In the last newsletter, you saw that extending sets with forced and negative reps, a la Mike Mentzer, crushes the nervous system and can derail muscle gains—if you’re not on drugs, that is…
And recent research suggests that going to failure on too many sets also can overstress your nervous system and choke recovery/growth…
Now, there is no pat answer as to how many sets to failure will work best for you. That’s dependent on your individual recovery ability, pain tolerance, etc.
But if the research is correct in that it takes five additional sets to equal the hypertrophy effects of your first set, you shouldn’t do too many sets for each muscle.…
And most should not be to failure…
If you want to fully recover and grow as quickly as possible, that is. A recent meta-analysis suggested that 15 to 20 sets per muscle per week is optimal. But for whom?
If you’re average and older, it’s no doubt fewer. And if you’re emphasizing the ideal exercise for each target muscle, you’re getting the most mass gain for your effort buck…
In Old Man Young Muscle 2, the workouts use three to four sets per muscle at each workout. For most that’s six to eight sets per muscle PER WEEK…
But again, that’s for older, drug-free guys—I’m 64—properly emphasizing the ideal exercise using STX…
Remember, STX exhausts an array of muscle-fiber types quickly with one higher-rep set to failure followed by a Speed Set to further activate as many fast-twitch growth fibers as possible.
You follow the STX sequence with one or two sets of an add-on exercise, stopping one-rep short of failure. Again, that’s three to four precision sets per muscle twice a week.
Could you do more and gain faster? Possibly. Again, that’s determined by your individual recovery ability, etc…
Of course, youth can also allow more sets; however, not many. Weight training is severe/intense, as Mentzer found out when he retired and began training average people not on drugs. He dropped the forced/negative-rep nonsense.
But in OMYM2, it’s suggested that you extend sets with X-Rep partials in the stretch position of specific exercises. Hmm. Won’t end-of-set X-Reps smother gains like forced and negative reps?
I’ll have the answer in the next training newsletter.
Grow with the latest mass-building research:
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