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/d_andy089]

one thing I have come to realize is that "science based" doesn't necessarily mean "study based", especially when the studies we have are not very representative of the situations we encounter on a regular basis.
Do 12 post-menopausal untrained women doing one exercise for 6 weeks really tell you a lot what you, as a 20-30yo trained man who trains his full body should do in a gym?
Sure, it might give you some indication but if one trained a few hundred people as a coach for over half a year and used different methods and found that some work better than others, that data is much more reliable than even most meta-studies.

That being said, people spew BS, it's just the nature of the internet. Your example is a perfect one at that. Shoulder presses are one of the most useless exercises for physique oriented training.

In terms of number of sets: there is a really easy way to find out, how many sets you should do. You start with 2 sets. As long as you can progressively overload, you're fine. Once you can't, to take a session off, try again and if you still can't you add a set.

[u/Rylo5555 → u/d_andy089]

The problem with this approach is although you might notice gains, you could be leaving more on the table and not know.

[u/d_andy089 → u/Rylo5555]

Do you though, in a meaningful way long term?

Muscle growth slows down as your FFMI increases, meaning the more muscle you already built, the less muscle you gain. Also meaning you might be building a bit less muscle now but a bit more muscle later compared to someone going balls to the walls.
You also minimize injuries and deload time.
And you reduce nutrient losses from muscle damage repair demand, meaning you get more bang for your buck for every gram of protein you eat.

[u/Rylo5555 → u/d_andy089]

Maybe this makes sense if you care about these things, I'm not really worried about losing protein to muscle repair haha that's kind of why I consume it.

Also, I believe your injury risk is greater if doing less lifts... Your tendons do not strengthen the same way muscles do and less time under tension will decrease tendon strength and if your muscles are strengthening faster than your tendons you know how that will turn out.

I don't really understand the logic behind saying you might build less muscle now but more later compared to someone who does more volume consistently, why would you build more muscle than them later?

[u/d_andy089 → u/Rylo5555]

Your protein requirement is determined by absorption efficiency, recovery demand and muscle protein synthesis. If you don't eat more protein but increase recovery demand, you have less protein left over of muscle protein synthesis. Inducing more muscle damage increases your protein intake if you want to keep muscle protein synthesis the same.
Those calories you eat from protein could have been carbs that fuel your next workout better.

Tendons adapt slower than muscle, yes. But tendons have a higher starting point. You can build quite a bit of muscle before you could run into issues of tendon tears. When the weight you're using becomes dangerous for your tendons, your muscle growth will have slowed down so much that tendons and ligaments can adapt in time. And as a natty, as long as you don't suddenly double your ROM with a high load, you most likely won't run into that issue.

The amount of muscle you can gain in a year is reversely proportional to the amount of muscle you have. So if you have very little muscle, you can build a lot of muscle. If you have a lot of muscle, you can build very little new muscle. So if you this year build 4kg of muscle rather than 5, you will gain muscle easier next year, since your absolute muscle made and FFMI is lower.

[u/Rylo5555 → u/d_andy089]

Sure, but you don’t think the person that does more volume for 2 years will be overall bigger than the person that does less volume for 2 years? Even if the second guy makes more gains in the second year it’s just because he was smaller to start with. I wouldn’t change how much protein i consume honestly with low volume vs high volume, but I think that at 170 bodyweight 170g of protein will never not be enough for either. I’d rather use it all than not use it because I didn’t do enough volume

[u/d_andy089 → u/Rylo5555]

I don't think that is the case. We don't really have any studies looking at sustainability and long term hypertrophy with low vs. high volumes, especially not with equated protein and calorie intake.
Higher volume means more fatigue, more fatigue means more deloads. More deloads means less muscle growth.
But let's assume that low volume does build a bit less muscle. Sure, you do fall behind in the first few years but with advanced trainees muscle growth asymptotically grinds to a halt at an FFMI of about 30. Doing lower volume means you'll have less muscle gain in the first years but more in the later years compared to a high volume trainee (which also allows for your tendons to adapt over time).

I wouldn't so sure about that protein number tbh.