In the Paul Carter 5 years of insane gains article, he has 5x8 for bench press and rows. Are these meant to be ramping to a top set of 8, or straight sets? Does it matter?
Go with ramping up to a top set.
It’s Probably going to work better for most goals.
And the difference matters, it just might matter more or less from person to person. Like 5 x 8 with the same weight may be OK young studly person who’s making good progress.
And it may be the perfect shitty combination of too many reps with too little weight to make an old guy lose muscle mass and strength.
3 Likes
Noted thanks. I’m 37, so not quite a young stud but not old either. I’ll go with the ramping.
As an example: in his book Never Let Go, Dan John wrote that 5 x 5 at someone’s top weight can be “too much”. He was writing about athletes in their prime though.