How can tweaking your set structure skyrocket your strength gains? Join us on "There is a Method to the Madness" as we break down the science behind ascending and descending sets and how pushing your muscles close to failure can unlock new levels of power. You'll learn the subtle yet impactful differences between these set strategies and how they can be tailored to maximize your strength training results. We provide actionable guidelines on balancing workout intensity and recovery, ensuring you avoid overtraining while still achieving your fitness goals.
Ever wondered how much your mindset influences your performance in the gym? You won't want to miss our deep dive into workout volume and the incredible role of belief in strength training. Discover how customizing your workout volume to fit your individual recovery needs can propel muscle growth, especially if you're not using anabolic steroids. We wrap up with an eye-opening study on powerlifters that reveals the astonishing power of the brain in surpassing physical limitations. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical tips that will help you not only train harder but also smarter.
How can tweaking your set structure skyrocket your strength gains? Join us on "There is a Method to the Madness" as we break down the science behind ascending and descending sets and how pushing your muscles close to failure can unlock new levels of power. You'll learn the subtle yet impactful differences between these set strategies and how they can be tailored to maximize your strength training results. We provide actionable guidelines on balancing workout intensity and recovery, ensuring you avoid overtraining while still achieving your fitness goals.
Ever wondered how much your mindset influences your performance in the gym? You won't want to miss our deep dive into workout volume and the incredible role of belief in strength training. Discover how customizing your workout volume to fit your individual recovery needs can propel muscle growth, especially if you're not using anabolic steroids. We wrap up with an eye-opening study on powerlifters that reveals the astonishing power of the brain in surpassing physical limitations. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical tips that will help you not only train harder but also smarter.
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell. I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. What is this podcast about? It's about health and fitness understanding what works and why. Fitness understanding what works and why.
Speaker 1:
In today's show, I'm going to talk about ascending sets versus descending sets. I got a question from somebody. I think it's great because I really love to talk about why we make choices in our style of workout. There really is no best way, but there are better ways and better ways for us, so I just think it's a great question. I enjoy those types of things to talk about and that's what we're going to do. Before I get to that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home selling and they have the sales and the reviews to back it up, so give them a shout at 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:
All right, so let's talk about ascending versus descending sets. All right, so a set as I think everybody probably knows that listens to this show is a grouping of repetitions. If we do, say, three sets of 10,. That basically means that we are doing straight sets of 10. Straight meaning no changes 10 reps every time, three times. Okay, that's straight sets. There's a lot of different ways to structure your sets. They're all basically good. You just have to kind of know why you're doing it and what works for you, and you know what you like, because ultimately you're going to do more of what you like. So if you like a particular style, it's probably working for you. So two of the ways we can break that up is ascending and descending sets.
Speaker 1:
All right, so all's that mean is ascending sets means that you're doing the same number of repetitions each time. So, as I said, three sets of 10 straight sets means that you're doing three sets of 10 with the same weight every time. Let's just keep it simple Three sets of 10 at 100 pounds on the leg press, that is just doing straight sets of 10, or one set of 10 or two sets of 10, whatever, it doesn't matter, that's just doing straight sets. Now, if we're doing ascending sets, ascending means you go up. As you go it's going to be keeping the rep number the same again 10 or 8 or 12. Let's say you're doing three sets of 10, but you're doing ascending sets and that means that every set you're going slightly up in the load or way up in the load, it doesn't matter. Ascending sets just means that you are going up in weight each time. Okay, and don't worry, I'm going to get into all of the whys here, just explaining the definitions of what these two things are. And descending sets is the opposite. Let's say you're doing three sets of 10 descending, so that means that you are starting with your heaviest weight after your warmup. I mean, we should always make sure the muscles are warm, right, but you're doing your heaviest set first and then you do your normal rest whatever that is for you and then you do your next heaviest, and then you do your lightest set last. If you're doing three sets, so that is descending sets. Okay, so that's what those two things are. Now the bottom line is we're always trying to get our muscles either to fatigue or close to fatigue.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of different studies on whether or not we should go to failure. Very little, not at all. Every set. There's all kinds of studies done on muscular failure, and muscular failure means that when you are doing your set, you cannot finish the repetition. Now, volitional fatigue means that you can finish the repetition you're on but you can't complete another one. I know it's like semantics, it's almost the same thing. So that's why I pretty much just call it muscular failure. So in a lot of the research it's this big argument over.
Speaker 1:
Should we go to failure all the time? And the bottom line is there's not a definitive answer on that. Like it depends on how well you recover. It depends on how well you eat, which is part of how well you recover, how much you sleep. So it depends on how many days a week you work out, how many sets you do. So like there's a big depends on that.
