When you’re working hard at the gym or at home to build muscle and burn fat, resting between workouts is very important for maximum results. Resting between sets and resting between actually workout sessions are equally important, but many ignore the time frame between each.

Let’s first start with rest time between each workout session. I see many people working out every single day of the week. Those who are doing this workout different muscles a day. It’s best to give a muscle about 48 hours of rest before working it out again. A common workout schedule for those working out everyday is to work on the upper body one day and then next day the lower body.

However, this can still be too much for your muscles. It’s recommend to give your muscle more rest. Stick to working alternating the upper body and the lower body throughout the week, but then completely rest of the weekends.

As for the rest time between each set:

Let’s say you’re performing 3 sets of bicep curls with 12 reps each. A general rule to follow for resting between each set is no more than 60 seconds. You can pick up the weights and perform the next set earlier than 60 seconds, but you don’t want to rest longer than 60 seconds.

However, it’s different for abdominal workouts. Between each set of ab workouts, you want to keep your rest time to a maximum of 30 seconds.

To Recap:

Give your muscle groups 48 hours to rest.

Rest for a maximum 60 seconds between sets and a maximum of 30 seconds for abdominal sets.

This is the general rule that I currently follow and that I’ve learned from the Athlean-X program.