Anyone ever tried this shit? Does it work?
>QRD
Lower the amount of reps per set while proportionally increasing the number of sets in order to keep all reps at a specific intensity/bar velocity/muscular fatigue level relative to muscle failure. Pic related uses schemes of 8x5, 10x4, and 12x3.
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try it and report back
moronic gimmick bs that is unnecessarily complicated. Snake oil. Just lift for each muscle group to failure once or twice a week and do that for 10 years and you'll extract every bit of gains you will ever make in you life. It's so fricking simple
>moronic gimmick bs that is unnecessarily complicated
This.
>8x5, 10x4, and 12x3
Isn't that just strength training? Low reps for many sets.
Not exactly. The idea is that each "set" is split into subsets of 1-3 reps with a short rest in between, enabling you to do higher volumes of greater intensity than a straight set. So you'd do, say, a weight you can hit for 5RM, do 2 reps, rack for 10-15 seconds, do 2 more reps, rack, do 2 more, and so on until you finish the full set and rest for a couple minutes.
Sure, but "to failure" doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Are you taking the bar and benching it without plates for 150 reps or are you doing 1 chest-destroying rep and getting a spotter to bail you out?
Interesting. So its a rest pause style of training?
>So you'd do, say, a weight you can hit for 5RM, do 2 reps, rack for 10-15 seconds, do 2 more reps, rack, do 2 more, and so on until you finish the full set and rest for a couple minutes.
But how many working sets like that? Lets say for bench, do you do 1 of those as mentioned above? Or do you do several?
Do you have the template? can you upload it?
Apologies for the shitty image, this is from the same site as the book in the OP. You can see alternate implementations of the idea in this article:
https://breakingmuscle.com/cluster-training-how-to-use-it-to-build-muscle-and-strength/
Well that's the thing, if you use a scheme like I'm writing about you can do mini-sets of 1-2 reps with greater intensity than you could for 6-35. Now whether that would lead to greater gains in any one direction or another I don't know, which is why I'm hoping someone who's done this can weigh in.
> with greater intensity than you could for 6-35
Intensity refers to the amount of possible effort that you can exert compared to the amount that you are actually exerting. If you can lift for 12 reps until you hit failure as described, you'll pretty much milk all the stimulus you can out of an exercise and at the point of failure you can be certain that you are using 100% intensity. 0% intensity is being at rest. Everything in between is murky. 6-35, for whatever reason, seems to be the best range that gets the optimal amount of growth and strength increases from any given exercise (barring skill specific increases). If you want to generally increase size and strength, just do that.
One particular benefit to doing this multiple set low rep scheme would be to milk neurological benefits/skill benefits in a particular exercise that you're doing. Certain motor movements can be greatly improved by practicing the exact skill that you're attempting, so if you wanted to specifically get good at doing heavy bench press, then it would make sense to do heavy bench press, thus practicing the skill more often (multiple sets) at a heavy weight. You'll get more efficient at the skill based component of the heavy bench press and your weight specifically will increase greater and faster than other exercises that you're doing. This is only useful if you want to get better at a particular movement for a particular reason though. An example of this would be those people that do [x pushups a day for 30 days] type things. In that time frame they may double their pushup numbers, but they do not actually get twice as strong. They get the same amount of general strength and size as if they would have done something else, but they get much better at the skill of doing pushups. This is things like muscle recruitment pattern, timing, greater signaling capability to those specific fibers, etc. This doesn't transfer to other things though
>Are you taking the bar and benching it without plates for 150 reps or are you doing 1 chest-destroying rep and getting a spotter to bail you out?
Everything between 6-35 reps produces the same results when taken to failure. Failure for nearly all exercises being technical failure, which is when you can no longer complete a movement with good form (in the case of compounds) or you cannot move the weight at all anymore at all (usually isolations). Imagine someone put a gun to your head and said that if you do not complete a rep that they will blow your brains out. If you get stuck and you're putting in that level of effort, then that would be considered failure. Even if you get stuck, continue to push for another few seconds at your sticking point. Sometimes you can still get more reps even if you didn't think you could.
You can even leave 4 reps in reserve and get the same results as going to failure, but the issue with that is accurately gauging how far away you are from failure. Truth is, most people can't do that accurately, so just hit failure to be certain you stimulated everything.
> 1 chest-destroying rep
Reps aren't necessary either but they are extremely useful and make better progress for most everyone. You can literally just squeeze your hands together (pec gains) and still make gains if you squeeze hard enough, but it's not nearly as effective as doing full ROM reps to failure in the 6-35 rep range. I think there were some studies showing it produced results, but only around 1/3rd or 1/2 the results. Could've just been the participants' level of effort though. Maybe they just weren't going hard enough. Isometrics are very mentally difficult to nail down.
this is the correct response to 90% of posts on this board
It works great, plus you get more efficient at the lifts you practice clusters with. Don't get too ambitious with the weight or it will frick you up.
t. Dyels
salty because he fell for the arnold memeshit and didn't make any gains despite trying really really hard and working out every day
what's your vertical?
Anything below 37 inches neck your self right now. and don't ever make movements at the oral level. that means shut the frick up
>Mouth breather takes steroids
>Attributes success to bro science meme program
A tale as old as Schwarzenegger
Natty Pavel also preaches clusters
does pavel have programs outside kettlebells?
Yes. His Russian Bear program is relevant to this thread.
I've never trusted Arnold or his advice.
Wait I thought cluster training was going to failure and if you still had more reps, to rack the bar if doing bench, wait 10 seconds, then crank out the remaining or if you still need another rest, rack, 10 seconds, do the last.
For example let's say 5x5 just to be easy.
>set 1- 5 reps easy
>set 2- 5 reps easy
>set 3 - 5 reps easy
>set 4 - 3 reps before failure
>rest
>set 4- 2 reps to finish the 5 in set 4
>set 5 -2 reps
>rest
>set 5 -2 reps
>rest
>set 5 - last rep for the 5 reps
It all works at least for someone.
But why make it more complicated or time intensive than is needed to progress. Almost everything about volume increases is nearly exponential in terms of diminishing returns.
To further assist your training, look into stretch mediated hypertrophy. Essentially just train a muscle in an exaggerated stretched position. It gets SIGNIFICANTLY more gains than any other form of training in muscles that you are capable of getting a stretch in. You can't do this for every muscle group, but for the ones that you can, you should always train with weighted stretch. Gains can be as much as 50% greater than compared to other forms of training, so if you can gain 15% size and strength in a muscle over 12 weeks using a normal training method, you'd instead gain ~22.5% increased with weighted stretch. No current theory explains why this is the case, but the likely answer is that since muscle are being pulled longitudinally rather than laterally, they undergo hyperplasia vs hypertrophy, meaning that more muscle cells might be created rather than the muscle cells you already have just getting bigger.
Why not 13x3?
no gains if you do 13 reps
No one knows anything for sure at the intermediate or advanced levels of training without trial and error.
Starting Strength is the only training philosophy with predictable outcomes due to it's high emphasis on minimalism.
I just do singles. Anything more is cardio.