I was surprised when I heard my friend say he only did 2 sets of 5 for nearly all his excercises.
I told him I genereally do the traditional 3*8, but I do mix it up a little every so often to shock and surprise my muscle to adaptive change.
He then sent me an ebook 'Muscle Gaining Secrets by Jason Ferruggia' where it contradicted the tradional 3*8 sets and says the best is 2 sets of 5-8.
I've pasted the Chapter about this from his book below, WORTH THE READ! so read it and tell me what you think !
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Chapter 5:
Sets, Reps & Training
Volume
When it comes to constructing the optimal training plan, the first concept that needs to be discussed is that of sets and reps, otherwise known as training volume.
HOW MANY REPS SHOULD I DO PER SET?
From the beginning of time, it seems, the typical muscle building rep range has been 8-12. Every bodybuilding magazine and program under the sun always recommends that you do 8-12 reps in your efforts to build bigger muscles. However, I am here to tell you that they are way off.
The best rep range for building massive muscle is 5-8 reps.
There is rarely a need to go below five because sets consisting of 1-4 reps increase strength by improving the nervous systems firing efficiency but do very little to build muscle. On the other hand, eight is actually the highest number of reps you should do on a regular basis. Read that again and let it sink in before you ever consider doing another pump up set of 15-20 reps.
Usually, when you do more than eight reps you build up too much lactic acid and residual fatigue, thus the quality of your sets starts to suffer. Secondly, if you now understand that the key to getting bigger is to get stronger, you will find it increasingly difficult to add weight week after week the higher up you go on the rep scale. It’s easy to continually add weight to your five rep sets but not quite as easy to add weight to your twelve reps sets. This is a phenomenon I have observed not only with myself but with hundreds of trainees over the years.
I don’t know who ever came up with the 8-12 rep range but I can tell you for a fact that it is NOT the best rep range to be using in your quest to get bigger and stronger. If you go to the gym simply to get a pump then by all means do 8-12 reps per set. Hell, why not do 15-20? That will give you an even better pump. But I do hope you realize that getting a pump doesn’t have a whole lot to do with building muscle. A pump is the incredibly tight feeling you get after doing a large number of reps. However, a pump is nothing more than blood engorging the muscle. You increase the blood flow to the muscle through the high rep activity and the extra blood gets trapped in there. This leads to that skin stretching, tight feeling that we all love so much and that Arnold famously said in Pumping Iron was better than sex.
You can get a great pump from treading water but everyone knows for a fact that you will not grow an ounce of muscle from such an activity. Remember, the body does not want to build muscle and be bigger than it has to be. You have to force it do it what it does not want to do by lifting extremely heavy weights and leaving it with absolutely no choice but to grow.
This can not be done with high reps. Most of the times when you exceed eight reps in a set the weights are simply too light to force any kind of adaptation effect whatsoever. Sticking with the target range of 5-8 allows you to use brutally heavy weights and targets the muscle fibers that have the greatest potential for growth.
Now that I have gotten your attention and hopefully made you realize how effective the rep range of 5-8 is I am now going to tell you that there are some cases when you can actually do more reps than that. I know, I know, I just got done imploring you to never go above eight reps but bare with me here as I explain the instances when you will want to train with slightly higher reps. It will all make sense when I’m finished. I promise.
Certain muscle groups or exercises should not be trained incredibly heavy for safety reasons. Also, some muscle groups just seem to respond better to a slightly higher rep scheme. Below I have listed the instances in which you can and should go above the 5-8 rep range.
Injured Areas or Prehab Exercises: 8-15 reps
If you have suffered an injury it is best not to overload that muscle or joint with heavy weights. Instead you want to work in a higher rep range with lighter weights until you have completely healed and rehabbed the injury. Doing this will still allow you to regain some size and strength while you’re hurt, and will prepare you for the heavy lifting you will be doing again when you get healthy. Also, if you know that you are prone to shoulder injuries and include prehab (injury prevention) exercises in your program for that area such as face pulls, band pull aparts and external rotations, you should do these exercises in the 8-15 rep range as well. That is because some of them put your shoulders in a precarious position and just due to the fact that the musculature you are training with these movements respond better to higher reps.
