Stop Doing "3 Sets of 12" To Build Muscle (I'M BEGGING YOU!)

Well, let's start this video with a test. They will test you here. I want you to watch Jesse perform a set of incline dumbbell bench presses up to 12 and I want to see if you can spot what he's

doing

wrong. right, here goes, we can count if you want, but pay close attention and see if you can spot the mistake in this set, you're counting Jesse six, okay, see? We'll compile your answer here at the end, what number 11? okay 12 great, okay, so what was the problem? I don't know what it was, so a lot of you probably don't see the problem because you make the exact same mistake, but what I was

doing

was actually secretly. counting here and I have a

stop

watch on my iPhone that says I did this set in 27.3 seconds Speed ​​Racer, which is too short and you're thinking why, what do you mean by set length when you do your

sets

? with the main focus being three

sets

of 12 and you stick to the numbers.

I made a video about this years ago and I think it's incredibly important that you hear this concept again and in fact I'll expand on it when you get obsessed. In the numbers, three sets of 12, you're already setting yourself up for a set that's probably imperfect and certainly won't give you the growth you're capable of. Well, now the language your

muscle

s speak is tension, we know that if you want. In order for your

muscle

s to grow, if you want to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, you need to generate tension in those working muscles and we know there are a few ways to do that.

We know that you can get a lot of mechanical stress if you have a very heavy weight. load on your hand, so if Jesse were using, let's say a five rep max here, he would have a lot more tension directed to the muscles. He can only do five reps if it really was his max and he went to failure, but that amount of tension. is missing in a set of 12, let's say because it's not that absolute amount of tension, since the weights are less, so what you would have to do in that case is find a way to match that. tension and one of the main ways we equalize the missing absolute mechanical tension is to incorporate other drivers of hypertrophy, namely eccentric muscle tension, that is, weight reduction, because we know that in itself is a driver of greater growth when we talk about 12 repetitions.

Nobody picked that number out of thin air. They didn't say 12. Why don't they say 11? Why aren't all your sets prescribed in your programs at 11 reps? Instead, 12 repetitions were ordered. It met the criteria of eclipsing the 45 seconds of tension that seems to be significant for generating muscle gains when using lighter weights and where that comes from is again the absolute amount of time it takes you to perform one repetition. that the eccentric part of that rep, the descending part, would take longer on Jesse's reps there, it really wasn't significant, it was too fast, what you want to do is be somewhere in the range of around 2 to 3 seconds because what we know is that half a second in the descent of a repetition is an uncontrolled repetition and that is not going to produce much tension in the descent.

One second would be better, but not as good as it could be, which would be more like 2 seconds or 3 seconds if you applied eccentric tension of 3 seconds on the way down and 1 second concentric on the way up and we know that doing reps Explosives is a good thing, you would have 4 seconds per repetition in with a set of 12, you have reached a full 48 seconds for you who do math. 12 * 4 48, they have reached that range where we know that we can have enough accumulated time in renion to achieve the gains that we are looking for in the absence of some of that really high weight that we are using now as a physical therapist.

I would say that controlled reps are a must with whatever rep range you are using, so the eccentric portion of a lift. Even in those lower rep ranges it's still incredibly important if you want to have longevity in the gym now, that's fine, however, a lot of things start to go wrong when you get into this three sets to 12 mentality because, from the beginning , Jesse take these weights again, yes sir, if you find yourself doing your sets and you're obsessed with rep counting, go ahead and do a set of 12 to 12. Now let's say on the third rep here it gets pretty difficult, let's say That there is nothing.

