A justification for prioritising efficiency of effort for maximum value
In weight training theory the following is often understood as the “truth” when it comes to training stimulus.It goes something like this;If you want to train for muscle endurance you need to perform 15+ reps. If you want muscle growth (hypertrophy) you need to train 8-12 reps.If you want to train for strength, you need to train 4-6 reps.If you want power, 2-3 reps.
There has been study after study, meta analysis after meta analysis that “demonstrates” this. The only problem is that in the real world it isn’t as simple as this. But first of all, let me explain our philosophy when it comes to training our clients.We’ve tried the theory. We’ve tried the various training methods and there is one Why sets of 5s and 3s are the best use of most clients time
When a client comes to us training clients, we want to give you the best results possible in the least amount of time. We want to maximize the use of your time. Instead of firing a precise sniper rifle, we want to use a shotgun blast that kills as many birds as possible. Sorry for the brutal and graphic analogy but it is fitting. (Actually I’m not sorry. That was a great analogy.)
Instead of focusing on many individual exercises that target small, specific muscles that would take more days per week to be effective, we use compound exercises. Instead of having to spend 5 or 6 days in the gym we can successfully use 2-3 days per week to a devastatingly effective result. We incorporate multiple joints and therefore multiple muscle groups focusing on fundamental human movement patterns. Sitting down and standing up, lifting stuff off the ground, pushing things away from us, pulling things toward us.
This means you get more work done in less time. So we do variations of rows, cleans, deadlifts or chin ups instead of 3 or 4 variations of bicep curls, lat pull downs, back extensions, hamstring curls, and glute bridges in the same workout. It essentially means we do 1 exercise instead of 4 or 5. That one exercise recruits the maximum amount of muscle. When you do stressful compound movements for sets of 5, it’s easier to concentrate and perform high quality reps than it is for 10 or 12 for example. It’s all too easy to get sloppy because of a loss in concentration. If you’re doing more reps in a set than this, as some protocols prescribe, the chances of repetitive strain injuries also dramatically increases.
Minimum effective dosage
When you’re in your teens and 20s you can pulverise your body with more and more volume of work. You recover quicker. You can take more intense beat downs. You can take them more frequently and for longer. You heal quicker and adapt quicker. Many of us erroneously interpret this to mean more is always better. Until your 30s hit.It’s easy to be lulled into a flash sense of invincibility, until you hit your 30s and 40s. It’s not as easy to recover then. It gets harder. Add to this the likely additions of kids, sleepless nights, work stress, house stress, financial stress, illnesses, aches, pains, injuries, social pressures, and pretty soon your recovery resources will be greatly depleted before you even get near the gym’s front door.
This is why we advocate for a minimal effective dosage. You’ve probably heard the phrase before with regard to medicine and treatment. A minimal effective dosage is the very least you need to administer in order to derive the benefit from the drug or supplement. In training the same applies. We want to administer the minimal effective dosage of stress from training in order to derive the maximum benefit. Not one rep more. Not one set more. Not one exercise more than you need. Why? Because we want you to be able to recover successfully before your next session so you can be consistent with your training.Training is hard. If you’re doing it right that is. Why would we want to make it harder by giving you more to do than you essentially need? Beats me.
Strength makes everything easier
Everything in life is easier when you’re stronger. Everything. Moving your own body about is easier if you’re stronger. Quite simply it’s the way you interact with your physical reality. The process of acquiring more strength changes not only how you interact with your physical reality but how you mentality deal with reality too.
Heavy weights for fat loss?
Much is made of calories burnt. Which exercise burns the most calories. The truth is sleeping for 8 hours will burn more calories than the toughest gym workout you can imagine. But training is about more than burning calories. If you just train with the purpose to mindlessly burn calories it’s like driving around just to burn fuel with no destination in mind. It’s a waste of time, money and effort. Burning fuel for the sake of burning fuel.
But training is about much, much more important outcomes than expending energy. It’s about improved metabolic health, increased bone density, improved muscle, ligament and tendon strength, better balance, better mental health, reducing your risk of chronic disease, being more confident, more capable and more useful.We also utilize sets of 5 and eventually sets of 3 for women and older adults.
The reason is, 5s work for everyone in making progress, regardless of their age, sex, goal, sport or background. When I say progress, I mean the ability to make improvements to the exercise over time. And when I say time, I mean years, not weeks.
Want to get leaner – 5s will accomplish this.
Want to get stronger – 5s work
Want to get better muscle endurance – 5s will help set you up.
Want to get bigger muscles – 5s do this when you eat enough quality calories.
Are you male – 5s
Female – 5s, to start with.
Teen – 5s
70s? 5s, then 3s after a while.
Play rugby? 5s
Play gaelic? 5s
Golf? 5s
Tennis? 5s
Novice – 5s
This typically goes against traditional wisdom but keep reading if you want to understand why 5s work regardless of the goal.
