Rest periods for non-powerlifters

Hi guys,

Sorry if this has been covered somewhere else, I didn’t have luck trying to search the forums (“rest time” gets a lot of hits from logs!).

I just watched Alan Thrall’s video on youtube about shortening rest periods to 3 mins for the main lifts, and 2 mins for the supplemental lifts / variations (www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgfuQt9df2k). I have watched some previous Q&As where (I think) Jordan has said that resting for 3 mins between sets is not enough, but clarifying that 5 mins is plenty. I’m currently doing the HLM V2 template and, at least for a first run through, I’m following the prescribed rest periods (4-5mins on big lifts, 3-4mins on supplemental lifts).

I’m not a powerlifter, I don’t intend to be, my weights are nothing to brag about (not sure why, will leave that for another time!), so I’m just wondering if it matters much whether I rest 3 mins or 4 mins or 5 mins? Particularly, if 3 mins is too low, what is the practical difference between a 3 min rest and a 4 min rest?

If there is already a good resource you can point me to on this, happy to go do some reading / watching / listening rather than take your time up writing here.

Thanks very much, appreciate all the information you guys put out.
Dace

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The difference within that range doesn’t matter much, so I wouldn’t over-think it. We’re just trying to get people away from routinely resting 10-15+ minutes between work sets.

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Ok cool, thanks Austin! I’m also thinking that taking 1min off all the rests could add up to a bit of a time saving for the session as a whole.
Thanks again.