Oct
22
Increase or Decrease Weight By Set?
Filed Under Building Muscles, Work Out
If you’ve been to the gym on a regular basis, you will eventually see the following behavior. Someone is working out with freeweights, doing some common exercise like bench presses. They do a set and then they change weights, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing. They do another set and again they change the weight. In fact, they go on like this for multiple sets, usually four or five, changing the weight each and every time. Is this normal? Is it helpful?
Well, Maybe…
As with many things, the answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you would think. There are reasons for and against both increasing and decreasing weight. However, the difference is rather small. In fact, unless you’re a serious body builder, you probably don’t have much to gain from increasing vs. decreasing weights. However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore the impact of weight altogher.
The Right Weight
The right weight is the one at which, when you do your target number of reps, you can barely do the last rep. For example, if I plan on doing 10 reps, then I should pick a weight where, on the 10th rep, I am barely able to lift the weight. If I can easily do an 11th and a 12th rep, then I’m using a weight that’s too low for me. The same applies to any number of reps. For example, if I want to do 5 reps, then I should pick a weight that will be very difficult on the 5th rep and pretty much impossible on the 6th rep. That’s called “working to failure” or “failure point”. That last rep is the failure point at which you simply cannot complete another full rep. Ideally, every set of exercises you do goes to the failure point.
NOTE - This applies to everyone, not just body builders. And yes, it applies to women too.
What Does This Have To Do With Increasing Or Decreasing Weight?
A lot. Think about the fact that many people do multiple sets. For example, I used to do 4 sets of 10 reps for each exercise. So for example, I would do 10 lunges, rest a few seconds, 10 more, rest, 10 more, rest and then 10 more. That’s 4 sets of 10 reps. Now clearly, as I do more and more of these sets, I’m going to be pretty tired. That means I’m going to have a harder time with the weight.
If I used the same weight for each of these sets, I would have an easy time lifting it on the first set and I might find it impossible to even complete my fourth set. To compensate for that, I would start out with a higher weight and decrease the weight as I progressed in sets. So the first set might be with 120lbs, the second with 110, the third with 100 and the last one with 90.
So Decreasing Weight Is Good?
That’s not what I’m saying. Decreasing weight is just a means to an end. That end is always working each set so that you’re unable to do even one more rep at the end of it. Decreasing the weight was just one way of achieving that. I could have done it in other ways. For example, I can do:
- Set 1 - 12 reps with 100lbs
- Set 2 - 10 reps with 100lbs
- Set 3 - 8 reps with 100lbs
- Set 4 - 6 reps with 100lbs
This way I can keep the weight the same while still working to failure on each set.
Alternatively, I could do:
- Set 1 - 20 reps with 60lbs
- Set 2 - 15 reps with 80 lbs
- Set 3 - 10 reps with 100lbs
- Set 4 - 5 reps with 120lbs
This approach is just as valid.
These days I only do one set of exercises per workout. So I’m never doing multiple weights. However, I do change weights per day so that on Monday I might be doing a set of 10 lunges with 100lbs. In Wednesday I do a set of 5 lunges with 160lbs while on Friday I do a set of 20 lunges with 70lbs. Again, it’s not about increasing or decreasing weight, it’s about always working to failure and making sure that last rep is really the last one that you can do.
One Last Point
The only real benefit of decreasing and increasing weight is change. Change is good for your body. Doing the same thing over and over in the exact same way tends to lead people into a rut. They get stuck with one routine and can never improve. Changing weights can be a way of forcing your body to adapt to different conditions and that’s a good thing. So whether you change weights every set or every day, just keep trying new things and always work towards that failure point.
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Speaking of which, today was my blowout workout with 50% the normal weight and but only half the reps. I loved it! If anyone hasn’t tried something like this before, I highly recommend it.
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Comments
4 Responses to “Increase or Decrease Weight By Set?”
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There is a school of thought that increasing the weight significantly between sets to achieve a roughly 15 - 8 - 4 reps pattern is the best way to recruit as many muscle fibres as possible. This is Arthur Devany’s theory, based on power law. Apparently in the final set you target the fast twitch fibres directly because the slow twitch fibres have already been exhausted and are unable to help. You are also supposed to make consecutive sets more explosive, so that the first set is performed with a relatively slow concentric phase whereas the last should be as explosive as possible…
I know about that theory and have tried it out myself on multiple occasions. However, I never saw significantly better results from it. These days, I’d rather do my reps in a slow and controlled fashion while playing around with weight on various days.
But hey, the best workout is the one that works for you, right? So if this works for you
Gal
i’m educated as an exercise physiologist and have been a teacher and practitioner of strength straining for 29 years. there are many arguments both for, and against such weight/set/repetition structure. there is as much rhetoric in this area as there is in the current political race. in truth, nobody knows anything, except what they believe based on notions. it is impossible to support these notions with accurate data because there are too many variables which skew them. Gal is 100% right, the best workout is the one that works for you. AND, variety is not only the spice of life, it’s profoundly important in exercise!!! too often people adhere to such nonsense without first consider thier goals too. btw: great website Gal, keep it up!
Gal - agreed - in fact I did find some gains from that approach, but when I returned to my original set structure the gains had not really translated into strength with that set structure. So your last point about mixing it up is definately important, which is what I try to do now.