Dr. Layne Norton

So when I say mechanical tension, I think a lot of people misinterpret that as it's got to be heavy, you know, and I'm like, well, if you want max mechanical tension, just do the most eccentrically loaded exercise you can possibly do.

That'll be the most mechanical tension for one rep.

But it's really about

what is the number of hard sets that you do?

And by hard sets, I mean proximity to failure.

Now, the research seems to suggest for muscular hypertrophy, you have to get within a few reps of failure to really maximize the response, but you probably don't need to go all the way to failure.

And this is probably conflated by the fact that if you're always training to failure, especially compounds, your performance and the load you can use is going to drastically fall off.

For example, if I did a 10-rep max set of squats, like my absolute best – I actually remember the set.

I did 530 for 10 reps, I think, something like that in squat –

After it was done, I had to lay down for 15 minutes.

I couldn't move, like physically could not move.

If you asked me to do that again, I might've gotten, I don't know, two reps, something like that.

And so if you're doing that big compound movements like that, it's gonna be hard for you to actually get a lot of effective sets in because it's so fatiguing.

Now, isolation stuff, a little bit different.

Single joint movements, a little bit different.

you can kind of push those a little bit harder and actually probably should push those a little bit harder.

One of the best descriptions I heard was intensity is the medicine.

So hard sets close to failure is the medicine.

The number of hard sets or the volume we'll call it is the dosage.

So we have several meta analyses now and meta regressions kind of suggesting that