-: So now what I wanna do is we're gonna take
the information that is in this chart.
So I want you to look closely at this shape
this contour of the volume of
this low rep versus moderate rep versus high rep set.
And now what we have to do is we have to qualify
and quantify by using more than one set.
So what I've done is I've taken
and I've kinda put these things together like a puzzle,
so they could kinda see what the volume would look like
as we started using multiple sets.
So for instance,
the pink here still represents our higher load,
lower rep sets.
The red still represents our moderate,
and the green represents our high rep low load sets.
So if we look at this and we're looking at this,
and we're kinda using this as our proxy
of how volume of stimulus, okay?
There red box four sets.
And keep in mind that in the context,
these are all taken to failure right.
So this is four sets to failure
or failure all of these different intensities,
or rep ranges.
So four of those, right,
that's a pretty big volume of stimulus for only four sets.
When I get to this higher load lower rep range,
even though it's taller,
it's not gonna cover as much distance horizontally.
And then conversely with the high rep,
even though it's long that's not gonna cover as much
so to better visualize that,
what I've done is I've taken and I've overlap these
with that kind of like what we would stereotypically call
the hypertrophy range.
So we could look at volume of stimulus
across these different things.
Now, important context with this,
is this is not the amount of adaptation that you would get,
this is simply volume of stimulus, right?
So this is the amount of input into that equation
for adaptation that we getting,
it's not necessarily a measure of how much adaptation
'cause remember when we talked about training the failure,
there's a point of diminishing returns possibly on training
to failure too much.
But in that case it would affect all of these.
So from a principle perspective of just looking
at volume of stimulus,
if we shaved the little off the edge of all of these,
we'd still be seeing kinda the same pattern.
And so what I really wanna illustrate here
is just how much like if you were to imagine,
how many of these green shapes would it take
to fill up our big red shape?
How many of these pink shapes would it take
to fill up our big red shape, right?
And so I'll go back one just
so you can kinda see what those underlying shapes look
like again,
but as you can see here,
I mean, in this case we have six of these high rep sets.
And if we were to take this little sliver
off coming over here,
we're probably getting to the point where we need close
to seven ish of those high rep sets to get
the same volume of stimulus keeping
in mind that we're talking
about just mechanical tension, okay?
Now and we are talking about in this case scenario like,
a pretty long set all the way up to 20.
Now, (sighs)
in this case for the high load low rep set,
I got one two three four five six seven eight.
And you take this stuff and put it over here,
so we're at eight maybe eight and a half
or it's a little bit more than eight.
So when we went in either direction,
the amount of volume that we would need
for mechanical tension went up close to
the same weather we went heavier with less with fewer reps,
or we went lighter with more reps, right?
And but in both of those cases,
if we're looking at straight mechanical tension,
the one that got us there in the fewest sets,
was what we would typically qualify
as the stereotypical hypertrophy range
and when we look at the body of anecdotal evidence over time
of bodybuilders and people training
or whatever that tends to be that kind of area
that people have seen a lot of results.
So you can kinda see here that this theory
is kinda supporting a lot of the observations
and anecdotes, right?
And if we take this a step further,
and we start looking at the work volume
that would come along with that,
we can look at the stimulus to work volume ratio.
So in these cases what I've done here is I've tried
to qualify using that rep max and,
again to say like okay, if you can do eight reps at 200,
that means you can probably do four reps at 225.
And that means you can probably do 18 reps at 160,
Right?
If we are following the formulas that we currently have
to predict these all equaling the same rep max here
and the case here I couldn't get them perfectly,
but well I'm within that three pound window.
So the accuracy here should be pretty close to the same.
So that would mean that the relative RPE of all of these,
we say it's a nine, eight times 200 would be an RPE nine,
four times 225 would be an RPE of nine,
18 times 160 would be an RPE of nine,
based off of those rep max calculations.
So then,
what we look at is what's the tonnage then per set here,
right?
So that's what this column here is the pound per set.
And then we have the number of sets
'cause what we're gonna need is based off
of what we're looking at here,
trying to figure out how do we get the volume
of stimulus equated?
What does that end up being per tonnage, okay.
And again we're just illustrating here.
So I'm not gonna say that for sure.
This here equals this over here to the nanogram,
what I'm gonna say is principle what we're gonna see
is in our mid hypertrophy ish range ,okay.
If we were working in an eight reps,
that was a nine RPE in this case, right?
