Plateau Breakers: The Secret Of The Five Sets

So you want to keep doing the same exercise but can’t progress anymore? Then you need the secret of the five steady sets!

The Set Paradigm

You all know the drill: do three sets for as many reps as possible.

But at some point no more reps will be coming along and then you have the choice of either doing a different exercise for the same muscle group or doing the same exercise in a different way.

I already discussed various ways to do the latter here, here and here, but today we’ll tackle this from a different angle. We’ll keep the weight and reps per set steady, and instead play around a bit with the number of sets you do:

Once More: Don’t Overdo It

As with all those other plateau-breaking techniques we talked about, you shouldn’t do this all the time, because it will become less effective. It also tends to become tiresome to do one exercise for five sets.

In my experience, one month of this is enough. When you then go back to doing your regular three sets, you should be able to squeeze out at least one rep more than before.

Picture courtesy of Steve Johnson.