Maximising Your Workout: Understanding Reps, Sets, and Rest Times

February, 2024

For anyone who is new to working out, some terminology can be a little confusing.

In fact, even the thought of going to the gym can be daunting. However, in most gyms, people are just happy putting their earphones in and focusing on themselves. However, if you want to get the most out of your routine, you need to know what reps, sets, and rest times are.

I’m going to go through this with you and explain what the optimal number of sets, reps and time between them should be depending on what your goals are.

What are reps, sets, and rest times?

Reps

A rep (which is short for repetition) is when you complete one exercise. So, if you do one pushup, that is one rep, or you perform one arm curl with a dumbbell, that is one rep, too.

It is important to keep track of how many reps you do, and I’ll explain why a little later on.

Sets

A set is the number of reps you do before you stop.

If you perform 10 pushups or 12 arm curls, then stop, that is a set. The number of reps you do per set depends on what you are trying to achieve, such as building or maintaining muscle.

Rest times

It is vital that you allow your muscles to recover between sets, and this is known as your rest time. It works the same way as resting between training sessions but on a much shorter scale. As you need time for your body to properly recover between full workouts, you also need your muscles to recover temporarily between sets.

Reps, sets, and rest for muscle growth

If your focus is on building muscle mass, a good starting point is the 12-10-8-6 method.

This is where you start off with 12 reps, rest, then 10 reps, rest, 8 reps, rest, and finish with 6 reps and incrementally adding weight for each set. With this method, you are performing 4 sets overall but reducing the number of reps each time as you lift more weight with each set.

To maximise the benefits of this method, the rest time between sets should be at least 1 minute, although some evidence shows that waiting up to 3 minutes between sets produces better results.

Reps, sets, and rest for muscle endurance

Muscle endurance is different from muscle growth as the emphasis of these exercises is to increase stamina and your overall performance when exercising.

This means the reps, sets, and rest times are different.

For this type of workout, I recommend using lighter weights because you need to do more reps in each set. Aim for 20-30 reps over 2 or 3 sets. You want a shorter rest time between sets too, so around 30 seconds is best for muscle endurance.