Stop Doing “3 Sets of 12” To Build Muscle (DO THIS INSTEAD!)
Summary
TLDRJeff and Jesse discuss the debate on workout sets and reps, referencing Mike Mentzer's philosophy of one set to failure. Jeff explains that while this high-intensity approach can be effective for muscle hypertrophy, it's not suitable for building strength, endurance, or athletic performance. Emphasizing the importance of individual goals and effort, they argue for starting with minimal effective volume and adjusting based on results. The conversation also highlights the significance of effort, intensity, and proper technique over merely following set rep schemes for optimal growth and performance.
Takeaways
- 💪 Doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable according to Mike Mentzer.
- 🛑 One set taken to failure can be sufficient for muscle growth.
- 📈 The goal of training should be considered: building muscle, gaining strength, improving endurance, or athletic performance.
- 🔄 Mike Mentzer's approach involves high intensity and reaching true failure in one set.
- 🏋️♂️ Beginners need to learn coordination and fundamentals before attempting high intensity, one-set training.
- 🔬 Minimal effective volume can be a more effective strategy than maximal tolerable volume for natural lifters.
- 📉 Starting with fewer sets allows for easier adjustment and monitoring of progress.
- 📊 Effort level and intensity are more important than specific set and rep counts for muscle growth.
- 📚 Current science suggests a broader range of reps (even up to 25-30) can be effective for hypertrophy if effort is maximized.
- 🔁 The importance of performing repetitions with high effort, especially focusing on the stretch position for hypertrophy.
Q & A
Who is the person mentioned in the video advocating for one set to failure?
-Mike Mentzer.
What is the main argument presented by Mike Mentzer regarding doing a second set?
-Mike Mentzer argues that doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable because it would make a deeper inroad into recovery ability, negating any potential growth stimulation.
What is Jeff's position on doing multiple sets for muscle growth?
-Jeff believes that doing one set to failure, as Mike Mentzer suggests, might not be sufficient for everyone, especially those pursuing strength, endurance, or athletic performance, and that the number of sets should depend on the individual's goals and effort.
Why does Jeff believe one set is not enough for building strength or improving endurance?
-Jeff argues that building strength, improving endurance, and becoming a better athlete require more repetitions and practice, which cannot be achieved with just one set.
According to the video, what should be the main goal of a workout?
-The main goal of a workout should be to stimulate muscle growth, not just to accumulate volume or achieve a pump.
How does Jeff suggest determining the appropriate number of sets for an individual?
-Jeff suggests starting with a low number of sets and putting forth maximum effort to reach failure, then monitoring results and adjusting the number of sets upwards if necessary.
What does Jeff say about the importance of effort in training?
-Jeff emphasizes that the effort level, particularly reaching failure, is crucial in creating the stimulus for muscle growth, and it's more important than the specific number of sets or repetitions.
How does Jeff differentiate between maximal tolerable volume and minimal effective volume?
-Maximal tolerable volume is the highest amount of workload one can handle and still make gains, while minimal effective volume is the smallest amount of stimulus needed to start seeing progress.
What is the role of steroids in the context of training volume and recovery?
-Steroids can give the illusion of having infinite recovery ability, allowing for higher training volumes. For natural lifters, there is a finite amount of recovery, making it important to find the minimal effective volume.
What does Jeff recommend regarding the repetition range for hypertrophy?
-Jeff states that hypertrophy can be achieved within a broad range of repetitions, from 6 to 30, as long as the effort is maximal and reaches failure.
Outlines
💪 Understanding the Value of One Set Training
Jeff and Jesse discuss the concept of doing only one set to failure for building muscle, as advocated by Mike Mentzer. They explore the suitability of this method depending on different fitness goals like strength, endurance, and athletic performance. Jeff emphasizes the importance of goal-setting and explains that one set is not sufficient for goals beyond muscle hypertrophy. They stress the need for high effort and reaching true failure to make the one-set approach effective, especially for natural lifters who need to manage their recovery capabilities.
📊 Determining the Optimal Number of Sets
Jeff and Jesse discuss how to determine the right number of sets for muscle growth. Jeff suggests starting with fewer sets and increasing if needed, as it's easier to track progress and adjust. They talk about the inefficiency of starting with too many sets and the difficulties in determining whether to increase or decrease volume. They also introduce the importance of effort and intensity in training, emphasizing the need for a scientific approach to find the minimal effective volume.
