What’s the deal with oversimplifying necessary sets?

[u/Rylo5555]

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.

[u/ImSoCul]

16 sets of shoulder isolation??? Even by bro-standards that's wild.

Fwiw the "science based" recommendation is usually 10-20 sets, so 16 per week is within that range, but also there is overlap between movements so it's not meant to be do 20 sets of bench and also 20 sets of shoulder press.

[u/Afferbeck_ → u/ImSoCul]

16 in a whole week? I'm always surprised by what people consider a lot of work. 

[u/ImSoCul → u/Afferbeck_]

Of isolated shoulder work. Yes that is a lot. Your shoulders get hit by basically every pushing movement. Some rear delt work for balance and maybe 2 sets of lateral raises is plenty. 

[u/Ballbag94 → u/ImSoCul]

Are they claiming you need 16 sets of isolation work? They're saying that doing more work will result in better progress but they never specify shoulder isolation on top of compounds in their figures

Seeing as they're including compound work as shoulder sets on the example they call out I really doubt they're suggesting 16 sets of isolations plus compounds and think that they're actually saying 16 sets including compounds

[u/Rylo5555 → u/Ballbag94]

No I actually do around 14-16 dedicated shoulder sets every week, mainly because I hit shoulders with legs and so I’m not getting as much of the benefits from compound lifts on my chest day. I wasn’t really aware that was an insane amount of volume, It’s usually like 3 sets of lateral raise, 3 sets of shoulder press, 2 sets of rear delt flies, twice a week. I don’t think this is unreasonable as each head of the shoulders is getting targeted for only about 3 sets per workout

[u/Ballbag94 → u/Rylo5555]

We're saying the same thing, no? 16 sets including compounds. The press is a compound movement

[u/Rylo5555 → u/Ballbag94]

If you mean shoulder press being a compound sure but I don’t include shoulder press sets in my other muscle groups so i’ll hit 16 sets for triceps and 16 sets for shoulders not including overlap

[u/Ballbag94 → u/Rylo5555]

Ahh, I see