Weight Progression vs. Sets Performed

[ShowKidd]

was wondering what your thoughts were based on the thread topic, if i could increase my bench by 5 lbs a week by doing only 1 working set to failure to lets say 10 reps what would be the point of doing 3-4 sets of 10?. since the body will only get bigger adapting to the weekly increase in weight lifted wouldn't you be more concerned with constant weight increases over sets performed because if your bench goes up your chest will get bigger to adapt to the stress imposed on it?

looking forward to your responses

 

[ShowKidd]

bump, there has to be someone here with an opinion

 

[jmead]

alot of the chest growing has to do with the range of motion also though, whos to say that your shoulder/triceps wont take over most of the newly added weight, using less of your chest..

vs keeping the weight lower and increasing the reps to 10-12 and isolating your chest

you also arent breaking down as many muscle fibers by doing only 1 set to failure

when i do bench my 9-10th rep are pretty tough, on the 3rd set its failure.. i have a pump from hell and cant take my shirt off for 45 minutes.. i dont know what i just said.. so BOOYA

 

[nydj66]

Doing 3 or 4 sets burns bodyfat and gives muscles a harder look.

Powerlifters train with low reps/high weight and they can generally lift more weight than a body builder but are not necessarily bigger and defintely not leaner.

I mix up my training stategy a lot to try and keep gaining size. Some times I will do an easy warmup set of 12 reps, then do a heavy set of 5-8 reps to failure. This puts on size fast but your reach a point where you can't go up in weight anymore. At this point I will go back to 3 sets of 8-10.

Sometimes I throw in drop sets (which give an incredible pump) and in the summer when I'm cutting I do a full body H1T circuit routine.

 

[Anthony Roberts]

What's your goal for doing the bench press?

 

[ShowKidd]

i was using bench press just as an example, i have been following the DoggCrapp training routine and it is all about a few warm up sets that are not taxing and one working set to failure-rest pause then failure again- rest pause and failure one more time and on most exercises with all 3 rest pauses combined it should total 11-15 reps. i have never seen such good results and i have been doing it for about 5 weeks.

 

[Anthony Roberts]

DC training works. It's similar to some of the old soviet stuff, as is westside training, and a lot of other stuff. It's good...most people get really nice results from it.

Personally, I use a modified westside template that Joe DeFranco made popular.

 

[ShowKidd]

have a link to it?

 

[ukkared]

I might be in the minority but I have never really found a set training program of any benefit for my goals. I have always worked out according to the feedback I get from my body. Now sure i read a lot and incorporate different techniques into my workout but i've never done a 3x3 or 5x5 workout. For me it keeps my body constantly trying to adapt to the changes and in essence shocking it into growth quite frequently. As for bench that is a tricky one simply because bench is an odd exercise to begin with. What has worked for me in the area of bench is not so much the weight but working on my form.

 

[Nelson Montana]

The reason it's working is because the stimulus is new. That's the key --to continually find ways to shock the muscles. This is something Vince Gironda was addressing in 1965. He called it the "Muscle Confusion Principle."

"Failure" is impossible to determine.

Why do 3-4 sets? Because a certain amount of volume is needed to deliver the message that the muscle needs to grow. When is it time to do another set to failure? If it's just about reaching failure why not try to lift a building once a month and be done with it? It just doesn't work that way.

It also depends on the muscle types of the individual. There are a lot of other aspects but too lengthy to address here. At any rate, if something works, do it until it stops working.

 

[rg78]

Have a look at Bill Starrs 5x5 in the training forum, its good if you want to improve overall strength

 

[nolimitxxx]

was wondering what your thoughts were based on the thread topic, if i could increase my bench by 5 lbs a week by doing only 1 working set to failure to lets say 10 reps what would be the point of doing 3-4 sets of 10?. since the body will only get bigger adapting to the weekly increase in weight lifted wouldn't you be more concerned with constant weight increases over sets performed because if your bench goes up your chest will get bigger to adapt to the stress imposed on it?

looking forward to your responses

If it works I don't so why not. But can you? is the question.

