Antti
Level 10 Valued Member
I see that we need to clarify what is GTG. E.g., does Easy Strength qualify? Plan Strong?…
I asked Pavel and he answered:
“While 'greasing of the grove’ takes place with every rep you make—including in ES, PS, and many other types of programming—the GTG method does more than that. It maximizes the results of strength practice by enabling a very high volume through a combination of stopping far from failure (which is not unique to GTG) and extreme rest periods (which is unique). This minimizes stress by reducing the cellular membrane damage by free radicals, spiked in part by lactic acid and cortisol. For a 50% RM set a 10min rest is minimal to produce these effects.
“In summary, GTG is sets with < 50% of the max reps possible with a given resistance with >10 rests between sets, and high training frequency.
-S-
Nice summary.
Now, being who I am, I started thinking what kind of set ranges within these parameters people have generally found work and how well. I wonder if we could establish some trend lines, or if some have been established already.
In general, I would agree that as far performance stays the same, more is better. Still, the effect of each set would diminish. But how rapidly?