All right, guys, I'm going to give you a really fast workout here, one set. And yes,
it is possible to stimulate muscle growth with one set. If you guys caught my video
on Mike Mentzer about how to build your biceps or train your biceps, it's possible, but you have to
be willing to put the effort in. I want to show you and take you through what that actually looks
like. And if you want to adopt this, especially in times when you've got to get in and out of the
gym and you don't want to sacrifice, this is what we do. So today is a chest workout, all right,
just doing chest. How do we do chest in one set? Again, utilizing a lot of mentors principles. So,
the first thing is you do have to warm up. So, it's not technically just one set total,
you do have to do some sort of a warmup. The first thing I do is get to the ground for a push-up. And
like I said, I want to bring value in this series to you, to take you through my mind so that you
know why we're doing what we're doing, and you can actually shoot for the same thing. So, for me, I'm
doing a push-up, even though it's not going to be one of the exercises that we do in the workout.
And there's two ways to do a push-up as far as I'm concerned. The first way is to do it where
you're just performing the movement so that I can warm up the wrist, the elbow and the shoulders,
right? Just by going through the excursion here on every rep, I'm starting to warm up these joints.
Now, there's the other way that I've talked to you about doing a push-up for actual chest hypertrophy
where we try to squeeze off the ground, shoulders back down, squeeze up, engage the chest,
really try to fire up the chest as the prime mover. That's not the purpose here. You're not
trying to exhaust yourself before the actual main event. So, I'm just looking to do my warmup set
again, not to failure here, but just get my joints feeling pretty loose.
Okay. Probably another two or three. I can literally feel things literally starting to get
warm, actually even to the touch, starting to warm up. Now, again, not fatigued, but I'm starting to
feel like I'm at least ready to go now. The next thing I do is I start considering
what is this set going to look like? Well, the set according to Mentzer is broken down into two
parts. There's a pre-exhaust exercise that comes first that's more isolated on the chest. And then
there's the second half where I'm going to use an exercise that incorporates that same chest but has
additional help, in this case, from the shoulders and the triceps. So, our choices are going to be
here a crossover, and I'm going to show you how we're going to do it in a little bit of a
unique way as a high to low. I'll explain why in a second. And then we're going to do the Dumbbell
Bench Press. Okay. Now, as far as the weights that you're choosing here, you have to start
thinking ahead. I'm going to choose a weight for that main event, one set that's about 20%
less than what I would use for a typical set of, let's say 10 or 11 or 12 reps, okay. So, for me,
I'm going to choose 80s as my working weight for this, knowing that again in a typical set,
not pre-exhausted first I would handle more weight. Okay, now what I do though is take
that exercise because I have a second purpose for warmup here. I'm going to go about a little bit
more than half of that working weight. So, let's say 45s or so. I'm going to do the actual exercise
because what I want to do is feel comfortable when I've only got that one set to get this right.
I want to feel comfortable that I've grooved that exact movement, okay. So, I take my 45s
and what I'm going for here again is not maximal chest stimulation. I'm trying to just make sure
that I can find that groove of where I want these dumbbells. And I always tell you guys, the target
point should be the lower outer chest right here. The touch point should be the lower outer chest,
right on the bottom of that line. And again, when I can keep my wrists stacked right below
the dumbbells and with the elbow below the wrist, I have a good, strong position to press from.
Okay, I also like to tilt those dumbbells up a little bit as I come up towards the top with
just a little bit of a lift from the thumbs like that. Okay, now that's it. Again, I feel
like I'm in a good spot, this is where I'm going to want to press from when we start going here.
And that's all I'm trying to accomplish is get the movement ready and for me to feel good. Now,
I know there will be some objections about this style of training and whether or not it's even
something that you want to try to do. When I'm done with this set, I will answer those objections
and try to handle every single one of them that I know will likely come ahead of time.
So now, I m getting ready now for the actual workout. I don't need -- to me I don't need
to do anything else. I'm already feeling loose, warmed up, I'm ready to go. If you need to do an
additional set, I would go a little bit more up the rack. Again, if working weight was going to
be 80, I could come up here maybe to the 55s or 60s and do one more set the same way. So,
what I'm trying to do with this exercise with a high to low is be a little bit respectful
of the shoulder capsule, the anterior shoulder capsule. So, if I were to turn this into just
a regular Fly from here, and again, you might be asking, did it make sense to use a regular
Arnold Chest Fly from the bench? He did. You can if you want to substitute it here,
you might. That's fine. I don't like exercise. I think as a physical therapist,
I don't like the stress it puts on the front of the shoulder, so I'm not doing it. And I don't
like the fact that even with a Fly here, this is a bit of a position where I could find myself in
some of that anterior shoulder capsule distress if I had that extreme stretch back here, because
you do want to try to get a stretch going. So, what I do, though, is go from high to low
so that I can get that stretch but not have all that shoulder capsule irritation or potential
for that. So, I think it's time to go. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this down,
take this down, all right, and we're getting ready to rock. The goal repetition here is 6 to 10,
trying to choose a weight that will cause fatigue in the 6 to 10 rep range. If for some reason I
undershoot that you're still trying to go to all out failure. When I say all out failure,
I'm going to demonstrate here because I want you guys to see what that's like. That's -- this is
the secret to the effectiveness of this workout. I'm going to come down and across. So, this is
going to work both that sort of lower pec portion and of course, the sternal portion of the pecs.