 

[ShowKidd]

well i guess it is narrowed down to intensity vs. duration. so if it was possible to lift a building it would take a lot longer to recover from it. i look at it this way every time you do a set you dig a hole and after 3-4 sets you dig the while deeper and deeper, now your body's has to work to fill in the hole you just dug and after that if you haven't trained again already it will continue to do more than fill the hole "adaptation"(muscle growth) but if you trained before you allowed that to happen you would be at a stand still. so that fact that i only do 1 working set to failure 3 times it is enough to stimulate growth and increase my weight on the same exercise the next time around (3 days later) but not so much that i have to wait a week to recover from it. i know this response is kind of irrelevant but it was more for the new comers that are following this post and may be a little confused on the topic, thank you for all of your input!!

 

[Nelson Montana]

Then again, this guy didn't believe in training to failure and worked in the 12-15 rep range. He also trained 6 days a week doing up to 25 sets per bodypart. Maybe Dogcrap should inform him he's doing it all wrong. http://www.schwarzenegger.it/mro/nubret/sn304.jpg

 

[Cauliflower Ear]

i hate bench...i much prefer cleans, squats, deads and snatch

 

[sshadoww]

alot of the chest growing has to do with the range of motion also though, whos to say that your shoulder/triceps wont take over most of the newly added weight, using less of your chest..

vs keeping the weight lower and increasing the reps to 10-12 and isolating your chest

you also arent breaking down as many muscle fibers by doing only 1 set to failure

when i do bench my 9-10th rep are pretty tough, on the 3rd set its failure.. i have a pump from hell and cant take my shirt off for 45 minutes.. i dont know what i just said.. so BOOYA

I've also read that mixing it up, as well as utilizing the range of motion, can really help stimulate growth. I start my Chest routine with a set of tight pushups, then a higher rep medium weight set, then I go into 9 sets of varied degree bench sets at lower reps and higher weight, maxing on each one and scaling back the weight a little with each set. Then it's usually 6 sets of flies- high and low, then I go into various cable excercises, then laying dumbells, then finishing with pushups to max. I currently have just a couple of good cable excercises (Hulks, and standing low rear pulls), and I'm wondering if there are any others that might be good to switch up with.

 

[ShowKidd]

Then again, this guy didn't believe in training to failure and worked in the 12-15 rep range. He also trained 6 days a week doing up to 25 sets per bodypart. Maybe Dogcrap should inform him he's doing it all wrong. http://www.schwarzenegger.it/mro/nubret/sn304.jpg

Dante did touch on the fact that Arnold trained high volume/high frequency but also stated that only a small amount of people can handle that abuse, also that if trained with less volume/less frequency that he probably would have gotten to his goal sooner.

also Mike Mentzer is a fan of the same training method but even with a little less frequency and also said the same thing about Arnold in his book "High Intensity Training"

 

[Anthony Roberts]

have a link to it?

http://www.defrancostraining.com/

Joe's a buddy of mine...check out the articles section.

 

[Nelson Montana]

Dante did touch on the fact that Arnold trained high volume/high frequency but also stated that only a small amount of people can handle that abuse, also that if trained with less volume/less frequency that he probably would have gotten to his goal sooner.

also Mike Mentzer is a fan of the same training method but even with a little less frequency and also said the same thing about Arnold in his book "High Intensity Training"

First of all, that was Serge Nubret.

Two points.

One: Not everyone can tolerate intense all out to failure training either.

And two: At age 50, Nubret was still in fantastic shape whereas at age 45 Mike Menzter looked like crap.

This isn't an argument of one being better than another. It's an argument that there is NO ONE BEST WAY.

 

[Anthony Roberts]

First of all, that was Serge Nubret.

Two points.

One: Not everyone can tolerate intense all out to failure training either.

And two: At age 50, Nubret was still in fantastic shape whereas at age 45 Mike Menzter looked like crap.

