Hey All, Feel free to check out the Alpha Progression App: alphaprogression.com/HOUSEOFHYPERTROPHY Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:52 Part I: Meta-Analytic Data 4:19 Part II: Additional Key Points 7:10 Part III: Individual Differences 10:16 Part IV: Summary
The "How many sets" depends on 3 FACTORS. 1) The TECHNIQUE-FORM of the REPS execution. 2) MIND-MUSCLE connection ability. 3) The how close you are going to FAILURE(intensity). Having a CORRECT rep form+having a perfect mind-muscle connection+going close or to failure means that you need LESS sets in order to give the OPTIMAL stimulus for growth.
Agreed, I was about to say the same thing although not just going to failure. There's a difference going to failure using significant effort, and hitting failure with your brain screaming with effort.
Yes, and logically everyone can put this to the test. If you do like 4 exercises per muscle group (depending on the muscle ofc), you will see that the muscle fatigue gets higher and higher, so eventually you can not perform with all the aspects you mention at 100%. So either you lower the weight (which still is going to be very tough) or you lower the reps. If you want to test it guys, just find what is your RM weight for 3 different exercises of a muscle group, and then do 70% RM of them, aiming for 10 to 12 reps. Let us know if you manage to do every single rep and exercise with all these aspects mentioned by @Natural_Maximum_Hypertrophy. ;) What can I assure you, is that you need to hydrate yourself and you will feel your muscle blowing out and fatigue at the end, nevertheless, you will feel some soreness but able to move, don't worry (maybe for the legs no ahhahahahahaha) Blessings
Having been on both sides of the fence and tried just about everything, I can say it all works. The only advantage HIT tends to have is that you spend a lot less time in the gym, which is completely worth it when you're feeling burned out from training with so much volume for so long.
considering that triceps is one of the most common muscle we use in our daily life, i cannot imagine the pain those individuals suffered after exercising
I truly believe the "12~15 sets per week" recommendation for the regular population is because they don't go even nearly close to failure, so they need lots of sets to compensate that. That is not bad at all, olympic trainers usually train like this, but if you are an advanced lifter and you have good technique and go to the perfect near failure on your sets, you can absolutely get away with 6~9 sets per week
@@nunninkav Especially as you get older. I do around 6 proper working sets per bodypart per week and at the end of the working set, I'm knackered. I quickly recover but there is no need to do any more.
This just really shows how people need to experiment with different rep ranges, volume and rest times Everyone is different and there is no perfect training program for everyone
Yeah and different exercises will benefit from different ranges. My deadlifts were doing well with low frequency but bench was making no progress until I upped the volume and spread out it across the week.
I like drop sets for some things like speeding up my bench work but for many exercises I've changed to instead of doing 3 sets every time after the second set (assuming both sets were done intensely to where I'd just gas out on the third if at the same weight) I switch to a different variation or even entirely different exercise and get some more variety in in the same amount of time.
Man, I want to kindly thank you for making these videos super clear and to the point. I'm not a bodybuilder but I do martial arts and I'm currently in the process of going up a weightclass. I don't have time to do endless research on how to get this done so your channel is really helping me out!
Thanks again! Love these videos. The interesting thing to see would be these data reconciled with the effects of different intensities across set ranges.
6 to 10 minute rest periods are for most people, highly impractical. A workout with 6 sets with have an hour of rest. So, either the person has to be at the gym for 2.5 hours or so just to get near 15 sets with most of their time sitting around
THere is no way to tell if the change in sets was the definitive factor - often your body becomes accustomed to a routine and simply CHANGING that to something else creates new gains.
Nonsense. YOU have no way of knowing how I train, The fact is, changing your routine has traditionally been a way to start new gains over the decades and if you stay with a routing for a long time you often get stale.
Well we can debate this until the end of time, but the fact of the matter is that if you are an advanced, strong and already jacked, natural individual, you are not handling more than 20 high quality (failure or very close with long rests) sets per week. You will start having injuries, weird pains, feeling tired and unmotivated, decreased performance (one or more of theses), after a few weeks. Sure there WILL be some, VERY FEW individuals who will be able to do it, but 90% of people won't. Now, if you are relatively new to lifting, in your early 20s, with no day job, no stress, and you are not very strong, you might be able to do it and handle it for quite some time.
... wrong on twenty levels lmao. 20 sets per week? wtf are you on?? how many videos have you regurgitated ??? .. nvm. Enjoy the likes. enjoy the videos, enjoy not using a profile picture. I am sure you are natural and doing awesome ..... I am just glad these videos exist and people like you. going to the gym for 40 mins and leaving me to do my sets. while you show 0 growth. seriously seen it for 20 years, in and out and looking the same. but wtf would I know. I don't follow 'modern gym science' as god given lmao GOOD LUCK!
Bro, your content is amazing. Your graphics are perfect. You know how to dissect a paper. I love this channel. I think you are either speaking too fast or trimming too much silence in your audio. When you edit out all the breaths it makes it sound like you're having an anxiety attack and it makes it harder for the listener to process all the awesome information you're giving. Your content is good enough to capture attention, don't feel like you've got to speak fast to keep attention. :-) I've learned a lot from the TH-cam channels of voice actors. Again, love your content, just giving ideas of how you can make it even better.
Thank you my friend, as always I appreciate your support a ton! I would love to see more studies on switching between the two, and maybe this could provide greater insight! :)
Bro, you're so close to 200K subs. It's like yesterday I saw you just get 20K, then 100K subs. Keep up the grind and thanks for producing these masterpiece videos. Your videos are like my steriod use, it's an addiction at this point.
10-11K I believe. I remember I cant believe the views for as high quality as the research is. I binged watch your content was soon as your first video.
