Stop Doing “3 Sets of 12” To Build Muscle (I’M BEGGING YOU!)

If you are doing “3 sets of 12” in your workouts to build muscle, then you must watch this before your next training session. You see, there is inherently nothing wrong with any rep scheme that you perform if you do so with high effort and an adequate amount of intensity to build muscle. The problem

okay let’s start this video off with a quiz  you’re going to be put to the test here I want you to watch Jesse perform a set of dumbbell  incline bench press to 12 and I want to see if you can spot what he’s doing wrong all right  so here he goes we can count along if you want but pay close attention and see if you can spot  the mistake in this set you counting Jesse six okay do you see it yet we’ll collect  your answer here at the end what number 11 good 12 cool all right so now what was the  issue I don’t know what was it so a lot of you probably don’t see the issue because you make the  same exact mistake but what I was doing was I was actually secretly kind of counting here and I’ve  got a a stopwatch on my iPhone that says that he performed this set in 27. 3 seconds Speed Racer  which is much too short and you’re thinking why what do you mean the length of the set when you  perform your sets with the main focus being three sets of 12 and you get attached to the numbers  now I made a video about this years ago and I think it’s incredibly important that you hear this  concept again and I’m actually going to expand upon it when you get fixated on the numbers three  sets of 12 you’re already setting yourself up for probably an imperfect set and one that’s certainly  not going to deliver the growth that you’re capable of okay now the language that muscles  speak is tension we know that if you want your muscles to grow if you want to stimulate muscle  protein synthesis you need to elicit tension in those working muscles and we know there’s a few  ways that you can do it we know that you can get a lot of mechanical tension if you have a very  heavy load in your hand so if Jesse was using let’s say a five rep max here he would have a lot  more tension being driven to the muscles he can only get five repetitions if it was truly his Max  and he went to failure but that amount of tension is missing ing in a set to 12 let’s say cuz it’s  not that absolute amount of tension right the the weights are less so what you’d have to do in that  case is you’d have to figure out a way to sort of equalize that tension and one of the main ways  that we equalize the missing absolute mechanical tension is to bring in some other drivers of  hypertrophy namely Ecentric muscle tension meaning the the lowering of the weights because  we know in and of itself that’s a driver of more growth well when we talk about 12 repetitions  no one just picked that number at a thin air they didn’t say 12 why don’t they say 11 why are  not all of your sets prescribed in your programs to 11 repetitions instead 12 repetitions was the  one that sort of met the criteria of e of of of eclipsing the 45 seconds of tension that seems  to be significant for driving muscle gains when you’re using lighter weights and where that comes  from is again the absolute amount of time it takes you to perform one repetition realizing that the  Ecentric portion of that rep the lowering portion would take more time on Jesse’s repetitions there  it really wasn’t significant it was too quick what you want to do is you want to be somewhere in the  range of around 2 to 3 seconds cuz what we know is a half a second on the way down of a rep is a  non-controlled rep and that’s not going to produce much tension on the way down right a second would  be better but not as good as as where it could be which would be more like 2 seconds or 3 seconds  if you applied a 3 second Ecentric tension on the way down and a 1 second concentric on the way up  and we know that doing explosive repetitions is a good thing you’d have 4 seconds per rep in a set  of 12 you’ve gotten to a full 48 seconds for you guys that do math out there 12 * 4 48 you’ve  gotten into that range where we know we can have enough of that accumulated time on renion  to deliver the gains that we’re looking for in the absence of some of that really high weight  that we’ be using now as a physical therapist I would argue that controlled repetitions are a  must with what whatever rep range you’re using so the Ecentric portion of a lift even in those  lower rep ranges is still incredibly important if you want to have any longevity in the gym now  that’s all good however a lot of things start to go wrong when you fixate on this three set to 12  mentality because right off the bat Jesse take these weights again yes sir if you find yourself  performing your sets and you’re fixated on the rep count go ahead and do a set to 12 to 12 now let’s  say on the third repetition here it gets pretty difficult let’s just say like there’s there’s no  way I’m getting to my 12 repetitions what would you do I would start cutting my rep short like how  range of motion motion so go ahead so you start pumping out a few half reps you’re like okay well  four and five and six so you start to throw away repetitions with the pursuit being I got to get  to my 12 you’re making a giant mistake there too because this fixation on hitting a certain number  and discrediting the value of the tension and the intensity that’s required on every set to drive  new muscle gains is a major mistake so if I go and I perform my first few repetitions obviously  those are the easiest ones of a set they’re not going to be doing much of the the the actual work  for you if you then start cutting short the mid reps because again you’re afraid of not being  able to reach the number 12 then you’ve kind of thrown away the value of the middle reps as well  and then when you get to the end and he starts to say okay now I feel like if I resume my good full  range of repetitions I’ll be able to get my 10 11 and 12 with good difficulty yeah but I would  argue that it’s a different impact in result because the repetitions leading up to it to cause  the fatigue that that led into those final three really productive repetitions isn’t the same you  let go of all that when you kind of half ass to repetitions in the middle of the set so that’s a  mistake take this concept and apply even further to the sets portion of three sets of 12 why why  is it that three seems to be the magical number that we have to assign to Any Given exercise  that we’re doing for a muscle group why can’t it be two why in some cases can’t it just be one  if you’re so fixated on hitting your three sets you can make a lot of other mistakes again join  in and see if you’ve ever done any of these things you do your first set and you say to yourself  I’m never going to be able to get three sets of this weight so instead of even completing your  first set you bail on that weight you drop down to something lighter that you know you’ll be able  to use for all three sets that’s a mistake if you could have gotten 12 repetitions it’ be very very  challenging on that last rep you we’re going to failure then use that weight and simply drop the  weight down when you got the sets two and three yeah it’s a better end goal again you’re fixing  on being able to use 55 lbs for three sets of 12 don’t get married to the numbers again the  language of muscles is tension not a number on the side of the dumbbell if you make that mistake  by fixating on the number of sets you would also cost yourself an opportunity to maybe drive more  of those available resources towards an additional exercise that might just happen to hit the muscle  from a different angle and therefore get a better overall result for example if you’re training your  chest and you’re fixated on doing your three sets of flat bench right and by the third set because  of what I just talked about here you didn’t really have much that you’re getting from