Long rest between sets
Three to five minutes or more between heavy sets so each one starts fresh
Heavy work gets spaced out rather than rushed. Three to five minutes lets creatine phosphate refill and the nervous system settle, so the next set matches the last instead of sliding into a conditioning circuit. Some powerlifters wait far longer, ten or twenty minutes, and report better performance on the later sets; research on all-out efforts shows work capacity still below baseline seven minutes on. The cost is time. An hour for a handful of working sets is the design, not a failure of it.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Pavel TsatsoulineRecommends
Strength coach · StrongFirst
Rushing from set to set is, in his telling, why plenty of people never get strong. Following Matveev he sorts rest into ordinary, stress and stimulation intervals, and argues most sets deserve an ordinary rest, where you actually feel recovered, or a stimulation one far longer than instinct suggests. Density work he compares to fast food.
Source: StrongFirst: The Patience of Strength, the Russian Science of Rest Intervals
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