How many sets?
Workouts are going well, bodyfat is going down, and I feel generally terrific. I keep getting comments about how much “energy” I have–from various sources. So I must be doing something energetic-looking. Fidgeting? Wiggling? Jumping up and down?
The enhanced energy level is making me want to add–though cautiously, very cautiously–more exercise. I’m already occasionally adding an additional day of cardio (the intense kind–not the routine 30 minutes’ walk through the neighborhood with dogs at 5 a.m.), and I’m thinking of adding a fourth weight workout per week. If I do, the number of sets will be ridiculously low: maybe eight to 10. On a typical weights day I’m currently doing only 12 to 14 sets. Not many by volume-training standards.
In the past I’ve slipped into overtraining when I went great guns, but I hope now I’m old enough to figure out what’s happening if I do get excessive.
I’m intrigued by Ian King’s book Get Buffed (yes, silly title but a boatload of information) and his take on the number of sets one should perform. There’s no easy answer, but many factors influence the decision, e.g., one’s age, how active or sedentary one’s job is, how much life stress one has, and how much rest one is getting.
Well, this one has a sedentary desk job, but she has a fair amount of life stress, is no longer a spring chicken, and doesn’t always get as much sleep as she wants. I can do 20+ sets per workout, but within a week or two, my mood is crap and my motivation is gone. When I do a dozen sets per workout, I improve or maintain my strength levels and am eager to get to the gym. That seems to be the magic number for me at this stage of life, with a full-time job, commitments to four separate singing groups, half a dozen dogs, and so on.
The moral of the story is, when you’re losing interest in the gym and think you ought to be doing more, you might need to take a weeklong layoff, then come back to the gym and start doing less.
March 11th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
When I was younger, I could do twenty sets a body part (and we did in those days). But now I’m amazed at how my body really does respond far more to far less.
March 11th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Exactly. 20 years ago, all the books and magazines made it sound like high volume was the only way. I still sometimes feel an irrational twinge of guilt when I end my short but intense workouts . . . but they’re doing the trick.
March 13th, 2005 at 9:02 am
Great advice, Mary. I’ve found it to be exactly what I need in the past. A break, that is. A lot of times it is true … Less is more!