You ought to revisit difference in gains between compound vs isolation (ie BP vs skullcrusher). Also, thanks for making a point to group the studies by whether rest periods were sufficient. Saved that graphic.
its possible the reason people respond to vastly different volume numbers is due to work capacity, or ability to push failure, some people are just very bad with pushing a set to failure, these people may benefit a lot more from higher weekly volume, where people who can better push failure will do better with lower volume, i imagine its pretty rare to have someone doing high weekly volume, high frequency, and high intensity.
Doing isometrics helps a lot with going to failure. I was getting to failure without feeling as tired as I felt I should. After doing isometrics for a month my to failure sets felt so much tiring it was insane.
before watching this video I'll share my knowledge to see if it checks out if you're a beginner to intermediate high volume and slowly start spreading the high volume into high frequency, then once you're intermediate dial down the frequency again and the more advanced you become the less frequency is needed.
When you have a lot of sets, nobody is pushing them as close to failure. Most people don't enjoy pain enough to hype themselves to failure again and again.
having too many sets causes you to sand bag too, people should see set amount as a variable to change when needed, not a set in stone amount for their program. do 3 sets of bench in a given rep range, when all 3 sets meet the upper end, add a 4th set, once all 4 match increase weight.
More sets = more better Seriously, It always seems to come down to this: do as many sets as you can recover from and have time for. I'm personally doing 24 sets for biceps triceps a week, 12 from compounds & 12 from isolation (chest/back/arms, 3 times a week). This is the most I can seem to recover from right now in a 48 hour period.
The 52 sets study comes out to around 6 ish set per muscle of effective total reps per session when counting effective reps, according to Paul Carter and Chris Beardsley
It is my hypothesis that the people who respond to the lower sets, are just pushing themselves harder. So, if you like to train really hard 10-12 sets is optimal. If you like to go through the motions and not train to failure, you may need 18.
Hi Dhimant, there are some that believe that more advanced trainees benefit from lower volumes. A possible explanation I have heard is that highly trained individuals are more able to recruit the muscle fibers that are more fast twitch. We also know that those highest threshold fibers have fewer mitochondria, making them worse in off setting muscle damage (despite the obervation that sub maximum fast twitch actually do become more oxidative in many body builders). Also, advanced trainees do probably have their growth potential in those highest threshold muscle fibers. Considering every other type of muscle fiber has been stimulated in the past so often. To further illustrate this point, you don't really see slow twitch muscle fiber hypertrophy in highly trained trainees, while you do see it in beginners. In immobilized limbs this effect is even more profound. Personally I find this narrative quite plausible. What do you think?
So I can understand where that logic is coming from, but I don't really think there's enough evidence to support it currently. We also need to more accurately define advanced and at what point would you be classified as this. Also, if you have any data on slow-twitch growth not being present in highly trianed folks, I would love to see that! The data I'm aware shows trained folks (though not neccessarily highly) still experience slow-twitch growth :) (such as this: journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00464.2021 )
As Ive said before, with volume, rest breaks, eventually, you know you. Push yourself in all metrics, eventually you will know inherently what works best for you. I work out till I feel that dip in energy where im not giving my all to the sets. If its 4 sets, so be it. If its 6, so be it. I work out as frequently as I can. I aim to workout every day but if you awaken and cant work out, then dont. As long as you know you are pushing yourself, then ultimately you will know what you need to do. This assumes you arent an absolute motivationless drop kick and you are a go getter that is more likely to "over train" than not do enough.
exactly. It's so important to listen to and understand your own body. Not everyone has the discipline to learn these things and require influencers or statistics to follow. I always listen to my body. Progress is never a linear path
At 9:08, the gear animation is impossible in reality. If one gear turns clockwise, the connecting gears will turn counterclockwise, and so forth. Thanks for the science. I always appreciate how concisely you synthesize the data.
Excellent information. Has there ever been studies that extreme number od sets like 50 plus sets per body part, per week which would seem like what was done in Arnold.
Up to 48 sets were used in some of the studies mentioned in the video. But as noted at the end of the video, a new study has come out involving progressing up to 52 weekly sets, we'll analyze this in the next video :)
Muscle growth peaks at 6 sets per muscle per session, two times a week, and that totals to 12 weekly sets as a higher limit, IF you're training to failure or maybe 1 rep in reserve. If you're training with 3+ reps in reserve, you'll need that 18+ sets
I've seen this take a few times, but I sincerely believe the literature fails to convincingly show 6 sets per session is the max limit (people reference Kreiger's regression for this), there's a lot more nuance. I'll have a video on it at some point :)
@@Zhyriaa I didnt say you couldnt grow from more, what Im saying is if you choose good exercises and have good execution and going to failure, its easier to progressively overload with lower amount of volume. When I do more I stay stuck or regress. Its that simple.
"Are muscle fiber hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy different? Are there any differences in muscle hypertrophy training? Previously mentioned that sets of 5-30 are the same for muscle building? Given proper form, should this also be taken into consideration?"
I believe every study NEEDS to compare short rest and high rest groups. It’s such a massive difference in results. 18 sets with low rest would probably equate to something like 12 sets with longer rest periods. But how the results would vary is what I’d like to see.
As far as resting time between (heavy) sets goes - this has to increase as you age since ATP refuelling takes longer as you age. Creatine helps a bit with that of course. From previous videos/research it seems that the % of fast/slow twitch muscle fibres can't fully account for the reason why some muscles respond better to lower or higher volume. I suppose that it's the many components involved with muscle hypertrophy that makes this area very difficult to research and obtain reliable results.