Neck Extension and Flexion Exercises: 12-25 reps
Exercises such as neck harness raises and the four way neck machine should not be done for less than 10-12 reps. The reason for that is simply a safety issue. When you start loading the neck you have to be extremely cautious in order to prevent possible injuries. For this reason you want to keep the reps higher and the weights lighter. I personally prefer to stick with 12-25 reps on neck exercises. Don’t fret, however, as you will still build muscle. The muscles of the neck are postural muscles that are slow twitch by nature because they are designed to hold your head up all day. For this reason they respond exceptionally well to higher reps.
Triceps Extensions and Pushdowns: 8-15 reps
Any kind of heavy extension movement places a great deal of unnecessary stress on the elbow joint and should be avoided. You may not notice this at first when you are using lighter weights but when you get strong you will definitely start to feel it in your elbows. At that point it may be too late and permanent damage may have already been done. Do yourself a favor and keep these exercises in the 8-15 rep range if you want to keep your elbows healthy.
Parallel Bar Dips: 8-12 reps
This exercise places a lot of stress on the shoulder capsule in the bottom range. It is for this reason that I recommend lowering yourself only to the point where your triceps are parallel with the floor and absolutely no lower. Even doing that is not enough, though. To ensure safety on this exercise you want to keep the reps higher. As long as you don’t go below eight reps on this exercise you should be able to hit it hard and heavy without having any problems.
Wrist Curls: 10-20 reps
Any time you do a regular or reverse wrist curl you put stress on the wrist joint and not just the forearm muscles. This is completely fine and not dangerous at all, as long as you keep the reps on the higher side. I personally prefer 15-20 reps on most forms of wrist curls. The only exception to that rule is behind the back wrist curls with place very little stress on the wrists at all and can be done for as low as ten reps. Also, the forearms have been shown time and time again to respond more favorably to a higher rep scheme and thus will grow more efficiently when trained in this manner.
Any Kind of Squats or Leg Presses: 5-20 reps
Since the beginning of time lifters have reported great size gains in their legs from high rep squats. It was the basis of several training books and a favorite method of many old school bodybuilding authors such as John McCallum. The legendary professional bodybuilder Tom Platz was known for having the biggest legs of all time and credited much of his development to high rep squatting. One of my favorite leg training workouts for intermediate to advanced lifters is one incredibly heavy set of 5-8 reps followed a few minutes later by one grueling death set of 20 reps. If you can’t get bigger and stronger from doing that you need to find a new hobby.
One of the reasons high reps work so well on exercises like squats and leg presses is that you can still use a very significant load. Whereas a high rep shoulder press would force you to use too light of a weight to stimulate muscle growth, high rep leg training is still done with respectable poundages. When you load a muscle with a brutally heavy weight for a long period of time, it has no choice but to grow. High rep squats and leg presses do just that.
Calves: 6-20 reps
The calves also seem to respond quite well to higher reps. Standing calf raises can be trained heavy but should also be hit with higher rep sets on a regular basis as well. This has to do with the fact that we spend so much time on our feet and that the calves have adapted to that imposed demand. They require a high load and long time under tension in order to elicit a growth response. Seated calf raises should always be done for at least 10 reps in order to ensure optimal growth. That is because the seated version of calf raises train the soleus muscle which is slow twitch by nature.
WHAT ABOUT THE INVERSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REPS AND TRAINING AGE?
Nearly everyone who has ever written an article or a book about training has emphatically stated that beginners should use high reps on every exercise. They then go on to explain that the longer you have trained the lower your reps should get. So beginners should use twenty reps across the board, intermediates should supposedly use ten reps and advanced lifters should never go above five reps.
This is complete and total nonsense!
