The October 2003 Men’s Health magazine suugests after a heavy lifting session, to use a weight that’s 30-50% 1 RM for as many reps as you can do as a last set. In a Japanese study, men did 5 sets with a 90% 1 RM weight, then dropped to 30-50% 1 RM for the last set, and “increased their levels of a hormone that signals your body to burn fat and build muscle.”
Would this hormone be GH? They don’t specify. Has anyway tried such a method, and had any success?
After my last two UB workouts (5 sets of 5 for back and chest), I repped out with about 50% of 1 RM for 20-25 reps. I enjoyed it, got a great pump, and felt sore as hell afterward. Just wondering if anyone has any more to say about doing this.
Here are a couple things to keep in mind about the study. They didn’t tell you if there was any other result of this kind of set other than a possible indicator of future growth. There could be negative reactions to this method, but the study doesn’t address it. A better test might have been to compare actual muscle mass gained over the course of several weeks or months, but those are also very difficult studies to control. On top of all of that, if these guys had not been doing training like that, maybe it’s more beneficial than using it regularly. They don’t address how often this should be done.
However, the study is trying to say that this will result in more hypertrophy. I’ve used similar techniques in the past, and for me, the effect on hypertrophy was minimal at best, and I don’t really like it (regularly) for strength purposes. But that’s just my experience with this kind of training. I would imagine it’d be worth a shot every so often.
I like to use back off sets of 5 or 6 after my max effort work. I would be weary of that study though. If these guys were able to use 90% for multiple sets of any kind of reps then they werent very experienced. Also high reps tend to elevate Lactate and Lactate is associated with higher GH levels if im not mistaken.