Greg Doucette WRONG about 1 Set to Failure ( 

TRY my evidence based, 1 set to failure system HERE www.goldenerasystem.com

When I started working out I did ten sets of ten on almost everything 6 days a week. I was 18 years old 160lbs and gained about 5 pounds of muscle in a year and plateauing for the next three years. Because of work I cut back to 3 sets of 10 four days a week. I gained 15 pounds and my strength shot up massively. My schedule at work got even busier so, I cut back to 1 set of 10 , three days a week and gained 20 pounds the next 4 months and got very strong! Now I’m 53 and still gaining (very slowly) on one workout a week. It seem the bigger and stronger I got, the less I could train and still make gains.

One set to failure, IS all one need. The key is to perform it correctly (slow as mud), and to proper failure. As you say, the issue is that most people do not understand what real failure is...they have not been there...

Coach Greg has the right idea, "train Harder than last time". Except that without proper rest/recovery periods between last time and next time would lead to over training. Train to failure, write every set down on a journal, rest and recover, beat your numbers from last time and repeat.

I just started HIT last month. Bro I’m in love with it. I have a masters in ex. sci. The training principles make perfect sense and are very logically sound

Great content Jay…kudos on the video editing…excellent!

on point video👌how epic would it be to see Jay taking Greg through a HIT session

As I've got better at these workouts, I do alot of rest pause sets as well as drop sets. The gains keep coming.

Great content. And sound logic. Maybe for the next video you could include some client progress pictures.

Good video Jay! I just wanted to ask would it be counterproductive to do a warmup set before one set to failure?

Much appreciated for teaching me this method of training..I first saw you on a vid with Elliot Hulse, it has spared so much , much needed extra time, with excellent results.. so thank you for busting the myth about training I used to believe

A big reason for the skepticism: people pay quite some money for their gym membership and feel cheated if they only have to spend 2x20 minutes there per week. So to „maximize“ their investment they overtrain.. 🙈

Great, I'm starting this kind of training. Just one question. Before doing this set, example of Dips to Failure. How do you prepare before you are ready to do this series? Stretch? warming up? a few repetitions of dips? Cardio? and how long does such a warming take?? Do you have to be congested before this series or not at all? I'm sorry for the translation, I'm from Quebec! THANKS

congrats on 20k subs, don't forget us when you're at 200k 😉

Your messaging/delivery has improved a lot. Great job.

Love it ! I’ve been training Mike Mentzer way since the 80’s , average genetics here , natural , and this just works 👍👍

Yooo. Been training like a normie for years, but I’ve actually put on a lot of muscle. 6’1, 210, 9%bmi. When I saw Jay at first I didn’t believe. I’ve been doing 3 15min workouts a week and I’m getting huge….and very strong. Even my dunks have gotten better from my quick(but brutal)leg day. Don’t listen to Greg, unless it’s about gear 💊

I agree. I also like to do on biceps for range of motion real slow, at the end half reps, even baby reps, and sometimes to extend the set a drop set. on other movements I lift normally until I start to slow down then I do the kind of reps you were showing here. On the big lifts I like to do two sets I like to do a back offset because I like the way it feels after I just did The heavier set

I do one set but doing it just for maintainance to keep what i have got at 70 years old and been training 55 years works for me

How many reps should I be hitting, or does that depend on the exercise!!?? Also I'm using lighter weights to try work on my form first, I have an incline bench with dumbbells and a barbell, the point I'm making is, do I need a gym to hit all body parts??!!

Top notch intro Jay, my dog putting in the work.

I am training with machines 3x a week one set , its working I am done in 20mim to 30min per session. I do reps until I can not move the weight. Pec fly Chest press Row Lat pull down Shoulder press Lateral raise Bicep curl Dip machine Tricep push down 10sec up and 10sec up Than 1x a week legs and Ab I practice one set of pullup and pushup

Can these principles be also applied to weighted chin-ups and dips?

So i actually like both of you very much. I get the titles are to capture attention; i would appreciate if you both got together and did a crossover...you do his typical workout and he does yours. I think your audiences would appreciate...and i hope given his notoriety in the youtube space at the moment, he isnt "too high and mighty" (doubt he is but hard to know). There are good takeaways from both! would love to see it and thanks again for the knowledge.

