Science of pump sets

[Scott Stevenson]

Instead of making Another thread I will just ask here. As great as DC is, It's really brainwashed me in terms of I refuse to not take any sets to failure. Or at the very least I feel like I've missed out if I don't. Could you briefly describe why you chose loading sets in the higher tiers to not take that first set to failure.

By "brief." you mean not as long as my last answer?... LOL

See p.17 of the book.

Also what Benefit does taking an ISO movement to failure between loading sets. Won't that just fatigue you and take away from your big movement ??

This adds training volume for the intended muscle (but with lesser nervous system stress than the compounds movement) and yes, intentionally fatigues the *target* muscle (pre-fatigues if ou do the Iso exercise before the compound ones) to make sure that, for instance, chest exercises are chest focused vs. anterior delt.

The iso exercise also generally adds variety of stimulus, allowing you to distribute the loading / stress across the muscle belly in a given workout (e.g., use a decline fly with an incline press for pec loading sets).

Order of iso / compound movements for the loading sets also creates another way to re-arrange loading sets if you get to a place where strength is plateauing but you want to stick with certain "go to" exercises. E.g., if you like incline BB presses (in a rack for safety) and are not gaining, you can start putting the ISO fly movement BEFORE the incline BB press and then start gaining (with a lighter BB press load d/t the pre-fatigue) with that Loading set Configuration. (You can also vary out the isolation exercise and keep the same Compound if the compound is the one you dig, or vice versa.)

So, if the actual load used for the iso movement is 10% less, but your'e gaining progressively, you will still gain size. This was / is said many a time in the context of DC training.

I've had people (former DC trainers) try to take every set to failure before and hang with higher volume tiers. This tends to bring their blasts to a screeching halt (e..g, like barely if even 3 weeks in vs. going 5-6 weeks). That seems to extend the time needed to recover between blast as well, such that the normal (⅓ of blast) Intensive cruise time isn't enough: The next blast suffers even more.

But, as I pretty much always say - I'm for folks experimenting to find what works best for them. (But doing things the way I set it out for at least a blast or two give you common ground for discussion with the people who have done the same.)

-S