MB #059: Build more muscle with just one of these sets

This one accounts for 50% of your gains

Author

Chris Cirullo
April 28, 2024

Read Time: ~3 Minutes

Hey friends,

Welcome to The Mission Briefing, a weekly newsletter where I provide actionable insights, food for thought, curated recommendations, and more.

Today at a glance:

  • Food for thought: Food + Drugs + Disease

  • Quote: Shouting Children

  • Health tips: The set that builds all the muscle

  • Book: Boundless

  • Social Media: Entrepreneurship Masterclass

🧠 Food For Thought:

40% of Americans are obese now, and that’s climbing every year. Heart disease and cancer are on the rise. Diabetes and metabolic disease are on the rise. Autism, auto-immune, etc. all on the rise. Male testosterone levels are plummeting compared to 30 years ago...the list goes on.

And the primary things that have changed in the last 50-70 years is our food and our medicine.

✍️ Quote Of The Week:

"In Western culture, the joyous shouting of children often irritates us because it interferes with our depression. That is why we have invented a term, hyperactivity, so that we can, in good conscience, sedate the spontaneous joy in many of our children."

Ronald Rolheiser

💪 Health & Fitness Tips:

If you walk into the gym, warm up, and do a single set to failure, how many more sets do you need to do, in order to EQUAL that amount of stimulus that you got from that one set?

Answer: It takes about 5 more sets to double that same amount of stimulus when the rest periods are adequate (eg more than 2 minutes according to the research).

This is because the dose-response to volume is NON-LINEAR, and it’s very clear across all of the data, that there is a reduction of stimulus in each set performed.

What this means is, that while multi-set routines ARE more advantageous than just performing a single set to failure, you can get more than 50% of the benefit of a training session by having your first main working set be to utter and complete failure.

Keep in mind that failure ISN’T the same as “burning”, or feeling super fatigued, or that you’re in so much discomfort that you just want to put the weight down.

Failure is when the muscle legitimately has reached the end of the road. It can no longer move that weight in the same manner (good form), any longer.

This one set to utter failure at the beginning of an exercise while freshest, needs 5 more sets to failure in order to double the effect.

The moral of the story? Warm up really well, and start out STRONG. Otherwise, you missing out on a ton of muscle-building benefit.

📚 Book Recommendation:

Boundless - Ben Greenfield created a smash hit with this amazing collection of health optimization and biohacking insights, strategies, and research. Disclaimer, this is 640 pages packed with scientific “stuff” so if you desire to learn more and that’s your thing, you’ll LOVE this.

📱 Social Media Favorites:

As a father seeking to obey the scriptures and leave an inheritance for my children’s children, it’s no secret that as a business owner I pray I can continue to grow my business, and God willing start more businesses and invest in other asset classes. If you’re interested in those concepts but not sure exactly where to start, this Ali Abdaal YouTube podcast interviewing Daniel Priestley was in fact a “masterclass” as the title says. Highly recommend it:

PS. When you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help more:

1/ Grab our 90-day Tactical Fit Guide. Drop tons of body fat. Get "strong like ox". Transform your health. Improve your faith. Lead your family. Impact your community.

2/ Apply for our premium coaching experience Our elite coaching experience. This is only for the most dedicated and serious fathers who want to dig deep into the underlying junk that has been holding them back from a vibrant life of freedom. Serious inquiries only, please.