You have to know your own body simple as it takes time jay cutler said something very prevalent there I's no such thing as over training just under eating more sets more food I'm 57 and my body still responds well to 12 for chest / 9 for calfs / 12 for triceps/ 9 for biceps/ 20 back and legs all out 2 working sets at each top weight now if my eating I's off I'm in trouble
Some of the paper do report comparable caloric and macronutrient intake between groups, and most studies prohibit any supplementation pertaining to growth (such as creatine). Sleep schedule is rarely measured, but with randomization of subjects across groups we're sort of hoping this wouldn't meaningfully impact the results, especially when we have multiple studies simlarly designed which collectively increase the sample size :)
Is it hard to trust any study that trains one leg one way vs other leg different? Why? Because if you break your left arm but keep training the right - you don't lose muscle in the left! So, the body has some cross over impact on limbs and maybe even pec, lats, etc. It seems like most studies with individual limb training with different criteria - result in similar results - not identical but very similar.
For each exercise, one or two warm up sets, then one last set at 100% intensity or beyond. If you can do any more than that, either you are not really putting in 100%, or get your DNA checked because you are not human. Then move on to maybe one more exercise for that body part working in a different plane, eg incline press then decline press, pulldown then row. If you are pushing yourself at the amount of intesity that stimulates muscle growth, you need at least three to four days rest, and the stronger you get, the more recovery you need i.e 7 days. In saying that, everyone is a bit different and do what works best for you, but I would err on the side of undertraining rather than overtraining. I learnt that lession the hard way.
I think a huge component that might explain some of the variation between sets per week, for results across individuals, is nutrition. I believe that nutrition is at least as important, and probably more important, than what you do in the gym (had a trainer who thought the same as well). If you're not taking in enough calories or protein, you're not going to grow. I has personal experience in this unfortunately lol (calories; my appetite is fail and is why I was super skinny all my life).
Data suggest more than six sets per individual muscle per workout session garners diminishing return every set after 6 per muscle group. Per session Meaning when you do bench do three sets if you're doing flies at three sets also. If you're doing bench only do six sets. And then do six sets of triceps. If you do chess and triceps twice a week that's 12 sets if you do it three times a week that's 18 sets..
Is there any studies specifically around maximum effort lifting in a low rep range for mass growth? Specifically thinking of Mike Mentzers omni contraction/infitionic training method. Perhaps individual effort could account for some variation in the results of the studies.
As a 60yo my leg day looks like this leg ext 3 to 4 warm-ups followed by 12x 95kg. Front squats in Smith machine 2 to 3 warm-ups 1 set 12x60kg .leg press 3 warm-ups 1set 180 kg x 10 to 12 reps, Bulgarian split squat withd/bells 8x 22kg, and 1 set 8x 27kg. At 60 I can only train once in 7 days or I don't improve but according to this to get 12 sets I would have to do 4 sets of every exercise above stopping 3 reps short of failure. As a HIT trainee I can see this being too much, I just can't see doing this much unless we include warm-ups but you state that's not included, what am I missing here....
We are all keyboard warrior fitness scientists and proud ✊. As long as our grandmas are saying we have got big that’s all that matters. Shove your volume up your arse. Here’s Mike Mentzer.
hypertrophy is 95% nutrition and 5% training. All the skinny hardgainers I know (me included), grow easily once they start eating enough. The problem is that normal, healthy, relatively fit people, vastly underestimate the amount of (good balanced high protein) food they have to absorb in a day to actually grow. Look at babies, the ultimate body builders. They have a belly-filling meal every 2 - 3 hours, all day, every day. If you consider mass of food, I think for each kg of muscle growth, at least 3-7 kgs of food intake is required. Did you eat a kg of food today ? Remember most of it is just water so you are not actually eating that much.
Oh and untrained individuals, Mike theorized that more weight, is heavier on the body also for the recovery, so less sets are needed as you get stronger.
It’s more like a matter of diminishing returns. Something like 1st Set = 50% 2nd Set = 25% 3rd Set = 12% 4th Set = 6% 5th Set = 3% 6th Set = 2% 7th Set = 1% 8th Set through Infinity = Last 1%. This is why it’s important to make Sets 1-3 count because after that your ROI is extremely low.
Personally speaking, the once a week regime wouldn't be as good as twice a week for me. I've trained the once a week workout that Dorian used to do. Not that my workouts would be as intense. Difficult when you train on your own and can't do forced reps. There is a balance between rest and in the state where you start losing muscle. I'd imagine I start losing muscle after around 6 days. Twice a week and I'm defintely seeing a difference over one. Takes a long time to discover what is best for you. And your age is a factor as well as the amount of good food you're having.
When total number of sets per week are equated, the number of days you spread that out doesn't appear to matter too much. But there does seem to be individual differences, for example, one paper found when performing 9 weekly sets for the quads, some individuals saw similar gains between training all these sets in one session (9 sets all in one session) or across three sessions (3 sets per session), but others say greater gains with the thee sessions: th-cam.com/video/X82vvocqe-8/w-d-xo.html
So please tell me, if I'm doing front raise,lat raise and face pulls is t considered as 3 sets for shoulders or is t considered as 1 set for each muscle group
Crikey, if I don't count my warm up sets, I'm probably not doing more than 6 sets per week per body part. I'm 56 and I'm still making decent gains. I get bored being in the gym too long. I see people who are well into their workouts when I arrive and still going when I leave. I'm there around 45mins. I have done high set regimes in the past, I remember using an app to log everything and I was doing over 50 sets a workout, which included warm up sets. I'd do more exercises per bodypart than I do now. I generally only do two exercises per bodypart. I was probably doing 4 or 5 for back during that time. I actually made very good gains. It was after I'd had shoulder surgery and was slowly building up my strength. But it wasn't sustainable. Not physically or mentally.
My question: How is this 'thickness' measured? I always find higher volume makes you have temporarily more 'inflated' if you will muscles due to pump and what not, but after not training for a week or two you immediately sort of lose that extra size - how much of this is genuine myofibrillar hpertrophy? The sort of muscle that stays with you. Might sound a bit anecdotal/bro sciencey but if you've been around the iron game long enough you'll know what I mean
Is there a reference on which these studies base themselves to say that rowing counts as 1 set of biceps?Where can I access a "list" of exercises and the muscles they activate?
