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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

Cliffs: Contrary to broscience, longer rest periods between sets (3-5 minutes) are more effective at building muscle than shorter rest periods (30 seconds to 2 minutes).

As someone who has been engaged in weightlifting for almost 30 years, this is no surprise. It probably has little to do with the rest period itself and more to do with the intensity of exercise. You simply can't train with weights in the 5RM-10RM range, going to failure or a rep or two shy of failure, and only rest 30 seconds or 1 minute between sets. Such short rest periods will force you to use much lighter weights and stop way short of failure.

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> It probably has little to do with the rest period itself and more to do with the intensity of exercise.

It's my impression that the actual point of the article is that even though bodybuilding as a community is perceived and perceives itself as being driven by scientific research, it is still almost completely anecdote driven, even when there are scientific findings readily available that fly in the face of or more accurately explain things than anecdote.

It's interesting that you've illustrated this so perfectly. In the article it provides the research findings as to why longer rest periods are beneficial, yet you've still provided your anecdotal impressions as to why it would be the case.

I'm not trying to get at you or put you on blast; I really do find this interesting.

> even though bodybuilding as a community is perceived and perceives itself as being driven by scientific research, it is still almost completely anecdote driven,

Well I mean, it IS driven by scientific research, just not research into exercise physiology as much as organic chemistry

Most "scientific studies" in this area are worthless as they use untrained college age males and only follow them for 1-3 months. Virtually any sort of training will produce significant gains in these subjects and the variance will usually be due more to outside factors than the training regimen itself.

As for the "why", this is obvious to anyone who actually trains with heavy weights. Perform 8 reps of an exercise to failure. Rest 30 seconds. Repeat. I guarantee you will not be able to perform anywhere near 8 reps on the second set, you might not even be able to perform 4. OTOH, rest 4 minutes and you very likely will be able to perform 7 if not 8 reps.

Again, I totally get your point about broscience vs actual science, but this is one of those instances where I'm not sure the "30 seconds between sets" even rises to the level of broscience. You read about it in meathead magazines and some may even claim to adhere to it to demonstrate how manly they are, but if you go to the gym and watch serious lifters lifting heavy weights, you will not find them only resting 30 seconds between sets.

I would also be curious if exercise type needs to be included in this. For example calf raises vs squats. I find that for calf raises since they are so targeted I'm able to recover very quickly, but for squats I typically need to wait that 3-5 minutes

> As someone who has been engaged in weightlifting for almost 30 years, this is no surprise.

Agreed. I was honestly surprised to learn that some people were promoting rest periods as low as 30 seconds for building muscle. It's been common knowledge that super short rest intervals are not helpful for as long as I've been around.

Any weightlifter can tell you that super short rest intervals will limit volume, which is detrimental to muscle growth.

The article feels a bit like a strawman attack on fitness forums or bodybuilder stereotypes.

> Agreed. I was honestly surprised to learn that some people were promoting rest periods as low as 30 seconds for building muscle.

I'll remind everyone that Jeff Cavaliere, YouTube fitness darling beloved by people who don't lift very hard, programmed 1-10 sets of 10 squats @70-80% 1RM with 1 minute rest between sets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fICF_O5esc&t=174s

Non-lifters: this is basically impossible for anyone with a decent level of strength. If I attempted this, I'd be getting peeled out of the squat rack after the 2nd set.

> programmed 1-10 sets of 10 squats @70-80% 1RM with 1 minute rest between sets

10 sets of 10 @ 80% of 1 rep max doesn't make any sense. Nobody can do 100x as many reps as their 1 rep max, unless they've grossly underestimated their 1RM.

There is a place for high volume workouts with short rest periods if someone is training for certain specific fitness goals, but it's not optimal for pure muscle building.

> Nobody can do 100x as many reps as their 1 rep max, unless they've grossly underestimated their 1RM.

I mean, I could certainly do 100 singles at 80% 1RM, but I get your point. Jeff's program is atrociously bad.

I mean, as someone who got into lifting ~3yrs ago, I was told (and read online) to rest for ~3 minutes for strength training and 1 minute for hypertrophy. In fact, I had been training that way until yesterday when I read this article, so I don't think it is quite a strawman.

The first study cited was work equated, meaning the shorter break group did additional sets. This seems to contradict your hypothesis.

See my comment above. Additional sets are irrelevant if you have to lower the weights to a fraction of what you'd otherwise lift in order to maintain short rest intervals. You physically can't repeat your first set performance on 30 seconds rest.

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