🔢 The Role of Repetitions and Effort in Training
Jeff and Jesse shift their focus to repetitions, noting that recent science has shown a broader range of effective rep counts for hypertrophy than previously thought. They highlight the necessity of high effort, regardless of rep range, to achieve muscle growth. Jeff discusses the importance of the stretch position in exercises for hypertrophy and cautions against focusing solely on stretch-based exercises. The key takeaway is that effort and intensity are crucial, and the right amount of reps should be guided by the effort level.
🏋️ Effort Over Sets and Reps for Effective Training
Jeff explains that the effort level should guide the number of sets and reps in a workout, not the other way around. He criticizes the common practice of letting sets and reps dictate effort, arguing that it's more effective to focus on high-intensity effort and adjust volume accordingly. Jeff reiterates the importance of starting with fewer sets and increasing as needed. He concludes with a clip from Mike Mentzer emphasizing that the intensity of effort is the most important factor for optimal results.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Sets
💡Reps
💡Intensity of Effort
💡Failure
💡Hypertrophy
💡Volume
💡Minimal Effective Dose
💡Recovery
💡Stretch Position
💡Steroids
Highlights
Doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable; it would be the biggest mistake you could make.
Mike Mentzer advocated for one set all out to failure, emphasizing maximum effort.
Different goals require different training methods; one set to failure is not suitable for strength, endurance, or athletic performance.
The importance of defining your goal before choosing a training method.
Mike Mentzer's high-intensity training involves going beyond failure to maximize effort.
Starting with a minimal effective volume is suggested, especially for natural lifters.
Beginners should focus on learning movement coordination and fundamentals before attempting high-intensity training.
Determining the right number of sets involves starting low and monitoring results, then increasing if needed.
Repetitions for hypertrophy can be effective across a broad range, not limited to 8-12 reps.
Effort is crucial, regardless of the repetition range used for hypertrophy.
High effort and intensity are key to stimulating muscle growth, not just the number of sets or reps.
Effort should be the guiding factor in training, not sets and reps.
Avoid letting predefined sets and reps dictate your effort level.
Effort-based training helps eliminate guesswork and ensures sufficient stimulus for growth.
Mike Mentzer emphasized that intensity of effort is the most important factor for optimal results.
Transcripts
[Video clip] Doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable. In fact, it would be the
biggest mistake you could make. [End clip] (Jeff) Well, damn, I'm guilty of at
least two sets. (Jesse) Me too.
(Jeff) All right, so let's talk about sets and reps today. Because I think there is a
lot that we need to learn. And that for you who don't know, that's Mike Mentzer, and he
was a proponent of one set all out to failure and that was your workout. Like that was it. You did
one set, you did a couple warm up sets, you did one working set. Is there any value to that for
you specifically? Because if there is, then I think maybe are we all screwing it up?
(Jesse) I hope not. (Jeff) Are we doing too many sets
and reps? All right, well let's talk about it. So, first of all, you got to ask yourself what is your
goal. Because it has to all start from a goal. And most people have a goal of building muscle.
I'd say that's predominantly why a lot of people want to lift weights, right? But there are others
that are pursuing strength with a priority, or they're athletes trying to improve performance,
right? Or they're trying to improve endurance. In all of those cases,
none of these would be the proper recommendation for me for doing Mike Mentzer style training.
(Jesse) Right. (Jeff) One set is
not going to cut it when you're trying to build strength, when you're trying to improve endurance,
when you're trying to become a better athlete. You need more repetitions, you need more practice,
you need more fine tuning of the mechanics of what you're doing. So that's not who this is for.
However, again, most of us are sitting here trying to improve our muscle size and hypertrophy. Now I
want to go back to that clip, and I want you to listen very carefully. You heard the first seven
seconds of it. Listen very carefully to what Mike says in the next 20 seconds, it's just 27 seconds
long. All right. Let me play this clip for you again. Listen very carefully to what he says.
[Video clip] Doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable. In fact, it would be
the biggest mistake you can make. Because insofar that you train at all, you make an inroad. Well,
some people might say, might say, well, Mike, if I do a second set, maybe I'll get a little bit more
growth stimulation. But then I point out whatever little bit extra growth stimulation, you made a
doubly deeper recovery ability, so that negates any greater growth stimulation. [End clip]
(Jeff) So where does that leave you? Well, I think there's a lot of merit to that. See,
when Mike trained, he was advocating extremely high intensity efforts. The reason why you
could do one set in heavy-duty style training was because the effort level was something of
which you really don't ever put forth in any other workout. It's high, high, high effort. The highest
effort you could, you could exert. (Jesse) Balls out you would say?
