Set range a secret? Huh?

[Cinder]

I believe it was on the '80s bodybuilding thing, where several bodybuilders listed every exercise along with how many sets. Have y'all noticed lately that many top guys no longer post these things? For example, Hunter labrada and crew posting a squat and hack squat video to failure. They don't list the sets or anything else. I saw Nick Walker doing the same thing.
I was told this was due to coaches stealing other programs from each other. It's squats and hack squats, there's no secret.

 

[275bills]

My guess is your watching the only sets done to failure that's why. The rest are either warmup, feeler sets.

 

[Reno911]

Faith Hill once said in a song "the secret to life is there are no secrets". Most likely they are not filming the feeder/warm up sets because most people these days have no attention span so they need to keep a 1:15-1:30 condensed for Youtube in 10-15 min. If not, people "tune out".

This is an old video from Brandon Lilly a former powerlifter. It makes sense. All training methods will work as long as the person is training HARD.

 

[Cinder]

My guess is your watching the only sets done to failure that's why. The rest are either warmup, feeler sets.

Lol we know they're not filming everything. What I'm saying here is they don't wanna tell people their sets when someone asks. You'd have to be there to see how many.

 

[Powerlifter]

Nick has a lot of Instagram posts saying exactly how many reps and sets he’s doing per workout. Hunter has a bunch of YouTube videos where he describes his training including how many sets he does.

 

[Joshua82]

I've heard in podcasts both Hunter Labrada and Nick Walker both describing exactly how they work out and on Matt Jansens website (which you can get a free trial for) Nick Walker has a log laying out every workout. Nothing fancy, warm up, some feeder sets, a top set and maybe a back off set.

 

[danieltx]

As the last 2 posters have said, guys talk about it openly, you just have to know where to look.

It also seems pretty common knowledge that a lot of guys are taking the warm up / top set / back off set approach these days.

 

[TheOtherOne55]

Just because a Labrada videos doesnt have his routine listed out doesn't mean anyone's HIDING anything.
He has full videos on PPL routine and the volume he likes.
Look around.

Lol we know they're not filming everything. What I'm saying here is they don't wanna tell people their sets when someone asks. You'd have to be there to see how many.

 

[Cinder]

As the last 2 posters have said, guys talk about it openly, you just have to know where to look.

It also seems pretty common knowledge that a lot of guys are taking the warm up / top set / back off set approach these days.

Guy said you get a free trail... meaning gotta pay eventually?

 

[Fit2Serve]

i figured they dont post it cuz no one cares....
-F2S

 

[TripppleP]

I agree. Who cares. If I push the growth button by doing one or ten sets it really doesn't matter. I just pushed the button and that's all that matters.

 

[Cinder]

Oh I see, it's in some of their captions on youtube.
And they say working set or top set a lot.

 

[danieltx]

Guy said you get a free trail... meaning gotta pay eventually?

No clue, not a member of Jansen's site. But it's well-known that he does the warm up / top set / back off approach. Jordan Peters is similar, Patrick Tuor is similar, etc., so a lot of the guys today are training with the same types of programs with variances thrown in for what they specifically need. Credit due to Dante Trudel for his influence on training philosophy.

 

[Kaladryn]

Yates was the one who made the last set a back off set popular, he recommended this in his book Blood and Guts that came out in 1993. I had read everything I could find before this came out and heard no mention of it.

Total sets and rep ranges are pointless information for the most part because it is all dependant on intensity, exercise, style of training, etc.

The cookie cutter approach to bodybuilding is the one thing that definitely doesn't work unless you get really, really lucky, and even then you have to be able to adapt your training over time. No coach can really teach this for the individual.

 

[URODA]

Because they are pretty much working up to just one which may be either straight/back off/drop/rest and pause/cluster/super or really anything they choose to do on that day

 

[FK86]

Yates was the one who made the last set a back off set popular, he recommended this in his book Blood and Guts that came out in 1993.

I never once saw him do it in his own training. In Blood & Guts the video he worked up to his heaviest and then moved on to the next exercise. In all of his FLEX articles, likely ghostwritten by McGough, same thing. The one thing he did that is similar is from '87-'92 he was doing two sets to failure per exercise and stated he would reduce the weight by 10% to make the same rep range again as performance drops drastically when hitting failure. Typically he did 6-8 reps and wanted to make that on both sets. That's not really the same to me as what's trending now where the second set is in a much higher rep range purposely. Guys like JP are doing 8-12 then 12-15 or sometimes higher.

 

[Fa Seeshus]

I never once saw him do it in his own training. In Blood & Guts the video he worked up to his heaviest and then moved on to the next exercise. In all of his FLEX articles, likely ghostwritten by McGough, same thing. The one thing he did that is similar is from '87-'92 he was doing two sets to failure per exercise and stated he would reduce the weight by 10% to make the same rep range again as performance drops drastically when hitting failure. Typically he did 6-8 reps and wanted to make that on both sets. That's not really the same to me as what's trending now where the second set is in a much higher rep range purposely. Guys like JP are doing 8-12 then 12-15 or sometimes higher.

They just aren't showing it because it is a lighter weight. Then people would see that and say "Oh, Dorian really isn't that strong." For Levrone it was the same thing. He trained for lighter reps a good portion of the time, but you only saw the big lifts in his videos.

 

[USMuscle9403]

Lol think of the attention span of your average person who follows social media. Are they really gonna thumbs up and comment when the video is mostly the light weight warmup? Fuck no, light weight don't get no views. Most guys are pretty boring, anyway. Although I was surprised to learn Nick Walker is fairly low volume, usually just one all-out set of an exercise.

 

[FK86]

They just aren't showing it because it is a lighter weight. Then people would see that and say "Oh, Dorian really isn't that strong." For Levrone it was the same thing. He trained for lighter reps a good portion of the time, but you only saw the big lifts in his videos.

Never written, never shown. The other guys show their backoff sets all the time. In almost 20 years I've never heard the word "backoff" even said by Dorian.

Trained by JP

Basic compound training consisting of an upper , lower split is so damn effective, why do I stil see so many guys going in just to do arms, that's a wasted session. That's a wasted Opportunity across...

www.facebook.com

 

[Kaladryn]

Never written, never shown. The other guys show their backoff sets all the time. In almost 20 years I've never heard the word "backoff" even said by Dorian.

You probably didn't read Blood and Guts his original book, this is where he talked about it, but it wasn't the only place, he also talked about it in articles that showed his pre-Olympia training journals.

Everyone got caught up in his "one set to failure" post olympia win training, this isn't what go him huge, this is what he used to make very small gains AFTER he was already a 300-pound monster, not what he used to get there.

In fact, if you do a google image search for his training journals, you can see how his training was totally different pre olympia, often several working sets.

Lots of backoff sets here:

And there are even more sets in his earlier training journals, where he was still bigger than 99% of us at that point.