How am I getting to my 12 reps, what would you do? I would start to shorten my reps, like range of motion, so go ahead and start doing some half reps. You're like, well, four, five, and six. you start wasting reps aiming to get to my 12 and you are also making a big mistake there because this obsession with reaching a certain number and discrediting the value of tension and intensity that is required in each set to drive new muscle gains is a major mistake, so if I go and do my first reps, obviously those are the easiest ones in a set, they won't do much of the real work for you if you then start cutting. shorten the middle reps because again you're afraid you won't be able to reach number 12, then you've also wasted the value of the middle reps and then when you get to the end he starts saying "okay, now." I feel like if I get back to my full rep range, I'll be able to hit my 10, 11, and 12 with good difficulty, yes, but I would say the result has a different impact because the previous reps cause fatigue.

That it led you to those last three really productive reps is not the same: you abandon all that when you get halfway done with the reps in the middle of the set, so that's a mistake, take this concept and apply it even more to the part of the series. of three sets of 12 why why three seems to be the magic number we have to assign to any given exercise we are doing for a muscle group why it can't be two why in some cases it can't be just be one, yes You are so obsessed with achieving your three sets, you can make many other mistakes again, join in and see if you have ever done any of these things, you do your first set and say to yourself: You will never be able to do three sets of this weight, So instead of completing your first set, you drop that weight and drop down to something lighter that you know you'll be able to use for all three sets.

That's a mistake if you could have done 12 reps. It's going to be very, very challenging on that last rep. We're going to fail, then use that weight and just lower the weight when you have sets two and three. Yes, it's a better end goal. Focusing on being able to use 55 pounds for three sets of 12, don't get married to numbers again, the language of muscles is tension, not a number on the side of the dumbbell, if you make that mistake by focusing on the number of sets that would also cost you the opportunity to direct more of those available resources towards an additional exercise that could hit the muscle from a different angle and therefore get a better overall result, for example if you are training your chest and are obsessed with doing your three flat bench sets well and for the third set, because of what I just talked about here, you didn't really get much of what you were getting anyway, you half-worked your way through the first two sets. but on the last set you're not even using the proper weight to stimulate new growth.

On that set, it would have been better to leave two and simply put the extra set on another exercise that hits the chest from a different angle in this case. maybe a proper dip so you can hit some of the lower chest fibers instead of the upper ones and get a fuller impact on that muscle, but we look at these numbers and doing so costs us something else that I want to do. understand, don't fall in love with 12, you can

build

muscle from five or six reps up to 30 reps, sometimes even a little more, as long as the effort is there.

However, I will warn you that as you start to work in those higher rep ranges, the tension that you really need to find and in a way you know you dig deeper to find the will to train through the burn because the stimulus that is becomes the engine of muscle growth there is the metabolic stimulus, the correct burn, even the pump itself will help you in this case, but what you really want is to be able to deepen that burn, once it is burned, that is when the series and you want to be able to continue and and. try harder again counting reps is not your goal making all your reps count is the goal when it comes to the Slow Eccentric because again people get married to these Concepts, Jeff is saying go slow on the Eccentric, not necessarily on those sets of really high reps. 25 reps is kind of silly because what kind of eccentric overload are you getting? with a weight you could possibly lift for 25 reps in rep two, three and four, you go slow on the eccentric.

It's like it's nothing. By drawing attention, the focus shifts to your ability to withstand that burn, but not obsessing over the numbers is the best thing you can do if you want to see profits. I'm not messing with three sets of 12, but damn. look at any of your shows you're doing right now, I guarantee there are a lot of three sets of 12 recipes, maybe three sets of 10, the same applies there too, don't get married to those numbers, instead understand that what you're doing What I'm trying to do is make sure that the effort is there to create muscle growth, not just the number that you check off and when you do that guys, I promise you that you will create the best games that you can if you're looking for complete programs, guys, where By the way, we program in expanded set ranges, do two to four sets because I want you to have the flexibility of knowing that your body is unique to you and the stimulus is what really matters, not just checking a box, you can find them on our athx programs on aex.com I hope you found the video useful guys, if you haven't already, please subscribe if you haven't seen the old video.

Jesse has grown up a bit since then, you can also see it here. In the meantime, I hope you subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.