Frequently Asked Questions
Any time. What matters is they get done. Don't do 3 in a row regularly, but catching up is fine.
Cardio for health is great, add it if you like. But not instead of lifting 3 days a week and not instead of the eating methods. The best cardio is playing (kids, sports, etc).
The range for building muscle is actually huge, 5-30 reps. We use 8-30, covering nearly all of it. Higher reps keep your form strict, need less warmups, and offer smaller increments of personal bests. Going from 16 to 17 reps is way more achievable than 6 to 7 with heavier weight.
Balance your body, great range of motion so you don't need to stretch, half the weight to build muscle so faster warmups and less injury risk. They give you some cardio while you do them.
They give an unbeatable stretch, which replaces the need to static stretch. They remove huge progress-killing imbalances, and make your knees extremely durable. You need less warmup sets to hit them and less load to challenge your muscles. And they build damn good legs.
They require a ton of practice, coaching, warmup, sleep, everything. You do not want to take these to 8-30 rep max every workout. Do you want to be a strong squatter or do you want a kickass physique in minimal weekly time without getting hurt? Choose wisely.
If your technique is good and you give it your all, one set gives progress for a long time. The magic is that every week, your body does something that it's never objectively done before. That demands the body change. A muscle group may get a second work set, 10-15% lighter and not logged, but you only ever try to PR the first. More PR sets makes it harder to tell if you're improving. Will this eventually plateau you? Possibly, but it'll happen well past the point where you're in the best shape of your life.
Use one exercise to cover both work sets. Rest 2-3 minutes, take 10-15% off the weight and do a second work set, also to failure. The second work set isn't logged or PR'd, only the first one is.
Science indicates that the absolute optimal way to train is with many sets per bodypart, multiple times weekly. But exactly how much better it is can't reliably be measured. The benefit you might get from that optimization costs you double or triple the time spent in the gym. It's harder to track progress on, and overuse injuries can potentially arise. This is a huge risk to consistency. But the biggest reason? It violates target three: absolute minimum life sacrifice.
Pick whatever you have access to that fits the body part categories. You won't set PRs but you can still train to failure. Hotel gyms, day passes, suspension strap at an Airbnb. It's all good.
Most training plans have you taking breaks or deloads, but that's just not really how the body works.
For most of us, life will give us a break from training. We'll go on vacation, get sick, or have a week from hell.
If you're stuck on your lifts, you aren't losing muscle. Your body just isn't ready yet. Keep trying to set a personal best every session. Performance will dip, but as long as the dips are higher than the last dip, you're doing great.
The more advanced you become, the more your pace of PRs is limited by connective tissue adapting, not muscle. This is a longer process than muscle.
One PR per muscle group per month is still a good pace. There are many muscle groups, so you'll usually get something almost every workout.
If you are feeling extremely beat up, you can instead perform a "quality set" that's 75% of your best performance weight for the same reps. It's doable, but hard enough to keep the body from deconditioning.
- Lower Body:Hip Flexor Opener
- Upper Body:Ribcage Release and Dislocates
If you can barely do these, you'll probably get a tweak or get stuck sooner rather than later. Work them early and the movements in your workout will maintain the range of motion gains.
Do not select heavy spine-loaded movements such as back squats, barbell rows, T-bar rows, deadlifts, and good mornings. They're great exercises, but just not for this method. It's a good idea to still perform lower back training in the form of back raises, reverse hypers, and Romanian deadlifts when possible though. Just do 2-4 sets of 12-20 reps with about 60 seconds rest and don't go even close to failure.
Making Changes
Don't.
The right movements will give you months and months of progress.
But if you're legitimately stuck, check these in order before changing anything:
- Check 1
Time span perspective
After the first few weeks, expect fewer PRs. Exercises will consolidate in performance sideways for 2-3 workouts before setting more PRs. They won't all do this at the same time so there's always something improving. One PR per muscle group per month is still a good pace, and that adds up to mindblowing results spread across a year.
- Check 2
Rest and recovery
Sometimes you just have a bad week. You're stressed, sleepless, sick or something else. Progress is never linear. When you're absolutely sure you aren't at your best, focus on beating your worst performances from before instead of your best. Raising the floor raises the ceiling.
- Check 3
Bad technique
Most beginners and intermediates are bottlenecked by their form, and their form is always worse than they think. Technique improvements are the fastest way to make progress. Bar none. Common culprits: not setting scapula on bench press, swinging weight, partial range of motion, rushing warmups and feelers.
- Check 4
Mobility issues
You're likely too stiff to actually do the exercise right. Do the 3 mobility drills more. Once you can move through full range of motion, the lifting maintains it on its own.
- Check 5
Equipment and logistics
Home gym cables and bands can have inconsistent resistance. Use free weight and bodyweight when possible. In a commercial gym, different machines that do the same movement rarely match resistances the same.
- Check 6
Bad for your body type
If all the above checks out, the movement might just not be for your body. People jump to this conclusion too soon, but it does happen. Try a grip width adjustment or a small swap. The right movement feels purely in the muscle with no weird joint torque.