Do you pay attention to the (length of) breaks in your strength training? This does not mean the breaks between the individual training units, but between each individual set. If you’re not already doing this, even though you’re aiming to build muscle, you should definitely read on now.
The athletes in the fitness club do intensive strength training with a wide variety of goals. They want to do something for their health or improve their muscular endurance and use what is known as strength endurance training as a method (approx. 15 to 25 repetitions per set with a light weight). Others want to build muscle, for example, and therefore rely more on so-called hypertrophy training (8 to 15 repetitions per set with a correspondingly heavier weight). A few want to maximize their maximum strength (e.g. for competitive sports) and then use the so-called maximum strength method (3 to 8 repetitions per set with a very heavy weight). But what many do not know: that it is not only important how many sets per muscle and how many repetitions are made (stimulus range) or how often a week is trained (stimulus frequency), but also how the breaks between the sets (stimulus density) look.
The topic was not really considered in German-language literature for a long time. Older textbooks recommend break times of between one and ten minutes. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with that. And if you look around in reality, it is also noticeable that there are trainees who take very short breaks and those who take extremely long breaks.
What are the breaks in hypertrophy training?
During the break in training, the muscle recovers and collects energy again. Here you could say: The longer the break, the greater the strength that can be put into the next sentence. Ergo, a longer break of three to five minutes (or more) would be appropriate for maximum strength training.
On the other hand, as the name suggests, strength endurance training also aims to improve local muscular endurance. Therefore, a very short break of about 10 to 50 seconds would be advisable.
Time for hormone response in hypertrophy training
Between these two training goals is hypertrophy training – for big muscles. When you expose yourself to a strength training stimulus, a lot happens in the body. Among other things, there is a so-called hormone response (“Hormonal Response”). If you take a closer look at these in the blood count, you will notice that some so-called anabolic hormones, such as testosterone and the growth hormone GH (growth hormone), first increase and then level off again. Now, assuming that these hormones are somehow related to muscle growth, it might make sense to time this peak release closely. Most studies have found such a peak after about 60 to 120 seconds. Recent review articles on this topic are not entirely unanimous, as researchers led by De Salles et al. found an optimal pause time of 30 to 60 seconds and others around Grgic et al. more like two or three minutes.
If you ask me, the truth is probably right somewhere in the middle. So I would recommend a 1-2 minute rest period when doing hypertrophy training. Just give it a try!
About the person: Prof. Dr. Stephan Geisler is a professor of fitness and health at the IST University in Düsseldorf and a lecturer in Olympic weightlifting at the German Sport University in Cologne. There he also did his doctorate in the field of molecular sports medicine. His focus in research and teaching is on strength training. He has been training students and fitness trainers for over 15 years and is the author of various international specialist publications. He gives tips and tricks for athletes and coaches on his YouTube channel Fitnessprofessor and on Facebook.