Shorter Sets To Get More From Your Workout – What the Research Says

There's some really interesting research coming out on resistance training in postmenopausal women that made me stop and think about how we organize a workout. And I want you to stop too. So it's not just how much are you lifting? It's not just how many repetitions or sets are you doing, but how are those repetitions distributed? For time's sake, any given week when I'm rushed and our clients are, I have several tricks woven throughout the programming and that break the rule of traditional 3 sets, 10 repetitions. And though that is still a solid default, if you're doing that, you're not doing anything wrong.

But I employ things like monster, also called drop sets, rest-pause sets.

And now there is something newer to consider because we're beginning to see that you may be able to do the same amount of work and preserve more power, more velocity, that is moving with speed, And more force simply by changing how many repetitions you do before you rest. And immediately, as strength and conditioning coach, I have another question. If I make those sets shorter, meaning fewer repetitions, and deliberately reduce muscle fatigue, am I also reducing some of the absolute strength and neuromuscular adaptations I want women to get? From lifting, at least with intensity, if not heavy. And that's the question, or therein the questions, that I want to unpack in this episode, because I don't want you to hear shorter sets creates less fatigue, translating that into women after menopause should lift lighter. It's not that. And/or women after menopause should not reach muscle fatigue. It's not that either. And that's why we really need to break this down because any given scientific study has a very narrow window that it is studying and a very narrow question it's answering. Let's dive into that in this episode.

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So, as always, you will find the references in the show notes, so you can go for the full reference to the show notes on Flipping Fifty. Just so you know in advance, one of the CARE project studies—that's capital C, capital A, capital R, capital E—one of the CARE project studies looked at physically active postmenopausal women and manipulated the set configuration. That's an important detail to understand. They weren't simply comparing a hard workout with an easy workout. They manipulated how repetitions given to subjects were distributed. Women were working with a load based on their 12-repetition maximum. 12 RMs, if you will. So I want you to think about that as, I told you, as your coach or trainer, I want you to pick a weight that you will reach muscular fatigue in 12 reps, not 13 or 14, but really 12 reps. And we all know that success sometimes looks like, okay, I was aiming for 12, I reached fatigue in 10 or 11. Or, today I felt really good and that's the weight I usually pick, but I was able to get 13 or 14. It is a plus or minus, generally a couple repetitions. Because it's not an exact science. We do a lot of different things. We sleep a lot of different ways. Stress impacts us a lot of different ways. Just understand 12 is the goal, okay? And you're going to have a little wiggle room or latitude, plus-minus. Think about a resistance you could perform approximately 12 times if you continued the set. But this is where it gets interesting. Instead of necessarily doing all those repetitions consecutively, researchers broke the work into different configurations. So they tested a multitude of ways to do those weight loads that was a 12-repetition max. One of those was 9 sets of 4 repetitions. And yes, I know that's 36. That's not math. That equals 12. And that's not the point. The point was it was fatigue at 12. That is what we want you to use as a load. So when you hear me say 4 repetition sets, just 4 repetitions per set, don't picture 4 really easy repetitions with a pink dumbbell, but also don't picture yourself with a really heavy one that you can literally only do 4. It's a very different approach. There's still substantial total work being Yeah. Given you would normally reach fatigue if you did a straight set of 12. But what we're doing is just giving you a little, giving you a break, giving you a little more, giving you a break. Now, how long was the break? The break, I believe, was about 75 seconds. So what is that? A minute, 15 seconds, right? So let's explain this because the researchers talk about performing approximately 30% of the maximum number of repetitions. That could get confusing if you were reading the study and not necessarily used to reading science. That could easily get butchered on social media. So they're not saying lift at 30% of your maximum strength, meaning what's the maximum one rep max and do 30% of that. It's very different. Talking about roughly 30% of the number of repetitions. Not the weight load that you could complete with that same weight load before stopping and resting. So with a 12-rep max load, 4 repetitions is approximately a third of it. Therefore, that's where the 30% comes in. So with a 12-rep resistance, you do 4 reps, you rest, you repeat, and you continue that until you've done 9 sets.

Now, how does that sound to you?