So stricly speaking, there is no data that would say this is appropriate, there's debate about it as detailed here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6681288/ I would say since rows don't stimulate as much biceps growth as bicep curls th-cam.com/video/WBo7MzU6U-w/w-d-xo.html - it may not truly be 1 set for the biceps With other cases though, things are a lot more complicated. For example, the bench press might grow the lateral head better than triceps isolation exercises do th-cam.com/users/shortspevqsw8WNfc , and so in this case should we count the bench press as 1 set for the triceps in the same way we count isolation movements?
Without knowing the intensity of the sets this data is of limited value. If HIT advocates can get similar results with 1 set to failure then the idea of needing 20, 30 or even 50 sets to gain some fractional improvement seems insane.
I think what's missing is that this is volume per muscle group, not necessarily exercise. Maybe it's obvious to some people, but I think going from 3 sets to 4 sets for the chest would be better as 2 sets of bench and 2 sets of press ups, instead of 4 sets of bench. The majority of the time this is only ever mentioned with regards to arm work.
Also consider that the rest time, and number of sets aren't the factors the create the muscle, but they strongly affect the factors that do. Someone on the comments here @Natural_Maximum_Hypertrophy has listed those. Don't let short rest times or high numbers of sets affect your ability to generate intensity. And don't let long rest time affect your mind muscle connection. Or intense sets affect your technique and form. But find a balance where you feel rested to do another set, and a number of sets where you feel you are in a good range to improve on your previous week's work.
The major weekness with these studies is that none of these programs are complete bodybuilding programs, if you focus on just one muscle for a few weeks it's NOT the same as focusing on all major muscles, why not do science on actual boybuilding programs since that's what interests people
It is the exact opposite. Good lick recovering with 18 sets a week on advanced level, lifting insane numbers on compound lifts. Beginners can handle anything since their total weekly tonnage is weak as shit, no disrespect.
Hey All, Feel free to check out the Alpha Progression App: alphaprogression.com/HOUSEOFHYPERTROPHY
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:52 Part I: Meta-Analytic Data
4:19 Part II: Additional Key Points
7:10 Part III: Individual Differences
10:16 Part IV: Summary
Will this app help me? I just want to build some muscle not spending whole life in the gym.
The most important factors are intensity and volume, time under tension should be measured for volume not sets and reps
The "How many sets" depends on 3 FACTORS.
1) The TECHNIQUE-FORM of the REPS execution.
2) MIND-MUSCLE connection ability.
3) The how close you are going to FAILURE(intensity).
Having a CORRECT rep form+having a perfect mind-muscle connection+going close or to failure means that you need LESS sets in order to give the OPTIMAL stimulus for growth.
Agreed, I was about to say the same thing although not just going to failure. There's a difference going to failure using significant effort, and hitting failure with your brain screaming with effort.
Fool u said 2 two times, anyway another factor is time in between sets, the more time in between sets the less sets u need to do
@@SatanFollower1 I think It also depends on exercise selection. Compound is not gonna cut it
Yes, and logically everyone can put this to the test. If you do like 4 exercises per muscle group (depending on the muscle ofc), you will see that the muscle fatigue gets higher and higher, so eventually you can not perform with all the aspects you mention at 100%. So either you lower the weight (which still is going to be very tough) or you lower the reps.
If you want to test it guys, just find what is your RM weight for 3 different exercises of a muscle group, and then do 70% RM of them, aiming for 10 to 12 reps. Let us know if you manage to do every single rep and exercise with all these aspects mentioned by @Natural_Maximum_Hypertrophy. ;)
What can I assure you, is that you need to hydrate yourself and you will feel your muscle blowing out and fatigue at the end, nevertheless, you will feel some soreness but able to move, don't worry (maybe for the legs no ahhahahahahaha) Blessings
Thank you
You know it's a good morning when you wake up to a House of Hypertrophy video.
Take your upvote and get out.
Facts lol 📠
🤣
Having been on both sides of the fence and tried just about everything, I can say it all works. The only advantage HIT tends to have is that you spend a lot less time in the gym, which is completely worth it when you're feeling burned out from training with so much volume for so long.
sounds like part of what makes that work is the slingshotting caused by the change in stimulus
I feel like it's harder to put on weight with high volume
The best research - is on yourself & your results.
You just need to keep track of what you're doing.
30 sets triceps a week is just insane
30 sets of any muscle per week is insane
considering that triceps is one of the most common muscle we use in our daily life, i cannot imagine the pain those individuals suffered after exercising
It's a lot no doubt, but bear in mind that includes both compound and isolation movements
@@corenko Maybe, but some people are capable of gaining from it, so it may be worthwhile for them, at the very least for peaking
10 sets of chest press, 10 sets of shoulder press, 10 sets of triceps press, extention are totally 30 sets of triceps
I truly believe the "12~15 sets per week" recommendation for the regular population is because they don't go even nearly close to failure, so they need lots of sets to compensate that. That is not bad at all, olympic trainers usually train like this, but if you are an advanced lifter and you have good technique and go to the perfect near failure on your sets, you can absolutely get away with 6~9 sets per week
Agreed 100%. The harder you can train, the less sets you need.
@@nunninkav Especially as you get older. I do around 6 proper working sets per bodypart per week and at the end of the working set, I'm knackered. I quickly recover but there is no need to do any more.
I wonder if body proportions have much to do with it as well? Long arms, legs lever planes. Long individuals may not need as much volume.
@@daynemin or they need more. There must be millions of variables.
@@nunninkavand the less you can do. If I add more sets the intensity of each goes down.
