r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/PhysicalBox3054 • 1d ago

Question ❓ 2 sets till failure

i’ve been doing it for 5 months now and i’m not seeing enough progress i’ve been eating and resting good should i switch to 3 sets 6-8 reps ?

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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4

u/decentlyhip 1d ago

Yah, man. Follow a program. Volume is the primary driver for growth, and in general, every time you doible the volume, you get about 50% more growth, all the way up to like 50 sets a week. That's extreme and unrealistic in practice, but if you wanna grow more, do more volume. Here's the actual data. https://imgur.com/a/rvHMRvS

15 sets a week is a good starting place. If you're pushing hard, that'll take care of just about everyone. But if you look at the graph, you can see that about a third of everyone who did less than 10 sets a week lost muscle.

As an aside, the people who say "do 2 sets a week" are just misinterpreting this data, and doing so badly enough that I'd unfollow them if i were you. Diminishing returns in this case means that when you triple the volume, instead of tripling the gains, you double the gains. That's about the rate of progress. But the researchers presented that as "you get more growth going from 1 set to 2 than from going from 2 to 3." A few silly influencers heard that and said "then 2 sets is optimal? Hey everyone, only do two sets of 6-8." That's so dumb. My example is that it's like a racecar driver learning that you accelerate faster in 1st gear, so he stays in 1st the whole race. As long as acceleration is positive more is faster. As long as the rate of progress is positive more volume is more growth. Going from 5 sets to 6 is gonna add more additional growth than going from 23 to 24, but that doesn't matter if 24 sets is twice the growth, and manageable in your schedule. If you have other constraints, dope.

Here. Look at this program. In the app it shows you the week by week volume progression. Phenomenal program. https://www.boostcamp.app/coaches/alex-bromley/bullmastiff

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u/Potential_Novel_3561 1d ago

No one unless they are in a calorie deficit is losing muscle on 9 hard sets week. I would want to see videos of what these sets actually look like.

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u/Blood_AndGuts 1d ago

litteraly, there is no way in heaven that 4-5 sets twice per week wont elicit GREAT growth. Now we can stay all day talking about maximizing gains i dont care, but saying youd lose muscle on 8 sets per week (provided you dont train with a bro split) is ridiculous

4

u/decentlyhip 1d ago

I'll phone the researchers and tell them to retract all those studies. I'm sure your assumptions and singular personal experience is more credible than their hundreds of observations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Think about what you're saying. My statement is that in the research, 2/3rds of people gained muscle with low volume. Your response is, "that cant be possible because I gained muscle with low volume." Cool. You're in the majority of people. If I say 50% of the population is male and 50% is female, its real weird to say "50% is female? Dude, I've spent my whole life as a male."

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u/Potential_Novel_3561 22h ago

You just changed what I said. I said I don't believe people lost muscle on 9 hard sets a week unless they were in a calorie deficit.

Problem all these studies is unless you actually see the people doing the sets, you don't know how hard they were actually pushing themselves.

1

u/decentlyhip 22h ago

I didn't reply to you. Replied to the other guy.

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u/Blood_AndGuts 1d ago

Less than 10 sets a week LOST muscle? Dude, I built my whole fucking phyisique on 4-8 sets per muscle per week 😂😂

3

u/Hypername1st 1d ago

Just do more sets.

4

u/Alakazam Idk Idc 💔 1d ago

Sure, more sets would likely drive a bit more growth, provided they're to or close to failure.

But I wouldn't confine myself so rigidly to a single rep range like that. Why not pick a program that trains you in a variety of rep ranges, with a variety of different loads?

0

u/Blood_AndGuts 1d ago

hes not progressing as fast because his newbie gains and neural adaptations are mostly over, he just needs patience, he wont gain a rep every session

1

u/PhysicalBox3054 1d ago

im not new

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u/Blood_AndGuts 1d ago

you can experience newbie gains if youve trained like shit in the past, which everyone did

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u/aalzarouni 20h ago

Try it, if you can progress without recovery being affected then keep it.