resting for

1 to 2 minutes between sets and so a 20 to 30 set workout may only take you around an hour just over an hour and that's a super effective session and the final takeaway is I was wrong and I'll readily admit when I'm I'm wrong on this channel if the evidence comes out and says as much my YouTube channel is a place for you to get the best information possible and that's why I do it just kidding that is not why I do it and let me sell you my new product called myapt myapt is

a training app coming out soon that is designed to essentially be your evidence-based coach in your pocket at a much lower price tag whenever new evidence comes out that's important for hypertrophy and how you should train we make sure the app reflects that for example based on the results here I went into the app and make sure the logic that is used to design your training program is using the appropriate rest times to maximize hypertrophy the same thing happened when it came for example to the longer muscle length research the app sorts exercises for you

based on which ones are most effective based on the existing literature this app is coming out in just a few months and will be a fraction of the price of many coaches out there it will provide you with an individualized program aimed at muscle building that gets better week upon week based on your feedback and this is all coming out soon so if you're interested check out myod app.com to sign up to be notified when it comes out conversely if you'd like me to coach you check out the coaching at my website above and we

could become coach and client if you like the video please comment like subscribe let me know down below if there's any other topics you want to see me cover from an evidence-based perspective in the meantime have a fantastic day and I'll see you guys next time peace