This just really shows how people need to experiment with different rep ranges, volume and rest times Everyone is different and there is no perfect training program for everyone
Yeah and different exercises will benefit from different ranges. My deadlifts were doing well with low frequency but bench was making no progress until I upped the volume and spread out it across the week.
At 0:36 I believe it should be “at most 3 reps from failure”.
Your research-based analysis is fantastic!
Everybody is different. I found Dropset is the most effective for me. It's intense, time efficient, & no need for lots of sets or reps.
I like drop sets for some things like speeding up my bench work but for many exercises I've changed to instead of doing 3 sets every time after the second set (assuming both sets were done intensely to where I'd just gas out on the third if at the same weight) I switch to a different variation or even entirely different exercise and get some more variety in in the same amount of time.
I mean drop sets your doing another set and in a shorter time. Each time you drop it is another set if you go to failure. It def way more time effect
Man, I want to kindly thank you for making these videos super clear and to the point. I'm not a bodybuilder but I do martial arts and I'm currently in the process of going up a weightclass. I don't have time to do endless research on how to get this done so your channel is really helping me out!
Hey dude, thank you so much. This is really awesome to hear! Best of luck going up in weightclasses, I know you'll do awesome :)
Thank you for this video. This is excellent information.
Great video, well explained, not too long and informative! keep it up
Thank you! :)
I love going to the summary directly and not wasting time. Thanks anyway for the videos.
Such an amazing and useful video!!
And the edit was WOW.💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽
Thank you my friend!
Just wanted to say your channel is truly great man it's packed with great information in such a digestible format, thank you!
I'm curious about this next video you hinted.
At 0:36 I believe it should be “at most 3 sets from failure”.
Your research-based analysis is fantastic!
Ooooh nice ending. Its like a "to be continued" for a hypertrothy science type story.
Thanks again! Love these videos. The interesting thing to see would be these data reconciled with the effects of different intensities across set ranges.
That's actually very short (
6 to 10 minute rest periods are for most people, highly impractical. A workout with 6 sets with have an hour of rest. So, either the person has to be at the gym for 2.5 hours or so just to get near 15 sets with most of their time sitting around
25-30 weekly sets per bodypart was a game changer for me. I used to stick to around 12-15, doubling it really increased my strength and mass.
that's.... so time consuming though
Very interesting to hear, I imagine there probably are individuals out there that can handle and benefit from higher sets :)
THere is no way to tell if the change in sets was the definitive factor - often your body becomes accustomed to a routine and simply CHANGING that to something else creates new gains.
You don’t train with high intensity
Nonsense. YOU have no way of knowing how I train, The fact is, changing your routine has traditionally been a way to start new gains over the decades and if you stay with a routing for a long time you often get stale.
I can't wait for the next video
i like always starting at 6-8 weekly sets and ramp it up depending o priority up to maximum of 20 sets, i choose 2 or 3 muscle groups to ramp up tho
Well we can debate this until the end of time, but the fact of the matter is that if you are an advanced, strong and already jacked, natural individual, you are not handling more than 20 high quality (failure or very close with long rests) sets per week. You will start having injuries, weird pains, feeling tired and unmotivated, decreased performance (one or more of theses), after a few weeks. Sure there WILL be some, VERY FEW individuals who will be able to do it, but 90% of people won't. Now, if you are relatively new to lifting, in your early 20s, with no day job, no stress, and you are not very strong, you might be able to do it and handle it for quite some time.
... wrong on twenty levels lmao. 20 sets per week? wtf are you on?? how many videos have you regurgitated ??? .. nvm. Enjoy the likes. enjoy the videos, enjoy not using a profile picture. I am sure you are natural and doing awesome .....
I am just glad these videos exist and people like you. going to the gym for 40 mins and leaving me to do my sets. while you show 0 growth. seriously seen it for 20 years, in and out and looking the same. but wtf would I know. I don't follow 'modern gym science' as god given lmao GOOD LUCK!
Bro, your content is amazing. Your graphics are perfect. You know how to dissect a paper. I love this channel. I think you are either speaking too fast or trimming too much silence in your audio. When you edit out all the breaths it makes it sound like you're having an anxiety attack and it makes it harder for the listener to process all the awesome information you're giving. Your content is good enough to capture attention, don't feel like you've got to speak fast to keep attention. :-)
I've learned a lot from the TH-cam channels of voice actors.
Again, love your content, just giving ideas of how you can make it even better.
Could you make a video about FOREARMS hypertrophy??🙏🙏
Love it, thanks!
I’ve noticed that it’s also been helpful to change the plan occasionally, low vs high sets, and I wonder “how often” is best.
Thank you my friend, as always I appreciate your support a ton!
I would love to see more studies on switching between the two, and maybe this could provide greater insight! :)
Thank you, as always a great vid :)
Thank you for checking it out! :)
I don’t know how in gods name Mike mentzer had the audacity to recommend 1-2 weekly sets per muscle group once every 7-14 days
Your “vitamins” helps with that.
Bro, you're so close to 200K subs. It's like yesterday I saw you just get 20K, then 100K subs. Keep up the grind and thanks for producing these masterpiece videos. Your videos are like my steriod use, it's an addiction at this point.
Hahaha, thank you dude! I know you've been here for a longgg time, way before 20k itself I believe :)
10-11K I believe. I remember I cant believe the views for as high quality as the research is. I binged watch your content was soon as your first video.
You ought to revisit difference in gains between compound vs isolation (ie BP vs skullcrusher). Also, thanks for making a point to group the studies by whether rest periods were sufficient. Saved that graphic.
Thank you dude, I certainly could have a video on that!
its possible the reason people respond to vastly different volume numbers is due to work capacity, or ability to push failure, some people are just very bad with pushing a set to failure, these people may benefit a lot more from higher weekly volume, where people who can better push failure will do better with lower volume, i imagine its pretty rare to have someone doing high weekly volume, high frequency, and high intensity.
