Mike Israetel

If you work really hard and bring yourself very close to failure, you can already do super, super well just with that alone. If you get a really good cook, someone who really knows how to make food, and you give them an hour in the kitchen with a variety of menu items versus three hours, within an hour, they can wow you with what you're eating.

Within three, they can wow you more, but it's not three times more. Matrix-related orgasmic brownie or whatever. They ain't gonna make that. There's gonna take them a lot longer than three hours. They can make a difference, but probably only people who are very culinarily attuned can tell.

Within three, they can wow you more, but it's not three times more. Matrix-related orgasmic brownie or whatever. They ain't gonna make that. There's gonna take them a lot longer than three hours. They can make a difference, but probably only people who are very culinarily attuned can tell.

If someone makes me chicken fingers, gourmet chicken fingers, if there's even such a thing, I'm sure Austin has something like that. An hour versus three, to me, it all tastes same, same. It's amazing. To someone really, really with a refined palate, they'll be able to tell, but they can't lie to you and say, look, this three-hour chicken finger, this is just categories above the one-hour one.

If someone makes me chicken fingers, gourmet chicken fingers, if there's even such a thing, I'm sure Austin has something like that. An hour versus three, to me, it all tastes same, same. It's amazing. To someone really, really with a refined palate, they'll be able to tell, but they can't lie to you and say, look, this three-hour chicken finger, this is just categories above the one-hour one.

So in a lot of processes in general, and luckily in the human body, getting some of the way to your body's maximum ability to recover actually brings you most of the way as far as results. And that's why Dorian could do what he did.

So in a lot of processes in general, and luckily in the human body, getting some of the way to your body's maximum ability to recover actually brings you most of the way as far as results. And that's why Dorian could do what he did.

It's not 100% clear exactly what Dorian did or if he even did everything exactly as it was written on paper all the time. You see his training videos. You don't always see just one set. He would also have this thing like a warmup set that for him was a warmup, but for most people would absolutely be a work set. So it may be more like two or three equivalents of a working set per exercise.

It's not 100% clear exactly what Dorian did or if he even did everything exactly as it was written on paper all the time. You see his training videos. You don't always see just one set. He would also have this thing like a warmup set that for him was a warmup, but for most people would absolutely be a work set. So it may be more like two or three equivalents of a working set per exercise.

Right. Yes. So according to his categorization, the only work set was the one that was absolutely to true muscular failure, sometimes with forced repetitions, which you would also have to integrate because forced reps is when someone helps you lift the rest of the weight, or if you do a drop set, you use less weight right after you went to failure. We shouldn't count that as just one set.

Right. Yes. So according to his categorization, the only work set was the one that was absolutely to true muscular failure, sometimes with forced repetitions, which you would also have to integrate because forced reps is when someone helps you lift the rest of the weight, or if you do a drop set, you use less weight right after you went to failure. We shouldn't count that as just one set.

It wouldn't be the most correct way to think about it.

It wouldn't be the most correct way to think about it.

Almost all of the literature that has found out that if you don't systemically fatigue the whole body too much, Any given muscle or several muscles you can push into the 30, 40, 50 plus set range per week. Almost every single study done to elucidate that understanding was done with muscular failure studies. True failure.

Almost all of the literature that has found out that if you don't systemically fatigue the whole body too much, Any given muscle or several muscles you can push into the 30, 40, 50 plus set range per week. Almost every single study done to elucidate that understanding was done with muscular failure studies. True failure.

Truer failure than you'll see in the gym because these people are training in laboratory conditions with master students screaming at them to keep going. Most of us have never trained that hard consistently. So people can still recover.

Truer failure than you'll see in the gym because these people are training in laboratory conditions with master students screaming at them to keep going. Most of us have never trained that hard consistently. So people can still recover.

Now, these are undergraduates that are recreationally trained typically, so they can neither do a lot of damage, nor are they impeded by age and prior injury and all this other thing. So I would say that whatever amount of sets you have to do to get a certain amount of whatever amount of growth you want. You can get there in a few different ways.

Now, these are undergraduates that are recreationally trained typically, so they can neither do a lot of damage, nor are they impeded by age and prior injury and all this other thing. So I would say that whatever amount of sets you have to do to get a certain amount of whatever amount of growth you want. You can get there in a few different ways.

You can get there with, let's say, 30 sets that are four reps shy of failure. You can get there with 22 sets that are one or two reps shy of failure. And you can get there with 20 sets that are all the way to absolute muscular failure. So if you are really training not so super hard for reps in reserve, you'll have to do substantially more sets to see the same hypertrophy.