Tedious? Does it sound easy, like too easy for me? That was my first reaction. So I am going to guess that depending on your experience level and the moment in time you're in right now, the energy level, the bandwidth that you have, it either sounds really good or it sounds like this is really going to be too easy. And so stay tuned. We're going to dive into why this might be beneficial for someone and what the study showed, which is going to surprise you a little bit. I'm almost certain of that. And when this might be applicable, no matter who you are, you are somebody experienced who can do far more is what you're thinking, or You're a beginner or somebody with exercise intolerance, and this may sound like, gosh, I think I could do that, but still, nine sets—that sounds like a lot. Stay with me. The shorter set configuration, meaning just four reps, was better, better at preserving repetition velocity. Meaning, and I don't want you to imagine just uncontrollable repetition as quickly as possible, you know, without care to form. Just The speed, the same speed. For instance, we want you to go the same speed with each repetition. Think about what happens to you when you start to fatigue. When you get to those last few repetitions, I if if you're like me, I start to slow down. I'm not going faster. I'm like, okay, this is getting really challenging, and I've got to watch myself so I don't arch the back, so I don't stiffen the knees, so I don't try to do it with my whole core. I'm doing it with the working muscle. I'm doing that. If you can't see me, I'm gesturing with a bicep curl. So that is what I'm thinking about— standing, not locking my knees, pulling up. And I know good form and I know when I lose it. And I'm guessing if you're experienced, you do too. Women also experienced less metabolic stress and lower perceived exertion compared with doing longer sets. Say you doing all 12 repetitions in a set. Now, when you first hear that, what goes through your head? Less metabolic stress, you may be thinking, but wait, don't I want metabolic stress? I want total energy expenditure to be greater. And that may or may not be true depending on who you are. So if you are Working really well, you are recovering really well. Your energy is a four out of a four, meaning the best it could be, or at least as best as you know it can be. You may indeed want more metabolic stress. However, if you are struggling at a time of chronic stress overload coming from all places in your life, you're not able to get the recovery that you want, need, and deserve. Maybe you're In some capacities, you and I can be our own worst enemy. We're not eating, we're not getting the amount of nutrition, and specifically protein and carbohydrates, which really are the two that come into play with recovery. We may not be getting that. Less metabolic stress may be desirable for a short period of time so that you don't lose that muscle. Now muscle sticks around and changes your metabolism permanently. And yet, if you don't lift for, say, a week and then 2, that loss of that muscle, those fibers, they need a little refresher. Now, you might get by with maintaining your muscle strength with one high-quality workout a week. You're not going to improve your muscle strength Or your metabolism and the muscle protein synthesis by doing just one a week. More frequently may be better, provided you're recovering completely. But you potentially do want that metabolic stress. But would there be times when less metabolic stress is ideal? Certainly, lower perceived exertion if you're already under a great deal of stress, what we call the allostatic load, talking about maybe— Sleep deprivation, and maybe it needs to be true because you've got somebody you're caregiving to overnight. Things are changed right now. You're in a moment where there's imposition that you need some stimulus, you know it, for the muscle, for the bone. However, you have a limited bandwidth.

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The repetitions stay higher quality for longer when you are doing short sets, meaning you can do 4, take a break, 4, take a break, 4, take a break.

How many are we at? We're at 12.

But my form and my velocity are better if I do it that way than if I do 12 in a row. By say six and seven and eight, I start to lose the quality of that contraction, the form, the the muscle. So realize there is a benefit there. That's where this gets interesting. So as repetitions accumulate within a traditional set, fatigue does increase. Velocity starts to decline. You and I, even if it's imperceivably undetectable, your velocity is getting slower. Your power. Ability can decline. Force production within those muscle fibers and recruiting more fibers can decline. The later repetitions aren't necessarily being performed with the same quality as the earlier ones. Breaking the work into smaller sets gives you an opportunity to recover before you continue.

Now, another interesting thing is—

think about this for yourself because I know this is This is so true, and it's it's human nature for us to do this. That if I tell you I want you to do four sets, or I want you to do three or five, and we're going to do X amount of repetitions, there is something in the human brain. I've experienced this as a strength and conditioning coach for nearly four and a half decades. You will say something like, "Well, I didn't reach fatigue for the first one, but by the by the end of the last one, I did." That's not what I wanted. As your coach, I wanted you to reach fatigue in that first set, and then I wanted you to do it again in the second set, even if that meant you needed to pick up a lighter weight in the second set or the third or fourth. But we want that. And yet you and I will err on, no, no, no, I know I've got to get that many, that many sets, so I'm conserving energy. Even if we don't think we're doing it, a very small part of us or the brain is after some self-preservation. And so we do have to be careful and cautious. However, if I'm doing 9 sets of just 4 repetitions, and there won't be any repeating after you've done those, by the way, then you are done and done. You will maintain better form, better quality movement. The velocity will stay similar, and so will the power. That is a good distinction to make and necessary for a look, especially for any of you who are doing 2 workouts a week and you keep asking yourself, shouldn't I be doing 3? Shouldn't I be doing more? I know you, I see you, and I'm all behind. If you're fully recovered and you are as fresh on Friday as you were on Monday, you're not losing strength, you're not more fatigued. Then potentially, yes, it does work for you. But for a lot of women over 40, and that's adults over 40, by the way, but women who lose estrogen are probably a little more prone to this, at least sooner in life than men are. We lose the ability to recover. Our recovery capacity goes down, even if our work capacity does not. And that is really what science shows. Dr. Abby Smith Ryan, we hope. We've got her coming back on the show, but she's in middle of a semester, and I missed her over the summer before she got started again. But part of her research actually documents that for women, there is no absolute correlation between your menopause phase or your period weeks going through month. If you're still doing a regular cycle, there is no discussion or validation of you know the week you're in is. Going to determine the performance you get. Perception of that performance does change. You and I feel like it's a lot harder at certain times. If we're still cycling, it's usually that fourth week feels like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired. And so there may be a reason for you if you're not performing or training for a performance or a race, for you to back off slightly just to be wise so you're not injuring yourself. And yet, you know, there is no justification. Strength, speed, none of it actually declined.