Speaker 1:
All right, most research that I've seen and that I try to stick to is we shouldn't go to failure every single set by any means, and possibly our last set of an exercise. We want to try to go to failure. Now, if we're doing more like efficient, high intensity training while we're doing more single set, then we do want to try to really try to get to. I know I said try twice, sorry. We want to get to failure on those sets because we're not doing a lot of volume. All of this ties together To make a long story short on failure. The research is pretty unclear and the answer is it depends on the individual, but we definitely have to get close most of the time, meaning if you're going to workouts and you've never gotten close to failure in any of your sets, you're probably not training hard enough to really get the adaptations you want. We definitely have to hit it some. During our workouts.
Speaker 1:
A good rule of thumb is like on that last set, really try to hit it, or very, very close, and on the sets leading up to it, stop one to three reps short of it. That's usually a pretty good rule of thumb. All right. So then, if that's the case, and ultimately what makes a muscle stronger is hitting failure or getting close, and really what that means is that you've recruited every muscle fiber in that muscle belly. That's what hitting failure means. So the muscle is going to fail when it's recruited every single muscle fiber and there's nothing left to recruit. Every motor neuron's been fired, so there's nothing left to recruit. That's what failure is. We're trying to get close to that.
Speaker 1:
Some studies have shown that if you get like 80% inroad of that, which there's no way you can measure that when you're working out. That's why some of these studies are like so, not useful, but at least we get an understanding. 80% is close, right. So 80% inroad means 80% of the muscle fibers of the muscle have been stimulated. That should be enough. How do you really know? I mean, you don't. So that's why we go by the old maybe one to three reps short of failure.
Speaker 1:
So like, let's say, an exercise at a given weight, you know you can do 10 reps and you're going to fail at 10. Well, if you stop at eight, you're probably getting the stimulus. You need to get stronger If you're using more load over time, and that's a whole nother Pandora's box Like, well, how much load over time and how often should you go up? And it's like, just make sure you are going up and you're not doing the same thing day in and day out, week in and week out, or you're probably not getting better. So we do have to get closer to failure to stimulate the muscles, to get them stronger and get hypertrophy, and we have to practice the principle of overload, progressive overload for sure, so that we know.
Speaker 1:
Now, how do we get there? Well, there are so many different roads to roam. I mean we can get there a lot of different ways and different techniques we use really depend on the individual. So what are the pros and the cons? Well, if you're doing ascending sets, it goes without saying that you can't go to failure on your first set of 10, right? Because if you are, you're not getting your second set of 10. And so then it's either going to be a straight set, it's definitely not an ascending set.
Speaker 1:
So with doing ascending sets, you're definitely starting lighter than failure. That's the idea, and so some of the beliefs is you're getting blood to the muscle, you're what we call preloading the muscle. You're getting some fatigue in the muscle. It's great psychologically because you know, like when you first start the particular exercise, you can get that muscle warmed up pretty well. You know, even though you might be warmed up, that particular area might not be warmed up. You have the psychological and physiological benefit of knowing that's going to happen.
Speaker 1:
So some people like to feel like they are kind of leading to their peak, like they do a set, okay, they break, they go a little heavier, they break, and then maybe and again, sometimes we'll do more than three sets. Sometimes we're doing less. I'm just using three as an example, and then the third time's the charm. So you can. You know some people might argue. Then why do those first two sets if you're going to go to failure on the third? I mean that's a decent argument.
Speaker 1:
But then the other question is, why not? I mean, if you're there to work out, then you know and you've got the time and you programmed your exercises correctly. I mean, why not? I mean, again, it's really a style choice. We have to remember that it's really a style choice and like that's the point of this podcast is like there's nothing magic about any of this, like we have to recruit muscle fibers and we have to get close to failure. So how do we do that? And then we have to determine, really the more important question is volume. How much volume is going to do it for you. I mean, that's it right there. So when you're trying to grow muscle, not to totally get in the weeds here, but I think it's important. So you understand.
Speaker 1:
Obviously you've listened to this show, hopefully, and if you're new to it, I want to tell you right now I'm not an advocate of steroids. I'm against taking illegal steroids. I'm kind of against taking them legally. In other words, I just don't know that that's necessary. But that's between you and your physician, but you know I'm not an advocate of it.
