Acute response of 3 versus 5 minutes rest interval after squat exercise on standing broad jump distance and leg peak force output

The aim of this study is to investigate acute responses of 3 minutes versus 5 minutes rest interval during squat exercise on standing broad jump distance and leg peak force output. Second to this, comparison was also made between the 3 minutes and 5 minutes rest interval. Twenty-five recreationally active participants were recruited for this study. Participants randomly attended two testing sessions, where either 3 or 5 minutes rest interval between set was prescribed in the session. In both sessions, participants performed two set of four repetitions of squat exercise at 80% of one repetition maximum. Standing broad jump were performed on a force platform before and after the squat exercise. The results of this study indicated that there was no significant difference between the 3 minutes and 5 minutes rest interval group on standing broad jump distance. However, there was significant difference in the post test between the 3 minutes rest interval group versus the 5 minutes rest interval group. Meanwhile, for the leg peak force output, there were no significant differences between the 3 and 5 minutes rest interval group. There were also no significant differences between the 3 minutes rest interval group versus 5 minutes rest interval group on leg peak force output. It can be concluded that for recreational males lifting four repetitions of squat with either 3 or 5 minutes rest interval between sets for strength and power protocol resulted the same performance in standing broad jump distance and leg peak force output. For practitioners, this study has indicated that using any of the two durations as rest interval between sets during strength training produce similar effect. But this only on assessed variables, and may have different effect on other training variables such as metabolic based variables or hormonal based variables.