In fact, this rule is actually one hundred percent ass backwards. Beginners need to learn proper exercise form. This can only be done with low rep sets. They simply don’t have the muscular strength, control or coordination to hold certain positions safely at their level. For example, a beginner should never squat for more than five reps because his lower back and abs will fatigue long before his legs do which could result in a serious injury.
Also, you have to realize that as a beginner you will not be able to handle extremely heavy weights anyway. So why would you want to lighten the load even more by doing sets of twenty? It’s ridiculous. You want to lift as heavy as you can with proper form and this can only be accomplished by sticking with five reps per set.
So the real deal, bottom line truth here is that beginners should always use low reps and avoid high reps at all costs!
As far as advanced lifters using nothing but low reps goes, this is another recommendation that doesn’t quite make sense and the truth is actually closer to the 180 degree opposite. When you have been training for more than ten years and have built up a great deal of strength you will be able to use mind bending weights on many exercises. If done too often, this can take a toll on your joints and leave your body feeling beat up. For this reason, I actually often recommend to older, more advanced lifters that they increase their rep range slightly.
Again, the mainstream recommendations here are one hundred percent ass backwards and completely opposite from the truth.
HOW MANY SETS SHOULD I DO PER EXERCISE?
I hope you are sitting down because what I am going to tell you will probably shock you. I know most of you are used to doing at least three sets per exercise. After all, three sets of ten is the most popular set and rep scheme on the planet. Some of you may even be doing more sets than that. I was right there with you several years back. I was told by certain so called experts that I had to do at least four to six sets per exercise if I ever wanted to get big. Unfortunately that approach led to me remaining small and getting injured quite frequently.
The real deal, bottom line truth is this-- there is no reason for you to ever do more than two work sets per exercise. If you can’t accomplish your goals with those two sets you are probably not working hard enough or smart enough. In all actuality you could probably get away with just one set but I like to keep the second set in there for most people, especially those that aren’t quite at the advanced level yet, just as an insurance policy and to cover all of our bases.
With intermediate lifters I usually recommend doing two sets of the same exercise, in the same rep range, with the same weight. For the more advanced trainee I rarely recommend doing more than one set of the same exercise, in the same rep range, with the same weight. Instead, I usually have them increase the weight on the second set and possibly drop the reps, or decrease the weight and slightly increase the reps.
Therefore they might do the first set with 100 pounds for eight reps and the second set with 110 pounds for five reps. The second option would be to do the first set with 110 for five reps and the second set with 100 pounds for eight reps as a back off set. On lower body exercises the back off set may actually go as high as twenty reps.
On lower body days, with advanced lifters I almost always have them do a heavy set of 5-8 reps followed by a back off, high rep, death set of 12-20 reps.
The only exception to the two sets rule is a raw beginner. Newbies need to master proper exercise form and that can only be done with lots of practice, e.g. more sets. So the addition of more sets for the beginner is not done because it will help them grow more but simply because they need more practice and you can’t get better at something unless you do it quite a bit.
HOW MANY SETS SHOULD I DO PER WORKOUT?
In my experience working with thousands of trainees I have found that the optimal number of sets per workout that is needed to achieve mind blowing results while preventing overtraining is between eight and twelve. That, my friends, is a far cry from what you see in 99% of the training programs out there. If I had to take a guess I would say that most people do between 20 and 30 sets per workout. If that describes you, then let me ask you a few questions.
What are you accomplishing by doing so many sets? Are the extra sets making you stronger? Are they making you bigger? What exactly is all that training volume doing?
If someone can explain to me what the benefit of super high-volume training is, I would be more than appreciative.
"Well,” some people argue, “Arnold did it and so do all pro bodybuilders." Ok, but that doesn’t convince me of anything. Some people succeed in life in spite of what they do, not because of it. And when making this argument you need to understand that all pro bodybuilders have superior genetics for building muscle, and most are on enormous amounts of steroids. Some spend upwards of $60,000 per year on these drugs. But even so, not as many of them as you think are using the 30–50 sets that you read about in the bodybuilding magazines. The shady truth behind that is that many magazines have paid these bodybuilders to write about their training programs and grossly exaggerate what they do in the gym. This is all in an effort to do two things: create larger than life superhero types and, most importantly, sell supplements. If they can sucker you in to doing this 50–set workout, you definitely won’t make progress, and you will mistakenly start looking for some magical supplement to help you get bigger and stronger. It’s a dirty business.