Speaker 1:
What I am going to say is they work and the reason why they do work. And just because they work, it doesn't mean they're good for you. I mean, yeah, they might grow muscle and they also might have really negative health consequences. So you know, I'd rather have good health and bigger muscles. So you know, the reason why they do work is because they increase your recovery, they speed up your recovery. So people that are taking anabolic steroids are able to train more. That's the bottom line. They can train more frequently, they can do more sets, they can train longer, and all of that is going to lead to bigger muscles. There's no question. Like when people say, well, if I could do more and more, like if I could work out three hours a day and do all of these exercises for my upper body, would I get bigger? All of these exercises for my upper body, would I get bigger? It's like, yeah, of course, if you survived, like if you had the recovery to make the muscle. So there's anabolic and there's catabolic. When you break your muscles down, that's called catabolic. When you rest, sleep and eat, that's called anabolic. And you grow.
Speaker 1:
Now anybody not taking any kind of anabolic steroids are going to need a normal recovery process, and the older you get, the more recovery you need. So finding that sweet spot of what is the right amount of volume for you. And volume is like, how many days a week you work out, how many sets you do, how many reps you do. It's not load as much, it's more volume. How much work do you do? So that's why they work they meaning steroids and again, they also hypertrophy other areas of your body that you don't want right, like your organs, your heart. That's not good. They can anyway. And if you're taking them abusively for years and years and years, they most undoubtedly are going to, and that is very much a health risk. So that's my little rant on that. But that is why they work. So it all comes down to volume. That's what makes us grow. But again, how much volume can you take?
Speaker 1:
Like for me? I have a pretty good idea of my sweet spot, of what works, like I know like can't really or shouldn't really do more than four sets of an exercise. I definitely can't go four sets real close to failure. It just doesn't work for me. I'm better with, like you know, a couple easier sets and then maybe one or two sets close to failure, like on an exercise. Like that seems to be my sweet spot. When I do more than that, I tend to get overtrained. How do I know I'm overtrained? Well, I'm not getting stronger, I'm not resting well, I'm not sleeping well. So I know this about myself and you have to kind of determine what works for you. As I always say, the proof is in the pudding. So like, if you are getting stronger, if you're noticing yourself gaining some more muscle, losing fat, whatever your goals are, then it is working Okay.
Speaker 1:
So ascending sets is just a way to get there. It's. I like it personally. It's it's a great mental warm-up. I, you know I I don't ever go into a workout dreading it when I know I'm doing that because and don't get me wrong it's not like you have to do this only you can do ascending sets in an exercise, descending sets in an exercise, pyramid sets, pre. I mean there's a million things you can do, but this question was about those two. But it's not like you have to lock yourself in and only do like that for the whole workout.
Speaker 1:
So but if let's just say I was going to do like descending sets the entire workout. I might dread it. I'm like, oh man, so I'm going to come off my warmup, I'm going to come off the treadmill and I'm going to warm up on the leg press and then my very first set is going to be a hardest. I'm like, ugh, you know that's not very enticing. So there is that downside. So ascending sets tend to eliminate that stress. You know you're going to build up to it. Now, others don't like that. They're like, yeah, I want to get the heart out of the way. It's like, okay, and now let me just jump to that now. So that's like the beauty of ascending, descending. There's perks too, and I definitely do descending. But I'll explain how I do descending.
Speaker 1:
Now this particular client might be asking because I had him do descending all week, and really it was because we had been doing a pyramid up to that point. And a pyramid is close to ascending sets, except you're changing the reps as you go. So you're increasing the weight as you go, but you're lowering the reps and we call that a pyramid. So that's what we were doing. So it's kind of like ascending, but it's a pyramid very close. So I wanted them to do descending as sort of a do something different type of thing right, something different type of thing right. So it's a great technique.
Speaker 1:
The pros are the fact that this is what I love about it most. So you do get your heaviest set out of the way. But I don't know that. For me that's necessarily like a perk, like I don't know, I warm up and that's great. But what I think is really cool about it is then you can really work on your form the next one or two sets. Like to me that's really really good. I mean not that you should let your form go in your heaviest sets, you shouldn't but as you go down just a little bit, let's just use the leg press as an example. Like the pre-core, leg press is a beast, right. It's like 200 pounds. On it feels like 400 pounds. You know why it is. I found out that that's the way that it's made with its engineering and everything. So anyway, you know it feels really really heavy. So you're pushing and then when you lower it, let's say by 40 pounds, for your second descending set, I mean that feels significantly lighter, but you still get close to fatigue because your muscles are already fatigued.