Me and my brother have been on GES for 2 months now, my brother was skeptical at first, and within a month of seeing his progress he swears by 1 set to failure now as well. People give us some funny looks at the gym, but when they see the sweat, hard breathing, and the extreme exertion out of us the funny looks soon turn to looks of intrigue and interest

what if I do high volume but everything I do is to failure or a drop set (repeated constant drop sets constitute volume)???????

All that is needed is just enough to elicit an adaptive response.

I agree i think intensity is the xfactor.. i do 5 pushups dips and pull ups in-between every set i do and i can tell you i surpassed so many of my buddies at the gym in strength because i never take rest in-between sets

the thing is most people who do sets after sets won't even give the 1 set properly to failure a try. so why do they say it don't work I have been doing this for about 2 years after years of so called volume training and got way better results doing it this way. keep up the good content bro 👌

great idea Jay, you will get more views !

Hi Jay! Great content as usual! Thanks for posting! What is a good target time under load for one set to failure training? I select a weight that keeps mine greater than 1 minute and under 1 minute 15 seconds. That keeps me in the 8 to 10 rep range with about 5 seconds at momentary momentum failure. I think that is what Doug McGuff recommended in Body By Science. Just wondering if your clients have had better results bumping that up to around 90 seconds or so. I'd appreciate your thoughts.... Thanks again.

Only two workouts per week? So gow should we do the One set per exercise? Do full body each WO?

Jay....quick questions for clarity: Let's say that 12 -15 reps is my goal to failure. Now, does that mean that the weight stays the same throughout the number of reps to that failure? OR what if I get to failure at 10, do I take off the extra weight or get a spotter in order to achieve the full 12? If so, should I then have the spotter remove additional weight so I can make it to 15? Technically, if the spotter removes more weight at 15, I could keep going to 30 to reach "failure"...so when is "failure" actually reached? Please clarify. Thanks a million!

At first I thought that greg knew a lot about exercise, as it turns out, he knows almost nothing about exercise 😂

This Greg guy seems to me the brother from Scotty killmer. S talks in length about cars and g talks in length about training and in conclusion after 10 minutes I know as much as before.

One thing that threw me off at first using this training method was the lack of usual muscle soreness. Ive lifted weights on and off since my 20's and I'll be 59 soon. Ive always done 3-6 sets per exercise and what I would always rely on to tell me if it was ok to lift weights again was the presence or absence of any lingering muscle soreness. I really don't seem to get the soreness using the slow intense method so I have to keep track of the days since last workout so I don't train again too soon.

I think there's a major point that's missing, what is the fitness goal? Greg does mention that one set to be healthy is enough. Is being healthy your fitness goal, or is it competing in a weightlifting competition? Competing in the Olympics? 2 entirely different goals that require significant differences in training.

Why not a static hold, as long as possible, @ position of failure, & then a fully-resisted negative?

Hi Jay, I’m going to give your system a try. Would you recommend training the whole body each time or can you still split it into upper and lower body training days? I’m asking because the effect of exercise on your blood sugar when training more frequently would be beneficial.

Tom Platz would train legs once a fortnight! Most of it based around 1 hard set of squats (maybe a drop set as well; he might have done leg extensions and curls as well).

Seems like it comes down to how you perform the reps. If you are banging out your 10 reps quickly you will definitely need more sets to fatigue the muscles properly. But if you are doing grueling max failure sets you don't need any more

You nailed it!

Good job 🙌

Great vid 👌🏽 spot on

Can squats be performed this way?

Great upload. I do have a question pertaining to exercises in a single workout. If you do the shoulder press for one exercise, would going to another shoulder exercise, say side laterals as well in the same workout be overworking?

I'm a don't knock it till I've tried it type of guy... I done programs like super squats one working set 20 forced reps and it's brutal... So I'm trying HIT just to change it up a bit...I find that drop sets are taking me passed failure... For example weighted chins to bodyweight chins to band assisted chins to negative chins one working set...

The only thing I’m not sure about are the super slow reps Vincent. Slow negative yes , but I think a more powerful 1-2 second positive is needed to maximise gains?