5s for getting leaner
First of all, if you want to get leaner, ie, lose fat, you need to have your nutrition on point. You need to be in a calorie deficit to some degree. The easiest way to do this is to monitor your energy intake and ensure it’s less than your energy expenditure. This is the case regardless of your mode of training. But keep listening – the next bit is what most people miss. When you deprive your body of the energy it requires, your body begins to cannibalise itself which means a reduction in tissue – muscle AND fat. You want to lose fat, but your body doesn’t really care what tissue it burns for fuel. It’ll take whatever it can get and utilize it for energy.
You want to retain muscle for a number of reasons, number 1, so you don’t look like a shrivelled up raisin by getting rid of the firmer, harder tissue that lies underneath called skeletal muscle. But number 2, muscle is what’s known as “active” tissue. It uses up more energy than fat tissue just by existing, without working out. This means it’s easier to stay leaner and manage your weight long term. But more importantly, number 3, muscle is like a glucose sponge. Your body can better use sugar, ie carbohydrates with more muscle at its disposal. This again emphasises why it’s so important to build muscle and retain muscle, if you care about keeping unwanted fat off your belly and beyond.
So what role do sets of 5 play in all of this? Well while it’s difficult for your body to build muscle when you’re in a calorie deficit, regardless of the number of reps you do, if you lift heavy weights while in a calorie deficit, you’re sending a signal that you need that muscle. That it’s being used. It’s required. This helps create the best possible conditions for your body to opt for fat tissue as fuel if you’re in a calorie deficit. When you combine this with increased protein intake, it further enhances the conditions for your body to retain muscle and burn fat tissue effectively.
Many people (including myself in the past) make the mistake of lifting lighter weights for more reps while in a calorie deficit, thinking it’s going to “tone” them up. This is a mistake because muscle doesn’t tone. It either increases in size or decreases. Toning up requires a reduction in body fat tissue which covers the firmer, harder muscle underneath. This can either be reduced or increased as well.
Aside from the points above which highlights the importance of using heavy weight while in a calorie deficit in order to send the appropriate signals for muscle retention and fat loss, the other important statistic to remember is that light, medium or heavy weights all burn similar calories. So if you think you’re burning more calories because you’re doing 20 reps or cardio which will enhance your calorie deficit, you’re likely wrong. But not only is your arithmetic wrong, you’re also sending the wrong signals meaning your body is more likely to cannablise muscle tissue instead of fat.
So what about building muscle?
Some people like to divide up the reps into strength (4-6 reps) and muscle growth (8-12 reps). The truth of the matter is that if you’re a complete beginner, any rep scheme is going to make you somewhat stronger initially. At least for a few weeks. The problem is this quickly runs into a brick wall and progress stops. The other problem is you’re more likely to have significant muscle soreness due to the accumulation of eccentric reps (the lowering phase).
The truth is, 5s will build muscle more effectively than 8-12 reps with less work required and allow you to keep training for longer without hitting a plateau. You could train for 1- 2 years and change nothing only the loading in every workout and make progress with sets of 5. The same cannot be said of 8-12 reps, because the rep target will have to change as well as potentially the load, never mind the greater potential for plateau.
How to get strong and stay the same size
A common objection to this is, “what about so and so – yes he’s really strong, but he’s not that big. He doesn’t carry much muscle. He’s not bulky.” Great question from an excellent observation. You absolutely can get significantly stronger without adding muscle “mass”, up to a point. The limiting factor is going to be how much food you’re eating – how many calories and how much protein you’re consuming. For example, if you start training and stick to 3000 calories per day and you need 3000 to maintain your current size, you will still get stronger.
You could double your deadlift from your starting point. But you will limit yourself unless you eat more and put on weight – muscle weight. Increased muscle mass – hypertrophy, if you will. The person in the initial example isn’t limited because he’s doing sets of 5. He’s limiting himself because he’s not eating ENOUGH to grow muscle tissue! If he wanted to keep getting bigger and increase his muscle size he would do so by continuing to lift heavy 5s instead of medium or light 8-12s, by eating 4-5000 calories. To accumulate tissue, whether muscle (with training and quality calories) or fat (with less or no training and junk calories) you need to be in a calorie surplus.
This is why the bodybuilders who have the best physiques that everyone remembers, trained heavy. They got that way because they lifted heavy weights, not light weights 8-15 times. As well as substantial anabolic steroids. But back to reality. No one is asking you to take anabolic steroids and no one is asking you to become a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders are a unique breed who got there due to having a special genetic make up of thin skin, low subcutaneous fat and the ability to accumulate muscle tissue much easier than the rest of us. But the way they do things does shed a lot of light on how real muscle growth happens.
What about the studies that are performed that seem to indicate that 8-12 is the proven hypertrophy range? What I’ve noticed in these studies are a few common themes.