It just felt like it was harder.

The perception, perceived impression of that hard did change significantly. Okay. So, let's talk about this. Less fatigue does not automatically mean that you got less stimulus. Interesting. I'm gonna let that pregnant pause sit. Less fatigue does not automatically mean less stimulus. That's where I want to be careful with the interpretation. Researchers are essentially asking whether we can maintain a meaningful mechanical stimulus while reducing some of the glycogenic or metabolic cost of the workout. And again, there's a certain subset among us or in our lives in the The course of a year or a season of life we're in, there probably is a time where maybe we're going through a grieving process, a caregiving, especially heavy load, where it may be ideal for us to reduce some of the glycolytic or metabolic cost of the workout. The question is, can I keep producing meaningful force without turning every set into a metabolic grind? And this is where maybe you want to position that Monday and Friday workout. Those are a grind. Those are hard. You're getting the intensity. You're getting the effort, whether you're going more reps, lighter weight, or you're doing heavier weight, fewer reps. We want that coming to muscle fatigue. I do believe we want it. We want it for bone. We want it for muscle. And we want it because it changes slightly what happens at the neural component. But we don't always want it. And if we wanted you to be able to get more volume, this This is one way to slip this in. I often advocate for do a total body flowing yoga.

You're on one leg, you're on the other leg. We call that unilateral work.

You're able to reach muscular fatigue slightly differently, but also to get functional movement in that encourages flexion, extension, lateral flexion, anti-lateral flexion or rotation, which means avoiding it in certain poses, is what's happening. It's a very good functional workout if you can tolerate it and you want to put that in. But this may be another way for you to do that if you want greater strength-specific stimulus. So especially when I'm interested in power, that's a combination of strength and speed, this question really matters. If I want you producing force quickly, rep number 8 performed dramatically slower than rep number 1 may no longer be giving me The same quality of power stimulus. So fatigue isn't automatically evidence that you've created a better training stimulus. Sometimes fatigue is simply fatigue.

