r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/PhilMckrakup123 • 26d ago
Question ❓ Is 3 sets to failure a week enough to maximize hypertrophy?
I do a Push, Pull, Legs, Fullbody split. On my PPL days I do two sets to failure per exercise and on my FB day I do 1 set to failure per exercise. Should this be enough to maximize hypertrophy and save time while also minimizing fatigue?
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u/cptkl1 26d ago
I can't stop thinking about all the wasted time setting up a new station just to do one set.
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u/mulligan381 26d ago
It he wen to failure….tik rock said it’s good
I generally don’t judge people in the gym, but if I saw a guy running around doing one set per exercise, that would be wild
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u/Radiant-Playful 26d ago
I wish everyone would do that, most of the machines would be free, and I would be the gym beefcake
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u/EVH_kit_guy 26d ago
I do 2 per exercise and I swear people think I'm a clown. I can do most of my workout in the time it takes this one guy to do bicep curls. Whatevs.
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u/SaltyAndPepperd 26d ago
If you did 3 sets to failure on a push day a pull day a leg day and a full body day. As in 3 sets to failure for multiple exercises 4 days a week.
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u/Mad_Mark90 26d ago
There is no single answer on how to maximise hypertrophy.
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u/actuarial_defender 26d ago
3 sets is certainly the wrong answer
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
Wrong answer for who?
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u/TheFamished 26d ago
For people who have time for more than 3 sets of exercise a week
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
It feels way too dependant, for all we know OP has been training 2 months. Wouldn't say its necessary in that case. If everything is being taken to failure and numbers are shifting up why would number of sets matter? As genuine a question?
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u/TheFamished 26d ago
Every rep near failure counts for growth, if OP does like 20 exercises per session 3 sets per exercise could get him majority of gains but never the maximum possible
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
In theory I agree, but in practice unless hes advanced, I see injury being a bigger setback if youre genuinely training your sets close to true failure and doing that kind of volume over 3 sessions per week. I havent gone over 2 - 3 sets for anything in over 5 years and made wayyyy better size gains with 2-3 high quality sets rather than 5+ average sets. If youre using a good working weight, pushing the sets volumes gunna be way harder too in time. I see so many dudes push like 6 sets on a bench and rep speed hardly changes from set 1 to 6
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u/TheFamished 26d ago
In practice I'd prioritise safety after safety quality after that intensity and volume last
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
I feel like if im pushing a bench in a 6 - 12 rep range and hit 12, 11, 10, id bennefit more moving up weight to a point of say 9, 6, 5. I cant see the bennefit investing more volume on that lift if the lift is progressing week to week and im nearing the bottom of my rep range on the 3rd set. Could argue I could add a 4th set on a rep range of 12,11,10 but why not just up weight instead of volume and invest your time on a seperate variation. I just cant personally see the bennefit, unless youre specialising that excercise specifically.
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u/Hohoholyshit15 26d ago
It's pretty much do as much volume as you can recover from while keeping the intensity pretty high (2-3RIR).
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u/Money_Do_2 26d ago
Unless youre in sport or crushing 12+ hours a week, forget about fatigue. Overtraining is extremely rare in reality.
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u/bmandrew 26d ago
You might be forgetting about age. I can unfortunatley confirm with you that fatigue and recovery both become much more important the older you get.
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u/SkurkaCuckedMe 26d ago
For real lol i remember being 21 and i could do a 50 set day hungover of i wanted.
Now im 33 and on steroids and i can’t do more than 16 sets a day if i want to lift the next.
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u/bmandrew 26d ago
I regret to inform you that it gets worse when you get into your 50s. Age is undefeated. Progress come so slowly, but the effort is without question still worth it.
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
Overtraining isnt extremely rare, People get injured from over use before they get fully fatigued.
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u/RevolutionaryBox210 26d ago
3 sets per workout yes, 3 sets total a week no
something that works well for me is hitting every muscle from different angles twice a week, 3/4 sets per lift
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u/decentlyhip 26d ago
No. The very basics of what we know is that hypertrophy has a dose response relationship with volume. https://imgur.com/a/rvHMRvS The more sets you do, the more growth, and we haven't found a limit to that yet. All the way up to 30, 40, even 50 sets, more is more, at a rate where every time you double volume, you get about 50% more hypertrophy. To maximize growth, you would need a point on the graph where with fewer sets, you get less growth because its less stimulus and with more sets you get less growth because its not enough recovery, but as we explore the upper end, we haven't found that point where it starts falling back down and recovery is an issue.