So, I'm going for that good hard contraction. Here is where I want
to get every single ounce of effort on every rep.
Five. Good slow eccentric. Six.
Seven. Most people would stop right here, okay. That's not how you perform these.
Eight. Oh, my God. See I m already lit up.
Hard on the eccentric here, nine. Nine little momentum if I have to.
All right, that's it. Now, you don't take any rest time, minimal rest,
heading right into the second part. This is literally it, this is the second part here.
This is where you have to really push it.
That low touch point.
Very difficult. Slow, eccentric.
Oh, God Almighty. I literally fought for that last rep as hard as I could.
That will be it. That will be it. Now, one consideration, if you weren't able
to grind, I think I had a good grind there for about two to three reps, knowing that I went to
absolute failure. If I didn't feel like I did it and I went to suddenly to failure from that second
to last rep to the last rep, you could do this. And I know this is not Mike Mentzer approved,
I use it with my athletes, and it works. I would grab an additional weight, just about half the
weight, a little bit over half, so probably back to that warmup weight of 45s. I come back in as a
drop set. Because again, my goal here is to ensure that I go to absolute failure, and I want to make
sure I do that. So, if I hit it too fast, it could be that the heavier weight caused that to happen
so quickly. But here with the lighter weight, I do have an ability to really squeeze through
every rep, make sure I'm recruiting every last fiber that's available to perform the exercise,
get those good controls, slow eccentrics.
I mean, this is brutal at this point, I've literally got nothing left.
Slow, eccentric.
Nothing. So that would be
optional if you felt like you had that left in you. Now, even then, if I had access to
somebody who I was training with, like Jesse, I definitely would not have had to have done
that drop set portion of it. Because I could have just had him spotting me so that when I started to
struggle concentrically on that positive portion of the rep, as you see here, he could have just
been spotting me through that and allowing me to fight through yet another negative.
This is something that Mike didn't use all the time because it is definitely a supremely
challenging technique to apply with ultra-high intensity, but now forced repetitions and negative
only repetitions. But it will ensure that you maximally stimulate that muscle and get the hell
out of the gym. So that being said, that's what the workout looks like. Now I start answering
some of the objections that might come. Okay, so now let's talk about those objections,
because I know you guys might have some questions. First of all, let me clarify,
this is not how I'm advocating you got to run out and start training and never train any
other way. What I'm trying to show you here is that by manipulating the variables of intensity,
we can certainly drop volume way down and still have an effective dose that's required
for building muscle. So, the first thing would be, is this one set actually enough? And for that I do
want to defer to something Mike Mentzer said here, because I think it's actually very interesting.
[Video clip] On occasion I've had a phone client ask, Mike, would it make a difference? Would it
be the mistake to do a second set? You keep making such a big deal about doing one set.
And I respond something to the effect that doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable.
In fact, it would be the biggest mistake you can make. Going from one set to two sets is literally
the biggest mistake you can make, because going from one to two audience is not merely a linear
increase of one unit, one to two, it represents a doubling. A 100% increase in the volume of the
exercise. And remember, that's a negative. Even once that represents a negative, because insofar
that you train it all, you make an inroad. Well, some people might say, well, Mike, if I
do a second set, maybe I'll get a little bit more growth stimulation. But then I point out whatever
little bit extra growth stimulation, you made a doubly deeper recovery ability, so that negates
any greater growth stimulation. [End clip] And what I like most about that is that if it is
this idea of physiologically that once we turn on that switch, that that's what's required,
that's the stimulus and that the rest of that is supported by what we do outside of the gym and
supporting our recovery. It is very much enough because you've actually done enough to do that.