Doing isometrics helps a lot with going to failure. I was getting to failure without feeling as tired as I felt I should. After doing isometrics for a month my to failure sets felt so much tiring it was insane.
before watching this video I'll share my knowledge to see if it checks out
if you're a beginner to intermediate high volume and slowly start spreading the high volume into high frequency, then once you're intermediate dial down the frequency again and the more advanced you become the less frequency is needed.
Thank you for the knowledgement.
I’m confused, by this logic, I can do 5 sets of front squats twice a week and I’m good to go for quads? Seems low for optimal growth
When you have a lot of sets, nobody is pushing them as close to failure. Most people don't enjoy pain enough to hype themselves to failure again and again.
having too many sets causes you to sand bag too, people should see set amount as a variable to change when needed, not a set in stone amount for their program. do 3 sets of bench in a given rep range, when all 3 sets meet the upper end, add a 4th set, once all 4 match increase weight.
Heavy Duty training Mentzer style is only for those who have a "no pain, no gain" approach to training.
@@nunninkav you rest long enough that you're jacked to beat your last workout, too. You don't want to quit early because you gotta make it happen
More sets = more better
Seriously, It always seems to come down to this: do as many sets as you can recover from and have time for. I'm personally doing 24 sets for biceps triceps a week, 12 from compounds & 12 from isolation (chest/back/arms, 3 times a week). This is the most I can seem to recover from right now in a 48 hour period.
The 52 sets study comes out to around 6 ish set per muscle of effective total reps per session when counting effective reps, according to Paul Carter and Chris Beardsley
It is my hypothesis that the people who respond to the lower sets, are just pushing themselves harder. So, if you like to train really hard 10-12 sets is optimal. If you like to go through the motions and not train to failure, you may need 18.
Hi Dhimant, there are some that believe that more advanced trainees benefit from lower volumes. A possible explanation I have heard is that highly trained individuals are more able to recruit the muscle fibers that are more fast twitch. We also know that those highest threshold fibers have fewer mitochondria, making them worse in off setting muscle damage (despite the obervation that sub maximum fast twitch actually do become more oxidative in many body builders). Also, advanced trainees do probably have their growth potential in those highest threshold muscle fibers. Considering every other type of muscle fiber has been stimulated in the past so often. To further illustrate this point, you don't really see slow twitch muscle fiber hypertrophy in highly trained trainees, while you do see it in beginners. In immobilized limbs this effect is even more profound. Personally I find this narrative quite plausible. What do you think?
So I can understand where that logic is coming from, but I don't really think there's enough evidence to support it currently. We also need to more accurately define advanced and at what point would you be classified as this.
Also, if you have any data on slow-twitch growth not being present in highly trianed folks, I would love to see that! The data I'm aware shows trained folks (though not neccessarily highly) still experience slow-twitch growth :) (such as this: journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00464.2021 )
As Ive said before, with volume, rest breaks, eventually, you know you. Push yourself in all metrics, eventually you will know inherently what works best for you. I work out till I feel that dip in energy where im not giving my all to the sets. If its 4 sets, so be it. If its 6, so be it. I work out as frequently as I can. I aim to workout every day but if you awaken and cant work out, then dont. As long as you know you are pushing yourself, then ultimately you will know what you need to do. This assumes you arent an absolute motivationless drop kick and you are a go getter that is more likely to "over train" than not do enough.
exactly. It's so important to listen to and understand your own body. Not everyone has the discipline to learn these things and require influencers or statistics to follow. I always listen to my body. Progress is never a linear path
personally i would alsways go for lower volume since it will give you better recovery and prevent the need to deload
At 9:08, the gear animation is impossible in reality. If one gear turns clockwise, the connecting gears will turn counterclockwise, and so forth.
Thanks for the science. I always appreciate how concisely you synthesize the data.
But they dont touch
Excellent information. Has there ever been studies that extreme number od sets like 50 plus sets per body part, per week which would seem like what was done in Arnold.
Up to 48 sets were used in some of the studies mentioned in the video. But as noted at the end of the video, a new study has come out involving progressing up to 52 weekly sets, we'll analyze this in the next video :)
@@HouseofHypertrophy thanks 😊
12 studies, 12 hours ago, and almost 12 minutes of duration. awesome
Hahaha :)
Muscle growth peaks at 6 sets per muscle per session, two times a week, and that totals to 12 weekly sets as a higher limit, IF you're training to failure or maybe 1 rep in reserve.
If you're training with 3+ reps in reserve, you'll need that 18+ sets
I agree but that is often way too much. My chest doesnt recover from 6 sets a week once or twice a week.
I've seen this take a few times, but I sincerely believe the literature fails to convincingly show 6 sets per session is the max limit (people reference Kreiger's regression for this), there's a lot more nuance. I'll have a video on it at some point :)
@@joojotin 6 sets twice a week is way too much ? Are you made of paper or something
@@Zhyriaa I didnt say you couldnt grow from more, what Im saying is if you choose good exercises and have good execution and going to failure, its easier to progressively overload with lower amount of volume. When I do more I stay stuck or regress.
Its that simple.
@@Zhyriaa I have used volumes per muscle group up to 30 sets per week. I know what works for me.
"Are muscle fiber hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy different? Are there any differences in muscle hypertrophy training? Previously mentioned that sets of 5-30 are the same for muscle building? Given proper form, should this also be taken into consideration?"
I believe every study NEEDS to compare short rest and high rest groups. It’s such a massive difference in results. 18 sets with low rest would probably equate to something like 12 sets with longer rest periods.
But how the results would vary is what I’d like to see.
Agreed, it's something I would like researchers do examine more!
It would seem to me that nutrition would play a big role in the ability to see gains from high volume.
its Monday again -> HoH uploads
You can always add more work to a lagging muscle, like forearms, in my case.