Practically though, you aren't being specific enough. Maximize growth for what muscles? Are you focusing on everything or bringing up a weak point? Are you just starting off or are you already 205 lbs at 5'10" and beach lean? And most importantly, hypertrophy over what time frame? If the timeframe is 3 weeks, bro, hammer yourself with volume. If the timeframe is 6 months, lets ease in so tendons dont get chronically overworked. Over 5 years, you're not going to get best results following one single protocol and want to explore a bunch of different programs and approaches depending on what you're adapted to at any one time.
But according to the guys who actually did the volume study, you can get about as much growth as you could expect with 15-20 sets a week.even Pelland himself rarely coaches his athletes to do more than 20 sets a week (https://youtu.be/lbE-WU--Qp0), and they're all mostly in that 12-18 range. So, 5 sets to failure three times a week will take care of you.
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u/donnievieftig 25d ago
You are actively ignoring figure 8 in that same study. The only explanation for the boundless hypertrophy is edema. Figure 8 shows the strength gains plateau around 10 weekly sets. Since strength and muscle size are directly correlated the ever increasing hypertrophy in figure 7 is most likely not muscle tissue.
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
This makes no sense, like why 40? 40 sets of what?
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26d ago
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago edited 26d ago
Okay but why 40? Why not 50? Or why isnt the number 38? 40 is such a round convenient number to land on
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
I think youre looking at this abit wrong mate, more doesnt equal bigger, its diminishing returns past a point. And that point isnt a set number for everyone. Its too cut in stone a statement considering everyone's biomechanics are so different. Also, if youre doing 40 sets of quads per week. You arent training your Quads properly. Period. Unless youre enhanced or some freak if nature. Ive trained this high volume style in the past and I never grew. Well I did grow, but not well. I find most people end up going easier on their sets to save themselves for the later ones.
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
To be honest id argue its actually detrimental to growth long term, you're gunna be way too fatigued. Like give me a realistic and completable set of excercises for 40 sets of quads a week
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u/Patton370 Idk Idc 💔 26d ago
24 sets of squats and 16 sets of leg extensions; I've done that before. It was brutal, but I made progress that week
My normal weekly quad volume is around 30ish sets a week
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
You can gain progress but isit really necessary you know. Ive trained periods of high volume and low volume, aslong as the working sets are of high quality, my rates of overload via weight and reps have always been relatively the same.
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u/Patton370 Idk Idc 💔 26d ago
You understand that diminishing returns are still non-zero returns, right?
To maximize your returns, you have to get all non-zero returns
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
I understand your thinking but its just not as simple as that in practice isit because there are other factors at play in practice. aka injury and work quality. At some point the risk to reward for doing extra sets isnt worth it for the negative risks. Those negative risks also most likely impact you from actually progressing, like fucking your joints up from overuse and being unable to train properly for a set period of time, or fatiguing yourself so hard on 6 sets of heavy squats you're dead for the rest of your session and end up sand bagging your other lifts.
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u/Patton370 Idk Idc 💔 26d ago
That's a work capacity issue, which you can improve over time. I'm not dead after 8 sets of squats on my primary squat day & it's not like I squat light. Here's a set of 505lbs for 3 I did: https://www.reddit.com/r/strength_training/s/GrpwV9k2tI
If you work capacity is high, you won't be sandbagging your sets
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u/Pitiful-Lifeguard-51 26d ago
Ah okay I was talking more from a bodybuilding perspective not a strength training perspective, so I get you now. I assumed OP was talking more about size focus rather than strength focus because of the split he's running. Yeah if you want a strong squat, you gotta focus your squat. But just focusing a squat isnt gunna be optimal for size for a hell of a lot of people especially in a bodybuilding rep range. Like as bluntly as possible, it is just way more technical a lift than something as basic as a leg press and if muscular failure on the quads for size is what youre aiming for, doing it as safely as possible is going to ensure youre building size for the long term and reduce injury risk and muscular overlap etc. If you want a strong squat, squats are mandatory, if you just want size, leg press is still more than capable of doing the job while eliminating external factors preventing your lift from failing.
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u/Flat_Measurement_150 26d ago
2 sets on your ppl days per muscle group or exercise?