"just because you paid a college to teach you utter nonsense does not mean you know anything" .. classic ! actually, it means your fooliah

Can't wait.

i would like to see you react to any mike isreatel video about training, seeing as how he is someone who actually conducts studies on hypertrophy

One set to failure on all exercises is just too hard for a lot of people, they don’t want to know they are pussies. They want to look in the mirror and play with their phones rather than punish themselves. 😂

I started at 14 with an Orbitron weight set and a bench. I was told to lift as much as I could. I did. I probably weighed 140 lbs. 3 years later. I started at 130 lbs. The summer I turned 17 I lifted at a Nautilus studio. Twelve exercises, 1 set to failure. In three months I weighed 150 lbs. For the most part I have used HIT since. As I am 2 months from 60 HIT/Super Slow works best now.

It’s highly unlikely that a new trainee will have the necessary skill set to carry a set of anything to failure in those first few weeks , especially learning the squat .

Should the negative be longer than the positive contraction or the same?

Greg, just proved everything you said 😀😀😀😀

dorian yates in his training videos does explosive concentrics and controled excentrics, but you recommend slow af concentrics, why?

Love the content, been following you for a while. It's great your videos are getting more professional, however, ask your editor to make fewer transitions in the video. It's tiring to the eyes and you're actually super knowledgeable and fluent in your speaking and simply don't need the video to look as if you needed hundreds of cuts and takes. Waiting to see you get to 100k subs, you deserve it 💪

That first video with Elliot Hulse was quite awesome. Elliot is a beast, and like you said, he really got it when he experienced a true HIT session.

💯 truth Jay. By being on the gear you will respond to anything!!!!! Volume or etc even when I competed in the IFBB amateur ranks trying for a pro card. I could tolerate loads of volume and grow like a weed every week. When your off the gear it’s a different mindset and ball game on how different your training has to be after

Greg misunderstood. He thought the other guy said one set per muscle, which is why he said 3-5 sets per muscle twice per week is what research showed. Also, 2 sets for an exercise can be more productive depending on the context. Depends on the individual's recouperative ability.

Henneman's size principle actually held up to scrutiny as well. They've tested it over and over and the result always supports the theory.

Last week I did introduce a friend to workout. I did teach him how to perform a good set with proper technique and doing slow reps ect. He did understand everything immediately. He said that it was logic and that he got surprised about how most of the people that he was seeing in the gym, was doing fast reps, using momentum. He told me that he thinks that machines are better than free weights for getting muscle failure because of that he doesn't need to worry about stabilizing the weight, you only need tu push in the correct place and form. He is a person that wasn't exposed go fitness industry, never watched a RU-vid fitness influencer, never read any magazine... Hes mind is not poisoned by bad advice, marketing and all the believes that involve fitness industry. That's why he could get to those conclusions mostly by himself, because I didn't told him that much.

Gotta stop putting everyone under one umbrella. One set may work for some not for everyone

I like Greg overall but his opinions on certain things has always made me think twice about what he says because for someone with a kinesiology background as well as his experience, he says some extremely outright falsifiable stuff. I think he was reasonably correct in his assessment though that I think intensity is such a mitigating factor in the single set protocol. And many people simply can’t channel that.

I’m a video, Please post your 7 years of client photo body transformations for us. Filing cabinets of workout charts doesn’t show us much. 50-70 sessions per week for 7 years. Doubt it. Unless these are 30 min sessions. Post the transformation pics. Ppl will be more likely to believe your claims.

Different routines work for different people. I try everything to keep growing.

Hi there Jay, I've been watching your content for a few months now and I've been implementing a similar training style. I was just wondering if you know of more studies that I could take a look at regarding the one-set vs multiple-set training principle with all other variables controlled. Reading through the studies linked in the video, it seems that they were all performed on untrained individuals, who have a stronger growth response to most stressful stimuli. Perhaps outcomes may have been different for a trained individual, I'm not sure...? (Also, excuse me if I'm incorrect, but the study: "Effects of training volume on strength and hypertrophy in young men" seems to conclude that 3 sets produced greater cross-sectional area increases?) Thanks and the content is enjoyable, keep it up. 👍

I've been in the gym for 45 years since I was a teen. Only after finding Jay here on RU-vid and taking his advice to the letter, training one set only, have I seen visible improvements at every visit to the gym. All through my prime years, 20s and 30s, I didn't improve as fast as I am now I'm in my 60s. I've never looked better. Gutted I didn't find jay years ago, but better late than never.

Very good comments, thanks!