And a lot of times when we train sub maximally and even far more maximally than we think we are,
we're not ever really flipping that switch effectively or it takes us a lot of volume in
order to do it. Because I said you can actually do this a lot of different ways. Lots of volume
will do it, but we'll do it as efficiently and we're looking for a quick workout option,
this could be exactly what you're looking for. The second thing, but Jeff, is this for beginners
or intermediate or advanced, who's this for? I would also say that this isn't really a good
beginner technique because it isn't necessary. You don't need to train at that level of intensity as
a beginner in order to stimulate muscle growth. You could just walk by a weight sometimes and
sneeze and you'll get some muscle gains. You don't need those kind of techniques. However,
at the advanced side of this, I think we have to start considering some of the other data that
we have. We know that training at a submaximal effort is still going to provide you with muscle
growth. However much of a difference we still don't know exactly and can't quantify that,
but it doesn't mean that you can't get gains by training at a lower intensity level.
But I think we all can agree that it should be within one or two reps of failure. The good thing
about advanced lifters is that they have the most ability to appreciate what that exact one to two
RIR is and how it feels so they know when they're truly there. I think a lot of us, though, a lot of
people watching fall into this middle category, I mean, a lot of people watching fall into that
middle category. Even when we have quite a bit of experience lifting weights, we don't really know
exactly what our true capacity is. And if you think you're putting one or two in the tank and
you're actually saving two more than that because you're not really training all the way till
failure, well you're one or two RIR becomes four. And that becomes a submaximal effort and not a
good stimulator of new muscle growth. So, I think it really, really does an effective job for that
big, large group in the middle, most of who are probably watching this video right now and could
benefit from trying this, at least for a time. Just trying to switch over to this for a time.
The third thing, Is this too intense for older guys and girls? Now, as one of those
somewhat older guys, I will tell you, I believe it's actually the opposite. And as a physical
therapist, I will tell you, I believe it's opposite and beneficial in another way because
it does save some of those rotations on the tire. Sometimes, no matter how much load we have in our
hand, just the excursion alone through this joint over and over and over and over and over and over
again, that can lead to some of the wear and tear on those joints. It just happens as we age. Well,
if we can actually trade that off and take fewer repetitions but increase the
effect through higher intensity, I actually think this could be a much safer way for
us to train as we start to get older. The fourth thing, does this work out only
work if you're on steroids? I can 100% tell you that that's not the case. As a matter of fact,
my first foray into this type of training was when I was younger, and I was looking for some way to
get away from the 45 set bodybuilding magazine workouts I was doing. And by doing this and
focusing more on my recovery, I was able to see a lot better gains and I was stuck being a skinny
hard gainer for a long, long time. Now, even as I age with lots of experience under my belt,
still, going back to these training methods as a natural lifter has only helped me, especially
as I've been trying to recover from some of the injuries I discussed in other videos. Finally,
and by the way, Mike Mentzer himself trained both naturally and on steroids and advocated
for the effectiveness of this, particularly for when he was training naturally.
The last thing, What if I enjoy the pump or I want to hit my muscles from different angles? Guys,
I can assure you, number one, this has created quite a pump. I mean, my chest here is lit up
from just doing that one combination of the set plus a couple of warmups. You will definitely get
a pump from this if you do it right and you exert that maximum intensity. The second thing, though,
good point, what about training from different angles? I like to hit my chest from all different
angles. There's no saying that you're married to these two exercises. I even invited you, if you
wanted to, to do a Chest Fly in the beginning, if that's what you felt was a better exercise
for you. I don't like the exercise I think this is a better alternative that I showed you. But
you could do that if you wanted to. You could go low to high if you wanted to, right? I just
think that's a good protection for the anterior shoulder capsule, but you're going to get the same
protection down here so you can hit the upper chest. If you started out with a low of high,
you could change that to an Incline Bench Press. As a matter of fact, Mike liked it as an Incline
Bench Press. You can hit these exercises with a little bit less of a dogmatic approach as long as
you're hitting the muscle in complementary ways between your pre-exhaust and second set and also
doing it with that all out required intensity. So, the idea here, guys, is something you can
explore. If you found the video helpful, I will cover more of these workouts for you. I will show
you exactly in real time what it's supposed to look like, how you should be thinking about the
workout as you're doing it, and what you should be trying to get out of it. And a one set workout can
sometimes come in really damn handy when you're looking at get results and you just don't have
all that much time to do it. You don't have to sacrifice the results that you're looking for.
Speaking of that, guys, if you're looking for supplements that will support your hard work so
you're not sacrificing your hard work in the gym, you can find them over at Athlean-RX,
high quality protein pre workouts and also, we have our programs over there as well,
guys. If you found the video helpful, leave your comments and thumbs up below. What do
you want to see next in the series? I'll do that. And also, if you haven't done so,
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or any other when I put one out. All right, guys, good luck, you're going to need it.