Kinda curious to hear what you think about an approach like the one I’m currently using, which is 5/3/1 with a pr set + FSL 5x5-8.
So you have the “all out set” which is the heaviest set for the most reps possible that you push to improve on every week and month, and then you do 5 sets of 5 (squat and Deadlift) or 8 (bench and press) with the weight of your first set of the day.
Those sets don’t feel “easy” but they surely aren’t close to failure. Do you think this approach can work well for hypertrophy or is it more geared towards just increasing strength? I know for me it’s been giving good results on both sides so far but I was curious what your opinion on this is since this system combines “failure,” pr sets with sub maximal volume work.
What’s the best way to structure your warmup sets if the plan is to execute 3 sets of an exercise, taking each set close to failure? I assume if you’re hitting 2 exercises for the same muscle group, the warmup sets for the first exercise will look different from the warmup sets for the second. Maybe you can even skip the warmup sets for the second?
EDIT: Just wanted to point out it’s interesting biceps and triceps grew despite the program not including direct arm work!
I think that any improvement in a parameter (such as load, speed, # reps…) improved will ceteris paribus result into muscle growth.
A comparison between an Olympic weightlifter and a Bodybuilder will tell us a lot. They have very different goals, quite contradictory.
The Weightlifter wants not to gain weight (but get stronger)
The Bodybuilder wants above all create lean body mass.
We can as a general rule agree that the weightlifter is much stronger than the bodybuilder (pound for pound, of course: and also often in absolute term too). The lean body mass is thus just a indicator of strenght, not the “value” of strenght. The difference in their training can teach us a lot.
They both train at quite high volume, but the weightlifer will work explosively a fraction of their 1RM while the advanced bodybuilder will work closer to his 1RM not explosively and will often add exhaustion techniques to hammer the muscle as much as possible.
Stronger at what? Olympic lifting? For sure. I know some bodybuilders who can incline near 600 pounds. There’s no Oly lifter that is most likely going to be able to match that. I don’t do the “pound for pound” bit. That’s a little guys argument.
Not all bodybuilders train high volume. Which is something I’ve touched on here many times. I asked quite a few advanced bodybuilders how many “work sets” they were performing in a given week for legs and the average was around 8-10. Hardly “high volume”.
Oly lifters can train high volume because there is no eccentric in Oly lifting, thus the recovery time isn’t as long as using movements that have a concentrated eccentric.
That was really kind of a piss poor comparison. Oly lifters for the most part, aren’t very jacked either.
Yeah, I can see why training hard 6 days a week is not the best for everyone. I did that myself for a while and made progress but there were a lot of days where performance was down or I was just dragging myself through the workout. Unless you live in Soviet training camp or you are young and just have too much energy, 6 days a week is overdoing it.
Well, the thing is that you have people claiming that more volume and frequency is better so its easy to get confused with all the contradictory opinions. As for your approach to training, I can see why higher frequency while training 3-4 days a week might not work well. You would have to combine stuff like legs and back on one day just for the sake of increased frequency and then if you are doing rows after a few hard sets of squats you just won’t be able to put the same effort into it.
I’m still on the fence about whether your approach or Mike Israetel’s is really better, maybe you guys will have to run a study where one group pushes each set harder and the other group does more sets. Otherwise it’s more personal preference, how do you like to train?
They have a bunch of different terms, and basically the one you should be aiming for is “maximal adaptive volume”, as in the most volume that will benefit you and going over that is either going to decrease results or just waste time and energy. That seems to be exactly what you are talking about as well. Of course there is no clear way to find that on a case by case basis, but once you are fairly advanced then anything that produces results without beating you into the ground must be pretty close.
Interestingly, there is some research that backs this up. Supposedly peak hypertrophy occurs at 8-10 sets per muscle group per session. And according to this, you could do more sets per week if you increase frequency but again, is that a benefit to advanced bodybuilder?
Mike posted this on his Facebook page recently, here it is from the original source:
Here’s another one for you, see the par that says “In house meta-analysis by James Kreiger found an ideal training frequency per muscle group would be between 1.5 and 2 days per week”. So basically with your volume and effort recommendations, training 4 days a week going push-pull-legs and then push the 4th day, net week you have your pull workout twice and so on, this is essentially a scientifically-validated optimal program, or at the very least it’s extremely close. OK then.
There’s lots in there I don’t agree with AT ALL. The one study where it supposedly showed more growth up to 45 sets was total trash (not double blinded, misrepresented the outcome of the results, etc). Not to mention that it’s not even PRACTICAL. This is why so many guys are confused.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. It doesn’t. Not if the program isn’t practical. So why do you guys get so obsessed with it?
There are many. And why don’t we compare exercices they have in common? I’ve seen a weightlifter break the geared squat record by 12kg BELTLESS. Many other feats I could tell, but individual prowess isn’t relevant here. You can see on this site that weightlifters quickly got most of the powerlifting titles after its inception.
