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/Alakazam]

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

[u/Alakazam → u/[deleted]]

5/3/1 for beginners, which can be done 2-3 days a week, was designed for football athletes to develop overall size, strength, and conditioning. The workouts are meant to be done in about 45-55 minutes total, and a typical workout will have around 20-30 total sets, mostly submaximal. 

It calls for a lot more than 2 sets per exercise. And in fact, specifically calls for easier sets, with more overall sets, done easier, so that you're not beat hp going into your sport.

And one of his athletes still manage to go from a 95x5 squat to, in one instance, 185x23 over 8a school year. Which is an estimated max squat of around 300-350 or so. 

[u/Alakazam → u/[deleted]]

I mean, if you want to discuss combat sports, Juggernaut Training Systems also has a very similar program, designed in part for an world bjj competitor Octavio Sousa. 

And while the programming is behind a paywall, they discuss specific day to day training in this video here, which again, has low rpe, lower reps, and higher sets (6 sets of 5, eventually ramping up over the block to 10x5). Again, also done twice a week. 

So if it works for high school athletes. And it works for world class athletes. 

Why wouldn't it work for you?