-: Now we're gonna move on to programming,
periodizing with the context of set.
So, we've talked about the quality of reps,
and obviously we needed tempo to look at
what are those rep qualities, now we have sets which
are the sum of those reps.
Both, in quantity and quality.
So, when we do a set,
in a way I think
a set is the best way to estimate volume,
if you needed to look at one parameter
for how you're measuring that as a set.
Because, every set basically, is an opportunity
for you to achieve the stimulus that you're going for,
and most of the time, when we're talking about
training stimulus, it is the stimulus of the set.
We need the reps to have a certain quality,
and it's the accumulation of those reps
that is going to get us to a stimulus.
So, we have that quality for a certain intensity
and a certain time, and then we reach a threshold
within that set, for the stimulus.
There are certain things, like,
the systemic effect, where it may be
accumulative for the whole workout, not necessarily
happening within an individual set.
But, for a single metric,
a set is a pretty good way
of assessing volume, because no matter
what my stimulus is it's essentially,
how many times did I try and hit that stimulus.
And then it's really easy for me to compare
apples to apples within the same stimulus.
So, the same sets of intensity work can be compared
with other intensity protocols.
Same thing with, like, mechanical damage hypertrophy
style training, and then we get into metabolic,
like, okay, how many sets did I take in
metabolic exhaustion, comparing those to
each other is better than, say,
counting the total amount of reps.
Because, I may have different rep schemes where,
you know, because of the significance or the intensity,
the rep ranges are very different, even though
I may be going for a similar metabolic goal overall,
the set is gonna be the measure of how many times
did I try and achieve that stimulus within a workout.
Which is ultimately what we need to track,
when we're programming and progressing is
the degree, like the intensity of that stimulus,
the duration and volume of that.
So, how many times did I do it,
and how intensely each one of those times.
You do have to account, when we're looking at volume here,
is sets per muscle,
and also the total sets per workout
if you're training more than one muscle group per workout.
Which you're going to do the majority of the time,
unless you're on, like, a pure bodybuilding split.
Which I would still argue is not most effective
most of the time, for bodybuilders,
and that a lot of them could make significantly more
hypertrophy gains, muscle gains, you know
contest prep easier, all of those things,
if they weren't so attached to that one-body-part-a-day
type split, as often as they are.
So, volume, I think sets are the single
best way to look at that, and that's because
we have that time under significant tension thing,
alright, basically is really valuable when determining,
okay, what is the outcome, the stimulus
accumulation of all of those reps?
So, if we look at this and we look at,
okay, the set is the accumulation of those reps, right?
The longer the significant tension,
the fewer sets I'm going to need.
So, sets where I'm at a significant amount of intensity,
or a significant amount of metabolic work
the longer they tend to be, so when I start using
supersets or tri sets, okay,
if you look at those as one set, even though it's like three
exercises and you're kinda, doing those,
we count that as one set.
You need fewer of them.
If I'm doing, you know, drop sets or whatever,
the significance of that set goes up,
therefore, I need fewer of them.
Mechanical drops, any sort of set extension.
If I'm doing something adding more significance because
I'm adjusting the resistance profile,
and making it harder throughout a greater portion
of the range of motion, well that becomes more significant,
so I will need fewer sets comparatively to where,
if I didn't have that matched resistance profile.
So, when we look at the significance,
as that significance goes up,
then that time under significant tension,
the amount of sets I need to accomplish that stimulus
goes down because I'm achieving,
basically, a greater stimulus per set.
The more intensity focused, so that's,
remember when we think about higher intensity,
we're thinking about lower reps.
Okay, but those two have to go together,
with the load, making it appropriate,
the more sets that tends to be needed.
And that is because, when we're training
the nervous system, we're trying to get those
strength based adaptations, we still need
a volume of work there, but in order to train
at that high intensity, the sets have to be very short.
So, in order to accomplish the same
amount of volume of that particular stimulus,
I simply have to hit the button more times,
because I don't hit it as long.
It's just not possible to do high intensity
for long periods, so I have to do a higher amount
of sets that are at high intensity to get
the same stimulation for me nervous system
and those strength adaptations to occur.
When we get into hypertrophy,
hypertrophy is a complicated one 'cause
there's a lot of ways to go about hypertrophy.
So, we tend to see that, as you progress
you will need higher sets, you will need more
volume of work to achieve the myofibrillar,
or the protein based hypertrophy.
That is not always gonna be the case, I would say
in terms of, like, the solidity of this information
the hypertrophy is the one most loosely, because
as somebody gets better neurologically
their contractions get better,
well they might actually be doing more mechanical
damage, or every rep may be significantly more
impactful so, the actual number of reps,
the number of sets that they need could go down.