I’ve made this comparison specially for this reason, weightlifters goal is to optimize (minimize) body mass. Their goal is not to look jacked. I’m just stating that they are the strongest, while not being jacked. I wanted to pinpoint that precisely to show that the correlation between strength and muscle mass is not as high as people think.
All due respect, I don’t believe at all that the AVERAGE weekly leg sets is between 8-10 in avanced bodybuilders.
No you don’t know a bunch of Oly lifters who can incline in excess of 500 pounds. But by all means link me some.
You’re missing a massive point here. The eccentric portion of the rep that is mostly absent from Oly training. It’s a huge reason why Oly lifters aren’t as muscular as bodybuilders, and you’re comparing power, not strength.
And I can go back and tell all of my friends who I talked to about this that they are lying. The rest of what you wrote is rubbish. My guess is you’re big into Oly lifting.
Why do you sound so upset? I was just posting that because it confirmed what you are saying, that 8-10 sets per muscle group is the optimal volume per workout.
I’m pointing out I don’t agree with some of those guidelines. If you look at the “Frequency of 3x p/w” it reads “27-45 sets”. That’s absolute nonsense. “No data on upper limit” is absolute ignorance. All of that was based on that shit show of a study done by Brad (and I like Brad, but that study was garbage). And yet the “evidence based crowd” is still piping it.
It’s because people train, fail to meet their goals or expectations, and then look for reasons why.
Experience is teaching me that effort and/or nutrition is the reason why, but that’s a tough lesson to learn. It’s easier to find a “new” or different program than it is to admit that I’ve been slacking off in effort or nutrition.
Working out with decent effort is easy to me. Working out with the right effort is proving to be hard. It’s painful. I do sets where I want to quit at rep 7 but if I keep pushing then I find that I can do 20+. For some exercises, it’s literally mind over body.
How often do people do multiple drop sets to failure in a week? How often do they do five second negatives to failure followed by a loaded stretch for max time? That stuff is unpleasant, but it seems to be working.
In addition to training, eating the right way the majority of the time is not easy. It takes planning and being unprepared for one or two days (aka meal prep) can wreck the whole week.
People get stuck looking at different workouts or studies because it’s the easiest aspect of those three - program, effort, nutrition.
Guys don’t make the progress they THINK they should make, so they just obsess over ever nuance believing that there’s some magic “secret”. I swear this is true.
Otherwise, why do so many guys (and right here in this thread) pour over every study or program and then hop around every few weeks or months? It’s because they absolutely do not have the patience to just find some methods and principles THAT WORK, and have been PROVEN TO WORK FOR DECADES, and do those day in and day out.
I mean we’re literally at a point where guys are trying to figure out “what’s the exact right number of sets to do to grow.” It’s mind boggling to me.
I just did 1 set to failure per exercise FOREVER. I don’t mean months. I mean YEARS ON END. I didn’t have studies in front of me to tell me “well there’s a better way.” I have really big, massive dudes, that seemed pretty smart telling me just to nail that one set, with good form, and add weight and/or reps each week. That was it.
I honestly feel bad for so many guys now because they become utterly paralyzed by all of this pubmed scientific bullshit and fail to just train really, really hard.
Paul
I think the problem with many “scientific” studies is the ambiguous wording used which leaves people confused.
In the case of this study the training days appear to cover upper push, upper pull and leg days.
The study makes reference to number of sets per muscle group per session (excerpt from abstract:The study included 40 volunteers that performed RT for 24 weeks divided in to groups that performed five (G5), 10 (G10), 15 (G15) and 20 (G20) sets per muscle group per session).but actually when you read on and look at the breakdown it seems to be referring to the total number of sets per day for that movement pattern. For example the upper push day (G10) for 10 sets comprises 4 bench, 4 incline, 2 military press. Clearly not 10 sets per muscle group (8 chest, 2 shoulders). Upper pull similarly 4 lat pulldown, 4 rows, 2 upright rows (8 Back, 2 traps/shoulders).
Anyone setting up a “push” days based on what at first glance would appear to be stated as optimal 10 sets per bodypart per day would probably do 10 sets chest, 10 sets shoulders and possibly 10 sets triceps. 20-30 sets in total for the day which is a far cry from the optimal 10 total sets to cover all pushing movements which I think the study is alluding to.
Nontheless its an interesting read. I agree totally with your summary above and thanks for making us aware of the study and its findings.
Good post. Dorian did 4 exercises for some body parts though, chest and back. And DC just one set once every 4 to 5 days for some body parts. As Dante said, there was no difference in level of development between low volume vs. high volume guys.
There are about a dozen influential men who started this mad-scientist approach for bodybuilding, one of whom has never even exposed his physique just once, because he is a researcher. Another has written millions upon millions of words on bodybuilding but looks even less muscled than almost everyone in gyms (not exaggerating). I wish I could name these men, but that goes against my behavioral standards these days. For all their special knowledge, they should look extraordinary. Although some look amazing, the others do not, some not at all!
As I said earlier, many men have done just fine without ever hearing about bro-synth, frequency, etc.