This isn't an argument of one being better than another. It's an argument that there is NO ONE BEST WAY.

At age 50, Mike Mentzer looked like death...

There's definately no one best way. But honestly....and I think you'll agree...a great program will work for everyone, while a mediocre one will work only for those genetically predisposed to it.

My favorite example is Joe Defranco and Louie Simmons. Everyone who has worked with them has gotten way better, bigger, and stronger. It can not possibly be that they have gotten lucky and that only people predisposed to their training methodologies walked through their doors.

 

[ShowKidd]

i agree with both of you, i think we are getting a little side tracked though. do you both agree that doing the minimal amount of exercise per session(1 working set) as long as you are increasing weight each time that your body will respond to it and be able to over compensate (growth) the same way that it would respond to 4-5 sets and only increasing the same amount of weight as you would with 1 working set?

i also agree that Mike Mentzer looked like crap but i dont think it had anything to do with his training because he was huge, he just looked like death as you stated. maybe it was bad genetics.

 

[Nelson Montana]

At age 50, Mike Mentzer looked like death...

There's definately no one best way. But honestly....and I think you'll agree...a great program will work for everyone, while a mediocre one will work only for those genetically predisposed to it.

My favorite example is Joe Defranco and Louie Simmons. Everyone who has worked with them has gotten way better, bigger, and stronger. It can not possibly be that they have gotten lucky and that only people predisposed to their training methodologies walked through their doors.

I think it's more that they only take on guys who have a propensity for that type of training. If an average Joe walked in he'd either get hurt or quit and be dismissed as a wuss who didn't follow the program. But I agree that most guys should try something that proves to be effective.

Mentzer had amazing genetics. He just got lazy. And if training one hour a week was all that was needed he could have been the best Billboard for his methods, but he didn't practice what he preached. Also, MM did not train like that exclusively though his competitive years. He was more fascinated with the intellectual theory or HIT than with the actual appliaction and end result of it all. But he found enough people to endorse it and made a lot of money. Makes me think of Charles Atlas who got rich selling an isometric course yet he trained mostly with weights.

 

[nydj66]

i agree with both of you, i think we are getting a little side tracked though. do you both agree that doing the minimal amount of exercise per session(1 working set) as long as you are increasing weight each time that your body will respond to it and be able to over compensate (growth) the same way that it would respond to 4-5 sets and only increasing the same amount of weight as you would with 1 working set?

First, are you saying that you'd lift the same amount of weight whether you were doing 1 set or 4 or would you lift more weight with the 1 set scheme?

And the short answer is no. You can absolutely grow from doing single working sets (for several weeks) but the body does not respond the same way that it does to doing several sets of the same exercise.

If that were true, then weight lifters have been doing a shitload more work than they've needed for more than 70 years. What are the odds that no one else has figured it out before now?

 

[ShowKidd]

First, are you saying that you'd lift the same amount of weight whether you were doing 1 set or 4 or would you lift more weight with the 1 set scheme?

And the short answer is no. You can absolutely grow from doing single working sets (for several weeks) but the body does not respond the same way that it does to doing several sets of the same exercise.

If that were true, then weight lifters have been doing a shitload more work than they've needed for more than 70 years. What are the odds that no one else has figured it out before now?

that is what mike talks about in his book, but both sides make sense, it just boils down to what works best for each one of us.

i appreciate everyones response and if anyone would like to add some feel free, and thanks for that link Anthony!!

 

[instant.muscle]

for 1 month i do 12-10-8-6-4, next month i do 4 sets of 10, then switch back, my chest sucks though

 

[Anthony Roberts]

that is what mike talks about in his book, but both sides make sense, it just boils down to what works best for each one of us.

i appreciate everyones response and if anyone would like to add some feel free, and thanks for that link Anthony!!

Here's some more, from people I consider to be top trainers, who all have great training articles on their sites:

www.ericcressey.com
www.jimmysmithtraining.com
www.cassandraforsythe.com
www.elitefts.com (look at the articles section)
www.alwyncosgrove.com