Duration of your sets?

[deltreefitness]

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research says; to stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40-60 seconds.

I sometimes mix up my durations (slow, medium, or explosive). If the 40-60 is true how do people build muscle with say, 5x5? There's no way to make a heavy set of 5 reps last that long.

What's your take on this?

 

[swaptrex]

thats a long time for a single set.

 

[StealthPower]

Are you sure you read 40-60 seconds?

What type of strength are they defining in the study? Isometric? Maximal? Speed-Strength?

Link to the study would help out a ton if you have it handy.

Kc

 

[thelion2005]

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research says; to stimulate muscle growth, a set needs to last 40-60 seconds.

I sometimes mix up my durations (slow, medium, or explosive). If the 40-60 is true how do people build muscle with say, 5x5? There's no way to make a heavy set of 5 reps last that long.

What's your take on this?

Seems to be math ....
6 seconds for a rep ....
6 - 10 reps.

Interesting guideline, but doesn't recognize lower reps
as you state.

Many years ago, there was a routine that used lighter weight at very slow speed. For example, Robby Robinson was doing Scott curls with 50 lbs, 10 slow reps, for about 90 seconds. Seems it would really take discipline to do this and I haven't a clue if it would produce results,

 

[Sub-Zero]

if that was true then that would mean madcow's entire program was shit, and too many people, including myself, have seen results from this program, for that statement to be true

 

[Madcow2]

So, you guys have to remember that a loose conclusion or an abstract is pretty useless without the study. There are so many factors and so many really bad studies done in this field.

All that being said, volume plays an important role, think about time under tension. What about rest period between sets, what if it's only 30 seconds? When is a set a set and when is a pause just a pause? When can another set be beneficial? Do all sets need to be 40-60 seconds or maybe that's just a threshhold for training time total and they only used 1 set on complete beginners (which is pretty damn standard unfortunately)?

Don't draw too much from this stuff without a full understanding of the study, the surrounding literature, and the underlying concepts being tested here. You guys are really better off ordering Supertraining, Science and Practice of Strength Training, etc...

 

[deltreefitness]

I read it right. It says 40-60 seconds. I personally find that next to impossible on some movements without getting into very high reps. I got the tid bit out of Men's Health.

There's also a study that indicates unless weight training using 60% (or more) of your max. weight you're building any muscle. That one makes sense for sure. Makes me wonder though if crunches and leg raises (or any ab exercise) are worthless for anything other than cardio?

Madcow brings up a good point though. Abstracts like these aren't necessarily an end-all answer and leave some questions.

 

[psychedout]

There was a post over on the HST forum that explained why TUT studies aren't really all that important and unaplicable to training. I'll go see if I can find it.

 

[Madcow2]

I read it right. It says 40-60 seconds. I personally find that next to impossible on some movements without getting into very high reps. I got the tid bit out of Men's Health.

There's also a study that indicates unless weight training using 60% (or more) of your max. weight you're building any muscle. That one makes sense for sure. Makes me wonder though if crunches and leg raises (or any ab exercise) are worthless for anything other than cardio?

Madcow brings up a good point though. Abstracts like these aren't necessarily an end-all answer and leave some questions.

It's not you that is at question. You are getting this from Men's Health - which is a pretty sketchy source. You're just quoting what they said - and I have no faith in them. In reality they may be quoting someone else or some such - very doubtful they went out and nailed something down firsthand. Anyway, you have to go all the way back to the source study and review it.

There is an overview of the study/results/conclusions called an abstract associated with all studies, this is what you see a lot of people quote and although it's infinitely better than 2nd or 3rd hand paraphrasing through Men's Health it's still just conclusions of the authors. As to whether the conclusions are relevent, repeatable, etc... you have to read the study and really see what was done. I mean, if it was all with 1 set done once weekly of a single exercise on untrained people (which would be my best guess as to the protocols), that certainly isn't terribly relevant or applicable.

In reality you can find a study to say just about anything you want. What the real key is finding information that is relevant to the application, repeatable, and holds up to peer review and subsequent testing. Finding gems like this is the key, but it really takes a broad knowledge of the field and methodology to identify and make use of this.

 

[StealthPower]

I read it right. It says 40-60 seconds. I personally find that next to impossible on some movements without getting into very high reps. I got the tid bit out of Men's Health.

There's also a study that indicates unless weight training using 60% (or more) of your max. weight you're building any muscle. That one makes sense for sure. Makes me wonder though if crunches and leg raises (or any ab exercise) are worthless for anything other than cardio?

Madcow brings up a good point though. Abstracts like these aren't necessarily an end-all answer and leave some questions.

Who was it done by?

The 60% or more is still pretty loose in terms of hypertrophy.

As for crunches and leg raises, why treat them different than your legs in terms of training? Personally heavy weight 4-8 rep range is sufficient in that regards.

Here is a good discussion about speed of movement and tissue damage along with some other neat information about muscle fibers.

http://www.fortifiediron.net/invision/index.php?showtopic=24907

Kc