It would have the lowest tonnage
to get the same stimulus versus these other two options.
And what you'll notice is that if we're focusing
on the low reps, the tonnage goes up,
but in this case,
it goes up a much smaller degree than the high rep ones.
So in this case here,
we're going from 6400 pounds of total tonnage
to get the volume of stimulus we wanted,
versus the heavy load low rep version
in the pink here goes to 7200 pounds, right?
So we're basically in increase in 800 pounds,
which in this case is like a,
I think it's about a 16%.
Increase in tonnage to get that same stimulus, right?
'Cause we had to go from four sets to eight sets
to get that same volume of stimulus based off
of what we're using for this visual example.
Now, for the high rep scenario, Okay?
We're looking at seven sets
so less sets but because we're you doing a lot
of reps at this lower load,
the total tonnage that we move
is 20,160 pounds.
So about three times as much
as our moderate
or tip stereotypical hypertrophy range,
in terms of tonnage to get that same stimulus
of mechanical tension.
And this is why anecdotally observationally,
what people tend to notice is that,
when you're doing high rep sets,
you just can't do as many of them
as you can low to moderate rep sets.
And that's because you're accumulating so much volume
of work, right?
Now, if we're following the logic
of the effective reps theory,
and we're using mechanical tension as our main stimulus,
we have to look at that and be like,
how effective is that work contributing to the stimulus
of hypertrophy via mechanical tension,
not very efficient in terms of tonnage, okay.
Now when we look at the heavy one,
it's not very efficient in terms of number of sets,
which means it's not gonna be very efficient
in terms of time,
but it's not as inefficient in terms of tonnage, okay?
So doing eight sets of four in terms of tonnage is not
as bad as doing four sets.
I mean it's not that much more efficient
than doing four sets of eight, okay.
And then when we look at,
the high reps is just the efficiency drops.
But the other thing we have to consider
is real world scenarios like how easy is it
to continue performance.
At four sets of eight than it is at eight sets of four,
right?
So if you're doing eight sets of four,
once you get to the point where you start to achieve
or accumulate a little fatigue,
your performance tends to drop quite a bit, right?
So it's hard to maintain high intensity,
high performance across eight sets.
So when we're looking at utilizing
this scenario for hypertrophy,
if we add in the real world component of the fact that men,
I'm probably just not going to be able
to maintain a nine RPE,
average over eight sets,
it becomes unrealistic that we're gonna hit
that stimulus goal.
So likely what's gonna happen is we're gonna fall short.
So and then the same scenario here.
In this case,
I'm likely gonna fatigue from just the tonnage of work,
right?
I'm gonna just be expanding too much energy,
I'm just gonna be too much volume
of work before I get there.
So even though in this scenario we're saying well,
if we were to try and get that same volume of stimulus,
that we wouldn't be able to,
we would likely wouldn't be able to get there.
And as an efficient way and just logistically
in terms of like if we were to say like we're trying
to optimize how much stimulus we could get,
we're just likely not gonna be able
to get the magnitude of stimulus.
Because these other things these other ranges
that are outside of that we are gonna fatigue via the task,
we're just not physically going to be able
to complete the work needed to get the stimulus
because of either the volume of high intensity sets
or just the volume of tonnage needed
to accomplish that stimulus.
Now, the other thing to take with this is not
to say that like well okay,
so never train low reps, never trained high reps.
It's not that these things give you no stimulus.
It's that they aren't as efficient
at this particular stimulus that we happen to be focused on,
in this particular lecture.
Keep that in mind, we're talking about mechanical tension.
If I was saying, hey, which one of these would be
the most efficient at expending a lot of energy.
Because I'm focusing on body comp or I'm focusing on
a lot of metabolic adaptations.
Well, then actually,
the high rep one may look
like it's the most efficient way to accumulate tonnage,
okay?
And then the low rep one would be the worst at that, okay.
So depending on what you need,
there's lots of different stimuli
and goals that we can have.
So there's still reasons to use low reps
and high reps for a person who's long term goal
is hypertrophy.
Because over the course of their macrocycle,
they're going to need
to develop other physiological adaptations
and other simple skills in the gym
in capacity adaptations, et cetera,
to be able to maintain the performance and adaptations
and recovery needed for hypertrophy.
So while I'm trying to illustrate to you the efficiency
of this moderate rep range for mechanical tension,
don't leave with that as the only way
that anybody that wants
to gain muscle should ever train again,
because that would be completely false.
(upbeat music)