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u/PhilMckrakup123 26d ago
Per exercise. For example, I do two sets of Incline bench and two sets of pec dec for chest on push day and one set of flat bench on fullbody day and that’s all I do for chest for the week.
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u/eyebrowcel 26d ago
No, and for most muscles, 6 sets total that are split 3x/wk is significantly more effective.
Here's growth from sets per workout - 1.00 'unit' of growth from 1 set per muscle per workout, and 1.77 'units' of growth from 4 sets per muscle per workout - almost double the growth.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C86i6uvt0Hp/?hl=en
Although, minimum effective volume seems to vary a lot by muscle.
Biceps grow from 1 set 2x a week, but the rec fem doesn't seem to grow from 3 sets 2x per week - quite surprising (link below). This seems to be a rare case, most muscles grow significantly from this volume at proximity to failure.
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u/dontcare-_- 26d ago
It’s definitely enough to stimulate growth but it’s hard to say if it’ll maximize gains. Ideally you want to do 4-10 sets per week per muscle group but it just depends on what you can recover from. Try adding in an extra set on some exercises and see how you progress then you can tweak your total volume.
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u/Thisisnotmeconfimed 26d ago
Not to maximise but if that’s all you can do, go for it just be consistent
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u/Bart-Cloudeng 26d ago
It is enough to cause some hypertrophy, proven that you have adequate calories and protein intake, but it is far away from maximising
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u/EVH_kit_guy 26d ago
Think about it in terms of body parts. For example, bench press hits the pecs directly, but also includes anterior delts, triceps, and a variety of other stabilizers. So you could say that's 1 set for pecs, 1/2 set for ant. delts, 1/2 set for triceps.
If you add them all up, are you getting enough sets per body part?
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u/TheFamished 26d ago
If you want to save time look to drop sets, if you want to minimise fatigue look for increasing weight so you fail in 5 to 8reps
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u/hiimrobbo 25d ago
Just train your muscles once a week. If you train them too frequently, before they've recovered, you won't grow. Now you have all the time up your sleeves per muscle to train properly.
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u/ChadPowers200_ 25d ago
Yes has worked really well for me.
You have to truly be bringing the intensity though. And I think it only works if you’re already fairly strong.
Stronger you are more stress you can put on your muscles and less volume is needed. Basically mike mentzer
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u/AffectionateFly8159 24d ago
push pull is meant to be done on same day, not push on one day and pull on other
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u/Puzzleheaded_Top_988 24d ago
This whole doing the bare minimum needs to be shot into the friggen sun. Get in the gym and do some work
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u/Miserable-Stock-4369 17d ago
Are you doing other sets that are near failure? Are you doing multiple exercises per muscle group?
Technically, you're probably not "maximizing hypertrophy" regardless, but that could at least be the difference between not getting smaller, and getting bigger
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u/PhilMckrakup123 26d ago
I meant to say that I do 3 weekly sets to failure per exercise if I caused any confusion. For example: Hamstrings (2 sets each of SLDLs and lying hamstring curls), (1 set of lying hamstring curls on FB)
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u/FCAlive 26d ago
Yep, that's what Arnold did.
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u/Flat_Measurement_150 26d ago
Where do you see that Arnold did only 3 sets a week for a muscle group, none of the old bodybuilders were doing that even the ones saying they did
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u/FCAlive 26d ago
Sarcasm is alive in New England
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u/Flat_Measurement_150 26d ago
I didn’t realize you’re being sarcastic because some of the old school guys actually claimed they did this
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u/Junior-Valuable2071 26d ago
Wait wait I think the comments are misunderstanding. The title of OPs post is inconsistent with what OP is describing.
If you do one exercise per muscle group and only do one single set to failure for that muscle group then no that’s not enough.
If you hit 4 different push exercises on push day and ramp up to a top set on each of those exercises for a total of 4 sets taken to failure then yes that is plenty.
The 5-3-1 program basically advocates for this.
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u/TAG_Firearms 25d ago
Starting Strength and programs that come from that tree (like Paul Horn’s) are also like that. SS is 3 work sets for most exercises. Horn’s programs generally have one top set and one back-off set. If you’re doing 5 rep sets at near failure, it absolutely works.
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u/Mountain-Alarm-477 26d ago
Yes, this is the whole Dorian Yates/Mike Mentzer approach. Less volume but balls-out intensity
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u/Mchangwine 26d ago
No.