So, it's like, it ends up being kinda like this weird shape,
like, "Well, I needed more, then I needed less,
then more and then less."
And there's just so many factors in terms of,
recovery, what your nutrition's like,
and how much glycogen you have.
All sorts of different things,
the type of hypertrophy program,
whether it's closer to strength or
closer to metabolic, or right in the middle,
is all gonna kind of fluctuate, how much, or
what number of sets that you need
for that particular program.
When we look at metabolically, okay,
the more metabolically focused, so
the further we get into those, like,
long sets where we're getting deep into fatigue,
we go right back to that top rule there.
Okay, we're making them more significant,
not from an intensity perspective,
but from the metabolic fatigue perspective,
I'm taking those sets into a greater degree of fatigue.
I'm burning more fuel, creating more metabolic waste.
So, I tend to need fewer of those sets,
as those sets become longer or more intense
from a more metabolic perspective, right?
So, that's not high intensity via weight,
that's high intensity of, like, energy consumption,
fuel being burned, so like I said
those finishers, things like that.
When we look at doing multiple sets of the same exercise,
the general principle is, if we repeat the same exercise
over and over and over, we're gonna get better
at that particular exercise.
Two reasons why, one is going to be the
neurological adaptations, so the more we repeat
a movement pattern the more my brain gets educated on
being able to do that movement pattern better.
So, that's stabilizing, that's the efficiency between
the agonist-antagonist, so learning to relax more,
and contract better on the two opposite sides of the joint
throughout the entire range of motion,
that's becoming smoother.
And then I will also be able to,
if I'm training intensity based work,
I will be able to start recruiting more fibers
to do that particular movement pattern, simultaneously.
So, that's where the strength adaptations come,
after efficiency, that's where the
intensity adaptations come, that's where
then we can star looking at biasing,
getting more fast-twitch involved for
explosive movements, things like that.
But, we need a lot of repetitions
of that single movement pattern.
And, then when we look at varying,
if we're really focused, say we're trying to
bring up the squat,
because our sport is squatting,
right, we're a powerlifter or whatever it may be,
well then we're gonna do very similar movement patterns
to not deviate from that, in order to bring up the squat,
with the exception of there not being any
limiting factors that are keeping you from progressing.
So, you could have an imbalance muscularly,
you could have a neurological issue,
you could have something structurally going on
that's basically making this movement pattern
non-productive to train.
So, this is assuming that you're good to go
on whatever that movement pattern is.
So, we will see faster increases in strength,
specific to the exercise
when we do higher
numbers of sets for that single exercise.
That doesn't mean that we will see faster gains
in stregnth in that muscle across other exercises.
When we're talking about simply doing
more volume of a single exercise,
we may actually see a more broad-spectrum increase
in strength if we're doing multiple exercises,
or we've displaced the number of sets more evenly
across different exercises, than if we
bias them towards a single exercise.
So, multiple goals, so your goal could be
get really good at a specific exercise,
you need to do it more often.
Your goal could be simply focused on the muscle,
and not any specific exercise,
in which case you may not wanna invest
all of your time and volume into
one particular exercise, unless it's an
extremely valuable exercise for that muscle group,
covering it's entire range of motion and being
very well loaded in terms of the resistance profile.
The other thing is, when we do a particular movement
our body's going to have those certain fibers
that it really likes for that movement,
it's go-to ones that is does first.
If we have that, then when we train that movement
over and over again, guess which fibers
are gonna get the most stimulated?
It's gonna be my body's go-to fibers
for that particular group, especially when
we get into intensity based training,
where we're allowing pretty much full recovery,
we're gonna be able to stimulate the same fibers
over and over and over again as we repeat that exercise.
And that means, proportionately we are going
to grow or stimulate those specific fibers
more than other fibers in the muscle tissue.
That, in itself, is an increased stimulus
for those specific fibers,
whereas the rest of the muscle tissue
may not be getting as significant a stimulus to
grow or to get stronger.
So, we're really focused.
Whoops, sorry for that.
We're really focused on that aspect alone.
If we get into what that could do in terms of
my training variables, if I'm really beating up
a certain set of fibers, it may take those specific fibers
longer to recover, therefore,
my frequency may have to go down if I'm doing
high volume of a single exercise because,
all of my volume is being pushed onto a smaller
amount of tissue, therefore, that specific tissue
is going to get beat up more,
need more nutrients, need more time to recover, therefore,
my frequency before hitting that muscle group again
may have to become less.
It may take me more days to recover before I can hit
that same muscle group again.
And from a motor pattern perspective,
same thing neurologically, especially if it's a
demanding exercise like a squat, it may take
more time before I can squat again if my
volume of squatting is significantly high,
versus having my volume distributed over
squats and leg press and leg extensions,
where the other two exercises are not as
neurologically demanding as the squat.