Please do some diet related videos
Hi, excelent video, how about Mike Israetel theory?
As far as resting time between (heavy) sets goes - this has to increase as you age since ATP refuelling takes longer as you age. Creatine helps a bit with that of course.
From previous videos/research it seems that the % of fast/slow twitch muscle fibres can't fully account for the reason why some muscles respond better to lower or higher volume.
I suppose that it's the many components involved with muscle hypertrophy that makes this area very difficult to research and obtain reliable results.
we need a video Brachioradialis
Coming soon!
Maybe drop the weight and add more volume then. So how long before you start noticing the changes, weeks, months?
Nice video - as always!
But, I think there's a mistake: 0:38 -- I think you mean(t) to say "at *most* 3 reps from failure", right?!
You have to know your own body simple as it takes time jay cutler said something very prevalent there I's no such thing as over training just under eating more sets more food I'm 57 and my body still responds well to 12 for chest / 9 for calfs / 12 for triceps/ 9 for biceps/ 20 back and legs all out 2 working sets at each top weight now if my eating I's off I'm in trouble
6-8 sets per muscle once per week here. Sometimes only 4 sets. All sets to failure with rest periods of 3-5 minutes
Where is the Housewife of Hypertrophy partner channel for women's fitness? I specifically requested it.
Hahaha, my apologies that's in the works
What were their supplements, diet and sleep schedule like?
Some of the paper do report comparable caloric and macronutrient intake between groups, and most studies prohibit any supplementation pertaining to growth (such as creatine). Sleep schedule is rarely measured, but with randomization of subjects across groups we're sort of hoping this wouldn't meaningfully impact the results, especially when we have multiple studies simlarly designed which collectively increase the sample size :)
Gotta help with the algorithm 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🥶🥶
Thank you my friend, as always!
Is it hard to trust any study that trains one leg one way vs other leg different? Why? Because if you break your left arm but keep training the right - you don't lose muscle in the left! So, the body has some cross over impact on limbs and maybe even pec, lats, etc. It seems like most studies with individual limb training with different criteria - result in similar results - not identical but very similar.
For each exercise, one or two warm up sets, then one last set at 100% intensity or beyond. If you can do any more than that, either you are not really putting in 100%, or get your DNA checked because you are not human. Then move on to maybe one more exercise for that body part working in a different plane, eg incline press then decline press, pulldown then row. If you are pushing yourself at the amount of intesity that stimulates muscle growth, you need at least three to four days rest, and the stronger you get, the more recovery you need i.e 7 days. In saying that, everyone is a bit different and do what works best for you, but I would err on the side of undertraining rather than overtraining. I learnt that lession the hard way.
I think a huge component that might explain some of the variation between sets per week, for results across individuals, is nutrition. I believe that nutrition is at least as important, and probably more important, than what you do in the gym (had a trainer who thought the same as well). If you're not taking in enough calories or protein, you're not going to grow. I has personal experience in this unfortunately lol (calories; my appetite is fail and is why I was super skinny all my life).
increasing/progressing in volume is the last thing one should do. It has a quick end.
Data suggest more than six sets per individual muscle per workout session garners diminishing return every set after 6 per muscle group. Per session
Meaning when you do bench do three sets if you're doing flies at three sets also.
If you're doing bench only do six sets. And then do six sets of triceps.
If you do chess and triceps twice a week that's 12 sets if you do it three times a week that's 18 sets..
Doesn’t this contradict your earlier video about having around 30-45 sets per week even with longer rest?
Is there any studies specifically around maximum effort lifting in a low rep range for mass growth? Specifically thinking of Mike Mentzers omni contraction/infitionic training method. Perhaps individual effort could account for some variation in the results of the studies.
I suppose you could replicate the study, train one bicep with lower sets, the other with higher, and then get the tape measure out.
I love you HOH
❤️
As a 60yo my leg day looks like this leg ext 3 to 4 warm-ups followed by 12x 95kg. Front squats in Smith machine 2 to 3 warm-ups 1 set 12x60kg .leg press 3 warm-ups 1set 180 kg x 10 to 12 reps, Bulgarian split squat withd/bells 8x 22kg, and 1 set 8x 27kg. At 60 I can only train once in 7 days or I don't improve but according to this to get 12 sets I would have to do 4 sets of every exercise above stopping 3 reps short of failure. As a HIT trainee I can see this being too much, I just can't see doing this much unless we include warm-ups but you state that's not included, what am I missing here....
We are all keyboard warrior fitness scientists and proud ✊. As long as our grandmas are saying we have got big that’s all that matters. Shove your volume up your arse. Here’s Mike Mentzer.
hypertrophy is 95% nutrition and 5% training.
All the skinny hardgainers I know (me included), grow easily once they start eating enough.
The problem is that normal, healthy, relatively fit people, vastly underestimate the amount of (good balanced high protein) food they have to absorb in a day to actually grow.
Look at babies, the ultimate body builders. They have a belly-filling meal every 2 - 3 hours, all day, every day.
If you consider mass of food, I think for each kg of muscle growth, at least 3-7 kgs of food intake is required.
Did you eat a kg of food today ? Remember most of it is just water so you are not actually eating that much.
This would seem to debunk Mike Mentzer's work. Though it still worked for him and some of his clients.
Unless the study didn't take into account high intensity training, but I doubt it, but it can work for some as you show.
Oh and untrained individuals, Mike theorized that more weight, is heavier on the body also for the recovery, so less sets are needed as you get stronger.
If I do hammer curls with 12.5 kg for 15 reps and only do 15 kg for 2 reps what should i do?
Man these purple, yellow, red, and orange mofos are jacked AF
Hahaha :)
It’s more like a matter of diminishing returns.