Having said that, the fact still remains that there are large numbers of pro bodybuilders who do use a training volume that is way too high for the average guy. If I were to ask any of these bodybuilders why they do 20 sets per body part, I would be anxious to get an answer that would actually make sense and persuade me that there is something I’m missing. And please don’t tell me you’re hitting the muscles from a variety of angles, blah, blah, blah. That subject has been debated to death and I don’t believe it to be remotely true. A muscle either contracts or it doesn’t. And when it contracts it does so from origin to insertion. You can not isolate a certain part of a muscle. There is no such thing as training the inner or outer pecs or the upper or lower biceps.
So, I ask of all the high volume junkies, can you honestly give me an explanation that you believe in as to why you are doing that many sets? And if you still want to use the "what about bodybuilders" argument, let me then ask you this: what about one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time and seven time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates? At no point in his career did he do anything that ever resembled high-volume training, yet he was absolutely enormous and strong as a bull. One of my best friends trained with Dorian and I personally spoke with him about his training on more than one occasion. But if you don’t believe me, take it from Dorian himself…
"For the first few months of my training I used to train the whole body three times per week. I’d do the basic exercises like squats, bench press, curls, and presses. From there I moved on to a split routine where I was training four days per week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday). Even when I was training four days per week, I felt overtrained, as if my body wasn’t getting enough time to recuperate. I then cut back to training every other day, doing half the body in one workout. The next day would be a day off. Sometimes I felt even that was too much training and I’d cut my training back to three days a week with a two way split... This program is a good way to pack on size while giving the body the recuperation it needs to grow. I don’t believe in doing the traditional 15-20 sets per bodypart. That’s too much work. I’ll do one or two sets per exercise. If you haven’t done the job by then, it’s not going to happen." Dorian Yates from Blood & Guts, 1993
Traditional bodybuilding dogma tells us that we need to do a certain amount of damage to the muscle and break it down, then let it rest and build itself up stronger before training it again. Well, if I do 12 sets for chest today, and then next week come back to the gym and my bench has gone from, let’s say, 300 pounds for ten reps to 300 pounds for 11 reps, why would that be any different than if I only did two sets for chest and still made the exact same progress? What exactly would be the difference?
For one thing, if I did the higher-volume workout, I would have severely depleted my amino acid pool and glycogen stores, which would take away from my recovery ability. The high volume would probably cause extreme levels of soreness (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS) which has been shown to decrease insulin sensitivity— so if I eat as many carbs as normal, they’re more likely to make me fatter than help me recover. Furthermore, my cortisol (a fat-storing stress hormone which eats away muscle tissue) levels will go up and my testosterone will go down. None of these are good scenarios.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Five to eight reps is the optimal range for building muscle. In certain cases you could and should go higher than this but for the most part, the majority of your training should be done in that range. Unless you are an experienced intermediate or an advanced lifter, your reps should rarely exceed ten. And even when you are at that level you should still do most of your training with heavy weights in the range of 5-8 reps. That is the premier rep range and doing most of your sets in that range is the fastest way to build size and strength.
Two sets per exercise are all you ever need to do and there is never a reason or need for more than that unless you are a raw beginner. Advanced lifters might even be better off doing just one set per exercise. Eight to twelve total sets per workout are all that’s needed to build a massive physique. Doing more than that will actually do you more harm than good and lead to overtraining and a complete lack of progress.
Adhere to those rules and you will avoid overtraining and wasting time and will get bigger and stronger than you ever thought possible.
Copyright © 2007-2008 Jason Ferruggia. All Rights Reserved
http://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com
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Originally Posted by MuscleScience
