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Thanks for this, there's a lot of good info here. I think I'll have a number of followup questions as I really go through this. But my first question - how exactly are you defining a "set"? Is it when you do x reps (where x is anything between 5 and 30) in one sitting, continually, and you've gone close to complete failure at the end of x reps?
If you're saying I want to do 6 sets per muscle per week, and I want to try to fully exhaust that muscle in 12 reps, does that mean that I should be expecting to do 72 reps per muscle per week? Can they be all the same (like for example, could I do bench presses for all 72 chest reps in a week)?
Exactly correct, it's basically doing repetitions with correct, reasonably slow form until you can't do anymore (or get within 1 or 2 repetitions of that). Generally you'd then take around 2 or 3 minutes of rest before doing another set.
Yup, 6 sets is a decent start, but you should really aim for 10 sets/week. And thinking in terms of "reps per muscle" isn't too accurate, the last few reps within a set have an outsized effect on muscle growth, the fundamental unit here is really sets rather than reps. A decent simplification is that the more exposure to a state close to complete failure your muscles get, the more growth stimulus. Going all the way to complete failure is only recommended on the last set of your exercises for a give muscle for the day, because going to failure exhausts you quite a bit for future sets. So if you're going 3 sets of bench press, go just shy of failure on the first 2, then all out on the last one. And here "failure" means "you literally can't lift the bar anymore, even with a gun your head", not "it hurts pretty bad". That's also partly why I mention 12 reps instead of 20 reps, going to failure in 12 reps is quite a bit less painful than going to failure in 20 reps, or heaven forbid 25 reps, which is truly a hellish feeling, yet the set of 12 to failure and the one of 25 to failure yield pretty much the same growth.
Certainly, though at some point you might want some extra variety and add in some chest flys if you have the equipment, but that's details with effect sizes well below any of the other factors we're talking about. The bench press is pretty much the king of chest exercises. If you have a barbell, I'd also recommend something called a Pendlay Row as your main back exercise
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