(Jeff) Balls out. Absolutely. You know, and then some. And basically, making sure that
you're reaching failure for sure, and sometimes even beyond failure by having a pre-exhaust
exercise right into a compound and going all the way to failure. Okay. So, what does that do? Well,
it forces us to have to ask a question. And that is a lot of us confuse two different ends of the
spectrum here. And is the goal of your workout to find the maximal tolerable volume that you
can handle, right, or workload that you can handle and still make gains. Or as Mike would want you to
do instead, is it to find the minimal effective volume? Like what does that minimal stimulus that
you can find that allows you to start to see additional progress in this case in the form
of new muscle gains? And if you're not using steroids, this is a key point, because a lot of
the guys you get your information from, they're using steroids, and they want you to think that
there is this infinite amount of recovery that you have. There is not. If you're a natural lifter,
there is not. You have a defined amount, okay. So, you need to find that defined amount. I think when
you're trying to determine the number of sets, it makes a little bit of sense here to start low.
(Jesse) Yeah. (Jeff) Because if you start
low and you give as much of an effort as you can, I'm not saying rank beginners go out and do this.
Rank beginners need to learn coordination of a movement, they need to learn the fundamentals of
lifting. They need to get a good base of training underneath them. But once you become a novice
lifter, if you're trying to gain muscle size, if you put forth that maximum intensity and you
reach a point of failure, true failure on the set, you've a removed all the guesswork of whether or
not you've gone intense enough, right? You're not leaving reps in reserve. Which is funny because
most of the reps and reserve guys are no longer reps in reserve, they're all advocating failure
now or in the last set, right, they've kind of come that way. But you're not trying to figure
that part of the equation out because you've gone to the finish line, you've reached that end
point. You do that and you monitor your results. And there's always a place, as Mike would say,
that you can go from there and that is up. (Jesse) Yeah.
(Jeff) If one didn't work, you know where to go. You go to two or you go to three, right.
(Jesse) Maybe four. (Jeff) Or maybe four. But you, you
don't know if you start at eight sets and you're not really getting results. Do you go up to nine
or down to seven? Do you go down to six? Do you go down to five? Do you go up to 12? Like you're
sort of stuck in an area where you have a lot less of a scientific ability to go through a process
to get to the point where you need to be. (Jesse) You'd be wasting your time going up
and down as opposed to just going up. (Jeff) Yeah, you go up. Again, it's just,
I'm just throwing it out there as a, as an effective place for people to start when they're
trying to determine how many sets is right for me. Right. The next thing I think we have to talk
about though is repetitions too. (Jesse) Yup.
(Jeff) Because in his training, Mike would say somewhere between six and 12,
six and 10, six and 12. That's the weight that you choose, that you're going to take all the
way to failure. What is the right repetition range? I think one thing that science has
taught us of late is that that is a hell of a lot more broad than we once thought.
(Jesse) Yup. (Jeff) It doesn't necessarily
have to be in a specific range, eight to 12 for hypertrophy or three to five for strength. Look at
those that are seeking hypertrophy, you can do it at many different rep ranges. As a matter of fact,
you could do it all the way up to 25 repetitions, 30 repetitions. But guess what's needed there?
What's needed, Jesse? (Jesse) Effort.
(Jeff) You need to be able to deliver that balls out, as Jesse said, to failure approach
to training in order to create the stimulus that gives you that minimal effective dose. Now,
the maximal tolerable volume is not necessarily that different from minimally effective, because
they could kind of blend a little bit, they could overlap. And the way that happens is the ball is
out all the way to failure approach, says, yes, here's my best effort. Did I reach did I provide
enough of a stimulus for growth? Great. What if a submaximal effort, plus another submaximal effort,
plus another submaximal effort gets you to the same point as the maximal effort? And I think
we've actually seen that a little bit in studies. We've seen that one in the tank, two in the tank,
if it's truly two a one or two rep and reserve effort level, because most of the time it's not,
it's people are overestimating how much effort they're putting forth. But if it's truly one or
two in the tank that you can still get the types of gains you could by going to failure. Well,
again, the accumulation of a few of those sets could equal out to what you might see
in terms of the stimulus you get from the one overall set. So, then it's like, what's the
determination factor for you whether you're going to go balls out for one or more, more sets? Well,
a lot of it has to come down to time. (Jesse) Mm-hmm.