Something like
1st Set = 50%
2nd Set = 25%
3rd Set = 12%
4th Set = 6%
5th Set = 3%
6th Set = 2%
7th Set = 1%
8th Set through Infinity = Last 1%.
This is why it’s important to make Sets 1-3 count because after that your ROI is extremely low.
3 Sets gives you 80%+
So might as well use that other time and energy to get yourself 80% of another muscle group.
I heard one study that says you get 60% of gains from 1 set.
I'm very curious to see comparison between training 10 sets once per week vs 5 sets two times per week.
Personally speaking, the once a week regime wouldn't be as good as twice a week for me. I've trained the once a week workout that Dorian used to do. Not that my workouts would be as intense. Difficult when you train on your own and can't do forced reps. There is a balance between rest and in the state where you start losing muscle. I'd imagine I start losing muscle after around 6 days. Twice a week and I'm defintely seeing a difference over one. Takes a long time to discover what is best for you. And your age is a factor as well as the amount of good food you're having.
When total number of sets per week are equated, the number of days you spread that out doesn't appear to matter too much. But there does seem to be individual differences, for example, one paper found when performing 9 weekly sets for the quads, some individuals saw similar gains between training all these sets in one session (9 sets all in one session) or across three sessions (3 sets per session), but others say greater gains with the thee sessions: th-cam.com/video/X82vvocqe-8/w-d-xo.html
How is set defined?
Have you ever covered unilateral training ?
Not yet! But I certainly could have a video on that in the future :)
I wonder what role diet plays in these results. 8:09.
So please tell me, if I'm doing front raise,lat raise and face pulls is t considered as 3 sets for shoulders or is t considered as 1 set for each muscle group
Crikey, if I don't count my warm up sets, I'm probably not doing more than 6 sets per week per body part. I'm 56 and I'm still making decent gains. I get bored being in the gym too long. I see people who are well into their workouts when I arrive and still going when I leave. I'm there around 45mins. I have done high set regimes in the past, I remember using an app to log everything and I was doing over 50 sets a workout, which included warm up sets. I'd do more exercises per bodypart than I do now. I generally only do two exercises per bodypart. I was probably doing 4 or 5 for back during that time. I actually made very good gains. It was after I'd had shoulder surgery and was slowly building up my strength. But it wasn't sustainable. Not physically or mentally.
It's awesome to hear you've found a plan that's working and sustainable for you! I wish you continued progress :)
Between House of Hypertrophy and Renaissance Periodization, I'm starting to feel like a nerd for bodybuilding 😂
House of Hypertrophy > Renaissance Periodization (they're biased whilst House of Hypertrophy isn't).
Haha, shout out to Mike!
My question:
How is this 'thickness' measured?
I always find higher volume makes you have temporarily more 'inflated' if you will muscles due to pump and what not, but after not training for a week or two you immediately sort of lose that extra size - how much of this is genuine myofibrillar hpertrophy? The sort of muscle that stays with you.
Might sound a bit anecdotal/bro sciencey but if you've been around the iron game long enough you'll know what I mean
Is there a reference on which these studies base themselves to say that rowing counts as 1 set of biceps?Where can I access a "list" of exercises and the muscles they activate?
So stricly speaking, there is no data that would say this is appropriate, there's debate about it as detailed here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6681288/
I would say since rows don't stimulate as much biceps growth as bicep curls th-cam.com/video/WBo7MzU6U-w/w-d-xo.html - it may not truly be 1 set for the biceps
With other cases though, things are a lot more complicated. For example, the bench press might grow the lateral head better than triceps isolation exercises do th-cam.com/users/shortspevqsw8WNfc , and so in this case should we count the bench press as 1 set for the triceps in the same way we count isolation movements?
I was going to bed, but HoH uploaded a new video
Haha, hope you have a great nights sleep!
I think the intensity of the trainee determines the outcome
You forget about muscular ovwrlap
Without knowing the intensity of the sets this data is of limited value. If HIT advocates can get similar results with 1 set to failure then the idea of needing 20, 30 or even 50 sets to gain some fractional improvement seems insane.
I think what's missing is that this is volume per muscle group, not necessarily exercise. Maybe it's obvious to some people, but I think going from 3 sets to 4 sets for the chest would be better as 2 sets of bench and 2 sets of press ups, instead of 4 sets of bench. The majority of the time this is only ever mentioned with regards to arm work.
When is the brachioradialis vid dropping?
Coming soon!
Do these volume numbers apply equally to lower leg muscles ?
Quads seem to respond better to lower volumes
Also consider that the rest time, and number of sets aren't the factors the create the muscle, but they strongly affect the factors that do. Someone on the comments here @Natural_Maximum_Hypertrophy has listed those. Don't let short rest times or high numbers of sets affect your ability to generate intensity. And don't let long rest time affect your mind muscle connection. Or intense sets affect your technique and form. But find a balance where you feel rested to do another set, and a number of sets where you feel you are in a good range to improve on your previous week's work.
The major weekness with these studies is that none of these programs are complete bodybuilding programs, if you focus on just one muscle for a few weeks it's NOT the same as focusing on all major muscles, why not do science on actual boybuilding programs since that's what interests people
GVS would probably say “There is no limits!!” 😂 j/k GVS
Full automatic fact presentation.
TL:DR
9 to 12 sets for beginners
12 to 18+ sets for trained lifters (2+ minute rest)
that doesnt make sense, advanced trainees need less volume
It is the exact opposite. Good lick recovering with 18 sets a week on advanced level, lifting insane numbers on compound lifts. Beginners can handle anything since their total weekly tonnage is weak as shit, no disrespect.
@@joojotin No, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. The more advanced lifters have built their ability to recover so need more sets for gains
@@drno62 false, advanced trainees will get fatigued due to the amount of weight they are lifting. hence need greater recovery demands and less volume
@@xdd543 Then why do the studies support my idea and not yours?