Anatoly - 25 November 2011 04:21 AM
Lyle wrote a review on this one, if somebody interested
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/strength-and-neuromuscular-adaptation-following-one-four-and-eight-sets-of-high-intensity-resistance-exercise-in-trained-males-research-review.html
I find it interesting that they found far more high responders in the 8 set group than the 1 set group and had to stop myself concluding that more people respond better to high set training.
There may have been a pre-selection that scewed the results a bit. Assuming high volume is still the standard training method/dogma in commercial gyms. It may have been the case for a large part of the gym population (where the subjects came from) (maybe unknowingly) responded well to 1 set routines and badly to 8 set routines, but that these people were automatically not selected for the study, because they were not strong enough. Also a lot of people stop weightlifting when they don’t get results from it. So you may end up with a gym population in which most people high responders to 8 set routines.
Also, they only tested lower body strength and the lower body may respond better to higher volumes. Then again, the whole body needs to get stronger in some way to get better at max squats imo.
I liked Lyle’s comment about time investment versus results. Although I do think you should test if you are responding well to high volume (like the researchers suggest) to better determine if 1 set protocols are a good investment of your time, because only getting 0-2% stronger after weeks and weeks of time investment is just not a good investment even if you only did 1 set per exercise and it does not have to cost that much more time to get better results.