(Jeff) A lot of it comes down to your ability to handle discomfort because that really high effort,
high intensity workout demands a high level of effort. And again, as you become more experienced,
it might be even a little bit more than that because your body can tolerate more, so you really
need to push yourself. I find, though, that guys that have a lot of experience with lifting kind of
enjoy that effort at some point, right? (Jesse) Yeah.
(Jeff) They start to actually like it, right? But don't fall in love with that effort,
because the goal of being in the gym is to stimulate and then get out and go grow.
Because the growing happens outside the gym, and you have to understand. That is where Mike was,
right? The growth happens outside in the gym is a simulation. And when you think of it that way,
it's not about just sticking around to get a pump and doing all the things you're doing
there, because you are creating a further inroad to that, to your recovery in your,
in your pursuit. Now there's also a little bit of focus on now, I say a little bit, there's a lot of
bit of focus on how we do our repetitions. Because not just how many repetitions and how many sets,
but what about the consideration to how you're doing your repetitions? And there's
a lot of focus right now being placed on the minimal portion of the range of motion,
like the stretch position of an exercise. And I've gone into this in another video, and I'll go into
it again in more depth here. We're going to find that there's a lot to learn, and a lot of what's
being said right now is an incomplete picture. Much more research is going to be done here.
That's going to wind up proving to you that don't start throwing out the rest
of the range of motion just yet. Especially if you're interested in strength and athleticism,
you don't do that. But as far as the hypertrophy benefits of the stretch position, the stretch
position is the terminal portion of an eccentric or elongation of a muscle. And we know that
that in and of itself is a stimulus for growth. So, the terminal portion of it,
the part where you're stretched, applies a tension in and of itself because it's stretched.
(Jesse) Yeah. (Jeff) But then you add the extra load there,
you've got two stimulus for, for growth. Of course it's going to work, it's always worked. But the
effort of the partial repetitions, oftentimes occurring after the set's been taken to failure,
is just leading more towards supporting that kind of lower set volume where it's like, go hard,
go heavy, and ensure that you've reached failure by doing a few partial repetitions because you
can't get the concentric anymore. (Jesse) Yeah.
(Jeff) You can only get a few partials with some additional eccentric overload
or stretch there. Now to take it so far as to start recommending only stretch based
exercises and literally saying that what is it called? The face away curl stretch?
(Jesse) Uh, Face Away Cable Curls. (Jeff) Like a like one of these deals.
(Jesse) Yeah. (Jeff) Is a, is a better exercise for
hypertrophy for the biceps than a heavy barbell curl with a focus on a slow eccentric. I'm not
ready to go there yet, and I don't think we're ever going to wind up, you know, validating that
that's a superior approach. When they start putting those two things head-to-head and
performing those with the same level of effort and intensity to failure, I don't think you're going
to find that to be the case. But, when you look at your training, you have to ask yourself what is
the right amount of effort that's going to guide you to the right amount of reps for you? See,
we start programs, and this is very important, we start programs and programing our own workouts
with the sets and the reps in mind. It's the guiding factor and then we work around that.
What I'm saying is the effort level that you're comfortable exerting, because it requires a very
high level or a lesser level, that will dictate the types of volumes you need in your workouts.
And you can work towards these volumes and modify them based on the results that you're seeing. You
can come down, you can go up. But when you take that high intensity approach, the only way to go
from there if it's not working is up. (Jesse) Yeah.
(Jeff) Right. And that's, and that's a little easier progression for people to make. But stop
letting sets and reps be the guiding factor, it's a big mistake. When it's all about sets
and reps first, and then you're like adapting your effort to the sets and reps. If you haven't seen
my video on 3 Sets of 12 is Killing Your Gains, or three sets of 12 is kind of a major problem
when you're training. That was what I talked about was like, you're -- you are adapting your effort
even within a given set to make sure you reach 12, when I don't really give a shit whether you
reach 12. You might have started with three sets of 12 in mind and wound up hitting 12,
9 and 10 or something in your reps. As long as the effort was there, it doesn't matter necessarily
what the rep count was. It starts with effort. Now I want to summarize this all and kind of leave
you guys with one final video here. This was something that Mike Mentzer said in one
of these TikTok clips or something like that. One of the very few things you find on TikTok
that's valuable. Here's what he said. I'll let us play out to his clip. In the meantime,
guys, make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications. That being said,
here's Mike. He's kind of saying everything I'm just saying here. It's worth a listen.
[Video clip] For optimal results, the single most important factor is intensity of effort. The
results, you realize, will be totally dependent on the energy you put forth. [End clip]
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