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-: There's this interrelation effect.
Basically, the greater a variable in relationship
to the others, and by greater I mean the bigger the number,
the smaller the progression you can achieve
with that specific variable.
If that's wordy, we'll go through it visually okay,
but I'm gonna read it one more time.
The greater, the higher the number, so that means if sets
are high and reps are low, for instance, in a relationship
to the other variables, so if you have one of those
that's really high proportionate to the others,
adding to that one is gonna give you
the smallest progression.
So the smaller a variable in relationship to the others,
the greater the progression.
So there's this inverse relationship so what you will see
is that if a movement is set or rep dominant,
whatever it happens to be in, changing that will provide
the largest increase.
So, in this example, we're looking at the set
and rep relationship using tonnage.
So what I've done here is I've chosen weights
that would be relative for the same individual across
these different set and rep variables.
So this is using both my brain
and understanding intensities, 1RMs et cetera,
that if you can do eight sets of four, 255,
you can likely do five sets of eight at 215,
you can likely do 185 at 3, 15 and you can likely
do six by six at 235.
So essentially these are matched conditions.
And what we're gonna look at is the change that we see
when we add a set or rep or et cetera,
when that is the dominant or not dominant.
So if we just skip to the bottom here, what I'll show you,
if you look here we got the six by six,
so six sets of six reps, 235 lbs gives us a total tonnage
and yeah 8,000's very similar to everything else,
but what you're gonna see is because it's six sets of six,
that makes changing either adding a set or adding a rep
gives us the same increase in tonnage.
And then adding 5% load gives us less.
But right now for this case,
I want you to focus on these two.
In a case where we have three sets of 15 reps,
so in this case this 15 here, these 15 reps,
that is the dominant variable over sets.
It's five times the number of sets.
So in that case, if I were to add a rep,
if I were to do three sets of 16,
it's a 555 lb increase in tonnage, but if I were
to add a fourth set, and do four sets of 15 instead
of three sets of 16, that extra set is a much bigger jump.
So it's about five times as much which,
this is five times this, well guess what?
Changing that, this is five times that, I think so.
I didn't do the exact math on multiplying 555 times five
but pretty close.
So, what you will see is that whatever is dominant,
in this case here, we get a smaller increase if we add
to that number but whatever is small, if we increase that,
because essentially look at it this way, if you only
have three sets and you add a fourth set, you're increasing
it by 33% so it's 133% of the volume.
If you were doing 15 reps and you add a 1/16,
you're only adding and extra 1/15, whatever that happens
to be in terms of a percentage.
So, we go to the opposite side of the spectrum
in a reasonable amount, we're not gonna do 15 sets
of something but realistically,
if we could do eight sets of four.
So we have weight or whatever, and so now what you'll see
is that because sets are high, eight, so they're double of
what we're doing for reps, is that if I increase in sets
to nine sets of four, it's an increase in 1,000 lbs.
But if I were to do eight sets of five,
I would get 2,000 lbs so adding a rep in this scenario,
the high-set low-rep scenario, adding a rep is twice as much
as adding a set in the low-rep high-set scenario,
adding a set is significantly greater of an increase
than adding reps.
And then a typical maybe hypertrophy style range here,
like a five sets of eight type thing, we can see that it's
still whatever's lower is more dominant but the closer
these numbers are together, just like here where they match,
the closer they come to be.
So it's not quite double anymore
'cause eight's not quite double of five.
Hopefully this is starting to give you guys
just some numbers and a little bit of visual understanding
of okay so, if I were choosing today what to progress,
if I wanted to make a large progression
and I wanted it to be in either sets or reps,
I could add more to the smaller variable versus if I wanted
to make a smaller progression, I would add something
to the larger variable between sets or reps.
If I'm close to the middle, like if they're very close
to each other, they're likely gonna be fairly similar.
So we're not kinda getting into the logic of why you would
choose one or the other, just understanding right now
that they're not the same size change.
Or the other thing it might do is that, well okay,
if you don't wanna add a set, do you have the room
to increase multiple reps?
Or add increased weight and reps or whatever,
and we'll start getting into those multiple changes
a little bit later.
So, big thing from here,
takeaway the smaller variable increases the most.
So now we're just giving you guys
a better visualization of that.
So if we look at blue which is the high-set low-rep group,
if we add a set when sets are high,
we get the lowest amount.
If we add a set when reps are low,
this should be the highest.
So if we add reps, if reps are low,
that's when reps are gonna be the highest.
So this is actually this one down here, this is miss-labeled
so I'll just fix that.
So this should be,
low-set high-rep, there we go
if that was confusing anybody.
If you got low sets and you add a set, more.
So the other thing here is keep in mind, we are looking
at percentages and that is the other difference between
this where we're looking at the tonnage, here we're looking
at the percentages.
We can see that now that we're looking at percentages,
the change in the loads would give us about the same number
across the board because it's just a multiplier
of the sets and the reps.
But these now become a little bit more manageable
and a little bit more visual to see.
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