For what reason??? I’ve always taken those to failure when training for growth. And usually added on intensity techniques as well.
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I guess I never really used them for growth and thought they would be taxing.
theres a difference between muscularly taxing and neurally taxing.
EDIT: is that you in your avatar picture?
Yes. And Yes I’m aware but to be frank I mainly used strength program during my lifting journey and I found bench to be taxing. But these last few months I have been doing bodybuilding work
I gotcha. I’ve never found bench press, even very heavy bench pressing, to be neurally taxing. I’m always ready to train the next day after a heavy bench session. That isn’t the case with heavy deadlifts or high rep squats. or after a strongman event training day, depending on what events I trained.
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The bench press is not a neurally taxing lift. You’re literally lying down.
The standing press would be more neurally taxing since you’re having to stand, which requires a shit ton more of intramuscular coordination.
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Yeah I guess I have been used to train with too much caution like “don’t go to failure on the big lifts or you’ll implement shitty form in your brain etc” and focusing too much on technique
Thank you i’ll keep that in mind
You look sick, dude. Never saw you post a picture of yourself, just wanted to say awesome work.
Thank you man I really appreciate it but at 6’1 and 185 I’m now focusing on gaining quality mass!
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I think one of the key differences is that Mike suggests >60% 1rm is a stimulus for growth without the need for accumulating metabolites.
Would this support some of those warm up sets actually being a stimulus for growth or do you disagree with the proposal that 60% stimulates growth without metabolites?
The very study that Mike helped fund showed that even at insanely high volumes, doing 60% with 4 reps left in reserve did absolutely nothing for muscle growth. In the studies that have looked at varying intensity ranges, they all produced similar growth rates so long as the sets were taken to failure.
Why do some of you so badly want to avoid training really hard??? You absolutely are not going to grow if you don’t train REALLY hard.
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I don’t avoid intensity, so I’m not trying to defend it. I’m just curious about the theories. I don’t train that light/easy because I don’t enjoy it, whether or not it’s “optimal.”
What you’re describing reminds me of things Dorian Yates has said
Well that’s the thing. WE don’t really need theories. We know what builds muscle. The issue is, or what I think the issue is…guys want it yesterday. When it just doesn’t work like that. It’s a slow process to synthesize new muscle tissue. And what I believe is that we keep doing these studies, but we’re basically just testing out things we already know work, but often want to know why or the boundaries (like volume).
I’ve just been confused for a while now at the whole “leave reps in the tank…do a ton of volume” stuff because that does not drive muscle growth or remodeling.
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This is what I’m getting confused about here. Not only Israetel, but also Eric Helms, Greg Nuckols, and a bunch of other people have been preaching that once you are within 3-4 reps of failure there is a significant hypertrophic stimulus. And they claim to have data to back this up.
Now one of the arguments in favor of staying a couple reps short of failure is that it will cause less fatigue and muscle damage and therefore allow you to do more total volume. This theory of theirs does not dispute the fact that sets to failure are more stimulating of hypertrophy, but the claim is that the difference in stimulus between a set to failure and one two reps short of failure is next to negligible while the difference in fatigue is more significant.
I don’t know who is right or wrong, I’m just following along and learning as facts and data come out.
What “data”?
This type stuff?
Cody T. Haun, Effects of Graded Whey Supplementation During Extreme-Volume Resistance Training, 2018 , Frontiers in Nutrition
I can go into depth with this study but basically by the end of the six weeks they were doing 32 sets of squats in the training week, at 60% of their max at 10 rep sets (which leaves about 4 reps in the tank for most).
The result in growth? None. Zero. Zip. Actually, what you see if you dive into the study is that the legs actually shrunk in the first three weeks, then grew back to the size they were at the beginning of the study.
They arrive at the conclusion that you leave a bunch of reps in the tank based on studies that don’t make a lot of sense when you break them down. One was something like a bunch of sets in the bench press, then they had them repeat the workout four days later and there was a downturn in performance. Leading them to believe that you need to leave reps in the tank.
You guys need to get out of pubmed and stop looking at studies and look at the hundreds of thousands of really developed dudes on the planet (natural or enhanced) and you’ll see that 9 out of 10 times they are also moving the most weight for a lot of reps, and training VERY hard.
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Honestly, the reality is that most people out there, just need to train MORE. They need a combination of more reps, sets and weight over time (total volume), with appropriate exercise selection. How you distribute that with frequency, is up to you.
BUT, if I am completely honest, it seems most discussion nowadays online focuses on how much volume is too much, where the optimal volume is, and how to prevent excessive overreaching. The thing is, these issues are actually really a non-issue for 99% of gym goers, simply because they don’t do enough work. Most of the energy online is focussed on this highly theoretical stuff like maximum recoverable volume, while most people (in commercial gyms) have never reached their minimum effective volumes in the first place.
We know the drivers of muscle growth. People don’t achieve more muscle growth not because we don’t know the science, its simply because people just don’t do enough work. Plain and simple.
All this theory on volume etc is nice, but its only relevant to the top 1% of lifters. The 99%, just have not grasped the basic idea of MORE.
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That is so true. Most people in the gym stay the same or use the same weights years after years.
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I’ve said it for years amongst my bodybuilding friends: there were jacked people before the Internet or they had access to the Internet and had no clue who Charles Poliquin, Ian King, or any of the other leading fitness gurus of the time were. And there are god knows how many enormous and strong people who haven’t even read a study in their lives, nor do they know, or maybe even understand, what this new crop of gym nerds are saying or doing. And I’m actually an RD with an MS. How much I learned in a classroom had to do with a contest prep? Zilch. And a guy with no related academic credentials helped me with my prep! His credentials? WNBF and USBF pro cards! That’s my pal @The_Mighty_Stu
My close IFBB Pro and Mr. O competitor friend of two decades. In all this time has he even heard or mentioned one of these guys? Nope. In the early 2000s I mentioned CP and some other people to him. His response? WTF are these people?
My NPC veteran friend with 70 contests under his belt and who competed since the early 80s? Never heard of them!
Main point: The gym is where the real studies are done!
I think the new breed of Internet gym nerds are mostly good guys but they are starting to get annoying and in the end don’t offer much new. I’d rather listen to people reinforce good recommendations as PAul does here than listen to people who are supposedly providing unique findings. Mike Israetel and Lyle McDonald conversed about a study regarding volume for over an hour and, honestly, after some time into I had no idea what was going on. This is making a damn pastime tedious!
These guys have been discussing bro-tein synth and frequency to death for years! I made my best gains by working as hard as possible on bro splits and for some time training with my pro BB or gym rat friends who just knew “Muscle and Fiction”, as the nerds like to put it. It’s also best to train with someone you’re scared of! 
Not joking.
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I couldn’t disagree more. Most people do in fact do the minimum effective amount in terms of total “sets”, it’s that the effort behind those sets aren’t intense enough to create the stimulus for growth. My article that just launched to day was written around a study that proves that very thing. The group that did 10 sets a week grew like weeds and gain strength like crazy. The groups that did 15 and 20 sets a week? Not so much. The difference in this study is that they were made to really train to failure. And that’s what is lacking from most guys who aren’t growing. They simply don’t train hard enough, with the right movements.
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