About seven years ago, I discovered a gym in London called Muscle Works. I'm sure you have heard of it, but for those who don’t know, this gym is one of the leading bodybuilding gyms in the U.K. It's like a mecca for those who bodybuild. The owner is Savvas, or Uncle Sav as I affectionately call him, and he also is Cypriot. This gym has the best atmosphere for training. It is a proper, old school, hard-core gym. It's a no-bullshit gym. You can see the hunger in its patrons to be the best. It is a very competitive atmosphere, and it is a great place to feed from the motivation in the air.
Anyways, Uncle Sav and I were discussing the amount of sets per exercise. This was back in a time when I would do 3 sets of each exercise which, if you do the math, added up to 12 sets. Basically, 3 sets of 4 exercises. He asked the question none have asked before as we have all been mainstreamed to do the 3 sets since we began our exercise routines. "Why three?"
I didn’t know what to answer. It was something I had placed little thought into before. He pressed further: "If 3 is good, 4 is better, and 6 will be the real deal, so why not do 6 sets per exercise?"
At that point, he introduced me to the concept of over-training [more on this subject to come]. It is important to pay careful attention to your body and the feeling you have after each set. It can be true that after the second set, you have reached your "peak" and any set thereafter would only mean over-training. In other words, you would push your body into catabolic state. This, as any bodybuilder would agree, is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. It would be working backwards instead of forward. So, the question then remains: How can we prevent pushing our bodies into catabolic state while still working hard enough to reach our goals?
Too much of a good thing, as is always the case, turns into a bad thing. It is important to focus on intensity moreso than quantity, back to the old adage about quality being superior to quantity. This is especially true in all aspects of fitness, whether you are building muscles or maintaining firmness. The biggest detriment to reaching your desired physical condition is over-training. It is important to pay attention to the signals of your body. When your muscles feel fully pumped, and the burning sensation is prominent, learn to stop. It is sometimes difficult to realize that it is time to stop because we often train with our hearts instead of our brains [more on this topic to come]. Our instinct is to keep pushing ourselves and fight through the pain, to feed our ego with our impressive number of sets and weights, but ultimately, the important thing (our goal) is being pushed further and further away from us.
So, instead of paying so much attention to our egos, we should pay more attention to our bodies, and we will reach our goals more effectively, save our energy for other aspects of our life, and we will be happier and in better physique. But by doing that extra rep, which we are conditioned to do, might actually backfire, and you lose what you achieved in that exercise.
Give one-hundred percent in two sets (instead of three or more) lifting your full weight capacity, doing the maximum reps at that weight... in other words, your 100%, would be equal of doing 3 to 4 sets of 60% or less.
Less is better at the end of the day for achieving our fitness goals. High intensity, less training. Make that your new mantra.
Love and Peace and big muscles.
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