1) they are short term. They usually only last a semester, about 12 weeks. This doesn’t demonstrate it’s useful beyond 12 weeks. In the real world it quickly becomes untrainable. You hit a plateau. This is why a common bodybuilding “trick” advises you should “shock” your muscles by performing a different rep range for a while to kickstart things…like lifting heavier for less reps…
2) they’re conducted on novices, who as we’ve already stated will get stronger and grow muscle with any rep range.
3) it’s often unclear when they are measuring the supposed muscle gains. There are two phenomenons that occur after training muscles, particularly after doing lots of reps like 8+. A blood pump occurs for a few hours following which swells the muscle beyond it’s normal size. There’s also a glycogen pump which can last a bit longer. If the biceps were measured at this time for example, it would certainly result in an increase in muscle size, albeit an artificial result.
Hypertrophy v strength or hypertrophy AND Strength
When someone tells me they want to increase muscle size but they don’t want to get stronger, I often wonder why anyone would want to only LOOK strong but not actually BE strong. Any answers? I’ve never understood that. Why would this be useful in any way? If you know the answer, please let me know.
If you’re still in any doubt as to whether strength and muscle size are inextricably linked after a certain point you should search for the photo of former worlds strongest man, Brian Shaw, presenting the trophy at Mr Olympia a few years ago. This is an example of two professionals at their given disciplines at the extreme end of the scale and the very obvious size difference is enormous, for lack of a better description.
Brian Shaw doesn’t just happen to be insanely strong. Funnily enough he’s also incredibly BIG! Compared to the most elite bodybuilders he dwarfs them. Yes, they’re significantly more lean, but if someone like Shaw wanted to, he could reduce he calorie intake over a year or two and he could lean out. He would likely never be as lean as those guys because his genetics wouldn’t allow him, but not many people’s genetics would. But he accumulated muscle and got extremely large and extremely strong in the process. One didn’t happen without the other which contradicts the basic theory on the matter.
If someone was serious about putting on significant muscle, they would lift heavy ass weights (in the words of Ronnie Coleman) and eat more food than they wanted. They would accept that they might put on some body fat in the process, but understanding this could be dropped off after without too much trouble and a bit of patience. The key to not putting on minimal fat would be to focus on quality calories, high protein and avoiding sugar.
What about the other example goals. Can you do 5s indefinitely? It depends how seriously you’re taking things. The only reason to do 8+ squats or deadlifts would be for mental break, not because it would be physically more effective. Sometimes it’s a nice mental holiday to deload and up the reps to give yourself a break from the slog of heavy 5s.
Women’s Best Rep Ranges
Women tend to respond better to sets of 3 after a while due to their unique neuromuscular efficiency. Basically men and women recruit muscle differently. Women require heavier weight to switch on motor units in their muscle. Men don’t require loading as close to maximal to switch on motor units effectively.
If you want to improve your athletic performance in your sport, sets of 5 are going to serve you better than sets of 8-12. Why? Because you’ll be stronger. Everything gets stronger. If you squat, bench press, clean, deadlift, strict press and do chin ups, incrementally loading the weight in every session everything gets stronger. You are systemically stronger. Not just your legs, arms shoulders, but your core, hips, neck, joints, tendons, ligaments, bones, connective tissue. It all gets stronger. Instead of doing a million sit ups, do some heavy squats or deadlifts for 5 reps. Then 2-3 days later when you come in, use the adaptation that has occurred to lift a little bit more. Rinse and repeat.
We’ve already pointed out how you won’t increase in muscle size unless you eat enough to facilitate this. The idea you’ll get “big and bulky” or “muscle bound” will only happen if you make it or allow it through your diet being crap, consuming too much sugar and drinking alcohol.
Long Distance / Endurance Endeavours
What about long distance or endurance athletes? Wouldn’t it be better to do high reps with light weight? Well besides the fact you’re already doing high reps in your discipline, the answer is no for the reasons above. I understand you won’t want to put on weight because every extra ounce you carry will sap energy. But as illustrated above, unless you intentionally put on weight through a sloppy diet and sugar consumption, you can get significantly stronger and stay the same weight. A marathon runner, for example, could take their squat from 40kg to 100kg in 4-12 months and their body would thank them for it, through fewer niggles, aches and pains, all while staying the same body weight.
For older people, if their goal is better bone density, better balance, better cognition, better mobility, sets of 5 will improve all of this just as importantly they’ll recover better than with sets of 8-12 due to fewer eccentrics.
Everyone Benefits from 5s
To conclude, just about everyone can benefit from sets of 5. Some benefit more than others but it’s a great place to start and it’s not a bad place to stay. It all depends on how far you want to take things and the direction you want to go. But rest assured we prescribe 5s for lots of very, very good reasons, many of which we’ve outlined here. There are many upsides and very few downsides. There are exceptions to this, but this is more often than not the phenomenon we see. Training with sets of 5 is the best way to get stronger. When you’re stronger, you’re better at every phyiscal endeavour.
If you’d like help getting started, drop us a message to book a free consultation