Speaker 1:
Now here is the downside to descending training. If you're paying attention you could see it's going to be close to almost every set being the failure because your first set recruited all of your muscle fibers. If you got very close to muscular failure, let's just say you went to 90%, so that would be about one rep short of failure. I mean that's really close. And if you're just resting a brief period of time, or even if you rested maximally, you still have enough residual fatigue built up to where you're going to hit failure pretty darn close on the next set. So we do have to watch for overtraining. But if we keep our volume relatively low, like if we are keeping it to like three to six exercises per muscle group or definitely three sets per set of exercise, then we should be okay. But we do have to watch for that. So the beauty of it is you get the hardest set over first and you can really work on your form the next couple sets. The downside is, again you have to watch for overtraining and you kind of have to be ready to roll like right away, which can be hard for people. At the end of the day both can work very, very well. We just have to kind of understand why we're doing them. So in this particular client's case, what he's going to find out when we train more this week is now we're going to do a little bit of both.
Speaker 1:
So here's what I like to do. Often I like to I mean, I do a lot of different techniques but what I like to do with ascending and descending sets, I like to use ascending on more of your compound movements. You know the things that really require more joint warming up, so things like a chest press, a leg press, a squat, a pull down, things like that. So ascending, working up that way. And then I like to do more descending on more primary or isolation exercises like a fly, a leg extension, something like that. So I like to do that. It's just kind of a good technique. And I like to use more descending sets for the smaller muscle groups. Ascending for the larger muscle groups. Again, it's really just technique. So, or or I should say strategy.
Speaker 1:
So it's not like even that's great, that works good for me, and I usually do a lot of things with people that work good for me, and then I watch and I evaluate and I'm like, well, it doesn't work overly good for them, like I'm more of a fast twitcher, so something's going to work for me. That is going to work probably for other fast twitch muscle fiber people, but not work as well with slow twitch muscle fiber people. So I'm always on the alert for that. So we just have to pay attention to what is going on and you, you know how would I know? Do you feel stronger? Did you feel a good muscle pump? Did you leave the workout feeling good or did you leave the workout feeling defeated? I mean, these are all questions to ask. So you know what style works.
Speaker 1:
Like a lot of people love pyramids, you know the famous 12, 10, 8, 6 style where you're going up each time. You know, in a way, that's great for people who are a little bit of ADHD, because you're not ever doing the same thing twice. It's kind of like you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this Again. All roads lead to Rome, so it's like it's really the same thing, right. But tiny little changes in our mind make a huge, huge difference, and I can't say enough how important sports psychology is. When we train and people say well, it's just in my head then and I look at them, I'm like that's everything, man. When you say it's just in my head it's like there's no more important variable than what we think about it. I mean, research has clearly shown that, you know. I mean, let me finish this with a cool little story about that, to just show you the power of the mind. Harpreet great question. Hope I answered it. This week we're going to do a combination. What did you like? Did you like ascending, descending, what do you like? Because it's very important to like what we do and oftentimes it changes. So here is the brief story you're going to love.
Speaker 1:
They did this study years ago in sports psychology actually exercise psychology and they were testing people on the bench press and what they did was they blindfolded them. They knew their maxes and in one group they lied to them and they told them it was heavier than it was and they knew their one rep maxes. They did all their homework. It was a well-done, well-organized study. It's been replicated numerous times, done meta-analysis on this, so there's been a lot of studies to look at the studies. So in one group they well, they lied to both groups. No, there was a control group where they told them the truth, of course, and then they benched their max and all that. But, like in one group, they made the weight heavier than it was and they lied to them it was. They told them it was lighter. And then in the other group, they made it lighter than what they told them and told them it was heavier. So what do you think happened? The group that thought it was lighter, even though it was heavier, was still able to push the weight. The group that thought it was heavier, even though it was lighter than the normal max, was not able to push the weight. The group that thought it was heavier, even though it was lighter than the normal max, was not able to push the weight. So it showed the power of the brain. So when they laid down, and there's, you know, let's just say it was 200 pounds, let's just say their max was 200 pounds. It's probably a lot more than that.
Speaker 1:
I think they did with powerlifters. Well, they've done it with many groups, but one study I've seen the most was with powerlifters. So let's say they told them hey, this is 400 pounds and the best they'd ever done before was 360. Right, so it's, it's, this is 400 pounds. You know you've done 360, this is 400 whatever. And you know they don't even come close to getting the weight and then they flip it and they say, okay, this is 360 pounds, but it's really 400 pounds. They've never done that before. Let's say they've done 380. Don't remember the exact numbers. They get the weight and then afterwards they say you just benched more than you ever had, if it felt like.
Speaker 1:
So it's crazy, the power of the brain. But it also is really cool because that means we need to train our brain. Listen to our brain, but train our brain Like what really works for us, and we have to go into workout strategies, really believing things are going to work and putting our power of positivity into that as well. All right, so now let me thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach. I can personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk. They are clients, they are friends, they are phenomenal business owners and people and they have the best garage door company in Daytona Beach. So check them out at OverheadDoorDaytonacom.