The system only calls for 1 set per exercise but it's not just 1 exercise. Dorian did up to 4 per body part if i remember correctly

You are both right to be fair both styles work but not for everyone. I’ve done every split going mostly high volume I’ve just recently started HIT and I love it. I’ve recorded all my workouts for years and high volume work I tend to plateau quicker and at times when I get stuck I used to put the weight up and add more exercises and reps and sets and I even started to go backwards so it’s true that the more you do the worse off you can get for me anyways. But with HIT my reps and weight are going up and have been each week I’ve even got to the point where I am litterly doing one set to failure after the warm up phase. And the sets and weight are going up that tells me it’s working. I’ve trained with a few people tho who have been doing similar programs it’s based on Dorian Yates not Mike there is more volume then mentzers and it’s not working for them. They’ve went back to higher volume programs and there growing again 🤷. This is why it’s essential to track your progress which I’m surprised a hell of a lot of people don’t do when they go to the gym they just wing it.

it works if you do working set, rest pause, and drop sets.

Other guy instantly loses argument simply by the fact that he sounds like my grandma.

For refined routines it's a great tool to use at least

Why does Greg always come across like a proper Nugget??

Greg has a point. Most people will not have the will power to make that one set hard enough. It isn’t comfortable, and 95% would fail. But training 4 sets with 10 reps, with 1-2 minutes pause in between sets, is obviously very inefficient. The first 5-6 reps of each set is junk volume. It’s only the last hard reps that really count. The middle ground is rest-pause sets. It eliminates the junk volume at the beginning of ordinary sets.

One set per exercise but how many exercises per muscle ?

I like the Nick Walker approach. 3 sets: Warm up, Main set, drop for blood flow set

Is there something to the fact that some people can’t handle the intensity? It’s very painful haha

Greg's argument doesn't make sense. He's essentially contradicting himself, he's telling people to train harder while keeping volume up?? If you actually train that hard then you will need much fewer sets to get an appropriate stimulus.

Both arguments are strong but before I pick a side I would like to know who? If any took the mRNA vaccine? And will there be an answer?

outstanding vídeo Jay!Maybe a idiot proof aproach vídeo like this at least make People consider this.Ivr Been working out like this 2 times/week, for 6 months and never been so strong and rested in my Life.Of Course the workouts are Hell but as i know ill rest plenty between workouts i can push myself. What i do with the time im not in the gym? i can focus on my diet for example, prep my meals and such.

I think the key emphasis to HIT isn't really one set to failure. It's working the muscle and then giving them time to recover. The latter of which is often not the case. Whether you use one set, two sets, or more. The point is to trigger an adaption response and then allow that response to happen.

Jay, can you talk about why your workout looks very different than watching Dorian Yates workout, both being a HIT workout ? Thx !

Why is Greg using helium every time he is on cam?

You should talk to Bart Kay and/or look at his videos he is an exercise physiologist.

I've been training one set to failure for about 3 months, and my arms especially look way bigger.

jay vincent doesn't like youtube drama lol

Mentzer is my idol but I prefer 2 sets with less time under tension because I hate very slow reps

It would be amazing if you guys collaborated with stuff. Same with Derek from More Plates More Dates. I mostly just wanna see you guys shit all over Mike O'Tren

I am currently recovering from multiple strains and injury. I usually don't listen to anyone who says my way is the only way and everyone else is wrong. Millions of people have built great physiques with high volume. I know and athlete who lost size and strength doing HIT. Everyone has different responses...no one size fits all...sorry Jay. But I am gonna try this style for 3 months because it seems.appropriate for me at the time. I am recovering... short on time and need a joint friendly program since I am 57. We shall see. I start today

If greg responds , and 99% He does cause you're brillant, I feel we have a long serie of back and forth right there lol

Let me tell u agree with u 100 but did notice the issue with sticking points

Hi Jay. I corrected your shifty technique a while back. Hope you have stopped tucking your chin bending your neck !

Jay Vincent is a stud. If you can convert Hulse you know you’re legit

I use to do 3 -5 hard sets and now I do one set with no pauses and muscles constantly loaded until true failure and I'm smoked!!!! I swear in one week I can see the difference!!!

I train my clients 1 set to failure and I have clients in their 50’s that are still crushing it. Going more is a waste of time

I rather listen to Mike mentzer and you jay I do 2 sets and grow more then I ever thought possible volume don’t work for me and my twin but once we did the switch to high intensity training we grew and got more stronger it was mind blowing

i'm confused