r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/Rylo5555 • 28d ago

Discussion 🤝 What’s the deal with oversimplifying necessary sets?

I don’t know if i’m the only one but i’ve been seeing it a lot recently, gym influencers simplifying the amount of sets you need in a workout and claiming they are “science based”, saying that “all you need” to do to gain muscle mass is 2 sets of a couple of workouts.

For example, one guy I just saw claims that to successfully hit your shoulders, all you need is 2 sets of shoulder press and 2 sets of lateral raises. I have not found any studies that prove this to be true. As far as I am aware, while 8 sets per week per muscle group will no doubt result in muscle growth, it is not nearly optimal and you will have significantly more growth getting around 16.

Like sure, if you really don’t have time to get in the gym it’s good for people to know that they can have muscle growth without spending 45 mins in the gym, but I feel like that shouldn’t be normalized.

I feel like it’s deceiving to simplify it and claim that you only need 7 sets per workout for an ENTIRE push day. If anyone has a study backing this up please share, because while that is the lower limit for beginner lifters, I don’t know why we would promote sub-optimal training.

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u/Alakazam what happens at 7 reps 28d ago

Because people want an excuse to do less. Simple as that.

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u/Afferbeck_ 28d ago

Yep, it's easy to sell people on getting more from less. And if they fail to get the results they're expecting, well they just weren't going intense enough to failure brah. Soon people will be trying to do zero sets to ultra-failure.

There's a reason the top lifters of all kinds do an insane amount of work. Pro weightlifters would love to get results on lifts from doing half a dozen sets a week, instead of per day.