Let that sit for a minute. It's really important that I convey this to you. I don't want to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction and suggest That fatigue, muscle fatigue, suddenly has no value. And let's be clear on that point as well. When we talk about fatigue from exercise, I am talking about the fatigue within an exercise set. When we're talking resistance training, we're talking if you're doing 10 repetitions, just for example's sake, the 8th, 9th, and 10th ones are challenging. You may realize, you know, I'm only going to do 9 because I have 2 reps in reserve and I feel like I'm going to lose my form if I go any further. And you may have a good day where you can do 11, but we're talking about muscular fatigue, the kind that you put those weights down, you rest and recover in between for, say, a minute, and you know you could pick that up and you could do another one. But at the moment, at the end of that set, you're at muscular fatigue, not complete muscle exhaustion or failure. And that means you're in the middle of a rep and you can't get it up. You don't have to go all the way there, but there is still value. And that is how we gauge effort in strength training that gets you results. And that is always what we've said in this recent contemporary conversation where people are saying, lift heavy. Pardon my French, lift heavy shit. You know it's a bumper sticker, and we can all give a nod and shout out to Dr. Stacy Sims, who started that. And look what it's done. It's a little bit like 10K a day, get your steps, because we remember it. And you remember lift heavy shit. And I don't think that even anymore she is, you know, that's a stake she would die on. Ultimately, if you can, Potentially, yes, lifting as heavy as you can sometimes, but we don't always go heavy every time. Because even as a 44-year lifter myself who does and enjoys actually going heavy and pushing, if I were to do that every day, my joints, my ligaments, my tendons would suffer. And eventually you get to a point in your life where you cannot because you're actually doing damage, not allowing repair. When you cycle— The heavy with the medium, with even with light, they all have value and they complement each other for optimal fitness that would be better than you going heavy all the time. So that was a little side detour, but I think important to say in this conversation because, in a way, we're suggesting with this study that came out that you bypass this whole idea of muscle fatigue completely. And that's not, I think, where we're going with this, but there is a place or a time. And at the end, I'm going to leave you with this reminder of when would I, as somebody who's experienced and can go heavy, or when would you, for the moment you might be in where you are extremely busy, extremely overloaded on stress, or physically you're not at capacity right now because of something. Recovering from an illness or simply from an overload of stress period of time. There are many times when you might use it. So the researchers in this study acknowledge this too. We are not suggesting that muscle fatigue has no value. They expect longer, more fatiguing training structures may potentially produce greater, number one, cardiovascular, metabolic, and neuromuscular adaptations. Because you're sustaining exposure to those physiological stresses. So longer sets is basically what they're saying of, you know, 4 sets instead of 9. 4 sets of 9 repetitions would be the opposite, really. And yet here we are, we're getting 36 repetitions, but how we slice and dice it could change things. It's important to realize different stresses create different adaptations. So I'm not looking at this research, and I don't think you should, asking, are short sets better? That's not the question I'm asking. What adaptation am I trying to create in this workout? That's a much better programming question. If there's one thing that I could change about my aging skin and I had to choose, it would be my neck. Look, as skin changes in midlife, the skincare that worked for years can stop feeling like enough. Dryness makes fine lines look deeper, more puffiness hangs around, and getting that healthy glow just takes a little more work. Holistic Goddess Frankincense Castor Oil Roll-On is a simple nightly face oil made just for those changes. Organic castor oil deeply moisturizes while frankincense helps soften the look of fine lines. Yes please! 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So now we have a Maybe a population, a demographic, or you and I have that moment when life is just overwhelming physically and/or emotionally, which also impacts us physically, where this could come in handy. But there's an enormous distinction here. Set configuration— that means how many sets of how many repetitions— set configuration and load are separate So shortening the set does not require making the resistance light. But wait a minute, really, that's not even where I, as a strength and conditioning coach, would go. Shortening the set does not require making the resistance heavier either. Not in this case. This research doesn't give us a reason to remove heavy resistance training from a woman's program. So I'm not suggesting those of you who can go heavy, or those of you who are aspiring to and believing, I need to lift heavy because of my bones— and by the way, that's only part of the truth. So I've been lecturing on bone density and bone health benefits since 1995. We've gone through cycles where we thought it's got to be heavier load to get to the bone, and no longer do we see that to be true. Because potentially we had not considered all the variables. But realize that light is where everybody starts. Progressing to moderate actually increases bone density for up to 48 weeks. Then going heavier may be necessary to see more, but that's the point where you and I have to determine, is this safe and smart for me to do? So my biggest question about this study would be, what about absolute strength? Now, if we were imposing a workout in addition to other things we were doing, reaching muscular fatigue in maybe 1 or 2 workouts already a week, and we wanted to increase our volume of One of the ways to do it might be this. So it's not so much metabolic or physiological stress. It won't take as much recovery, maybe also won't impede your recovery from those harder workouts, but will allow you to do positive work and get then more volume, more sets per muscle group in during the course of a week. But if we're picking up a weight that we can fatigue 12 times, but yet you and I were capable of doing a load that we can only lift 5 to 7 times before we truly reach muscle fatigue, that lends itself to true or absolute strength. The whole load that we're able to lift gets higher, we get stronger. That's so interesting. That's absolute strength. So my immediate concern about this would be if anybody took this and ran away with it and said, this is what I'm going to do all the time. I don't think that's what we want to do. If women start doing 4 repetitions and stopping well before they're at muscular fatigue every time, could we eventually compromise the absolute strength or neuromuscular adaptations we're trying to build? I think that's true, but the answer is we don't have evidence from this study that short sets compromise those adaptations. So I can't claim it, but I can say my hypothesis would be if we're not working at the level of strength we're capable of, soon we're going to lose that.

So that's too big a leap to make from what was studied here.

Remember that a single research study. Study is a very narrow focus. Heavy resistance provides a high-force stimulus, and that matters for absolute strength. It matters for recruiting and training the nervous system to produce high levels of force. I'm not willing to give that up based on acute set configuration study, the single study that we're looking at here. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't think we need to. But I do think for one of you listening, or somebody you know listening, who cannot go heavy or experiences they run into an obstacle or a wall and extreme soreness, or have a body with— definitely I'm thinking here about people with autoimmune disease who really struggle Above a certain point of resistance, this may be very appropriate for them to open doors that they previously could not walk through. The long-term question still isn't answered yet. So this is just acute research, a single study, and it tells us what happened during and immediately following these workouts. It doesn't yet establish that doing this exclusively for months is superior for postmenopausal women. I think that would be going out on a limb to say this would be true. The CARE researchers themselves in this study, and there is— there are others coming, have been investigating the longer-term question by comparing shorter and longer configurations using matched loads and volume. Meaning the example I gave, matched loads and volume. So 4 sets of 9 reps Or 9 sets of 4 reps, but we're talking about using that 12-repetition maximum load. So if I tell you, go to the weight room or the weight rack, pick up a weight that you will reach muscular fatigue in at 12 reps, you would use that in either case. So it's the same load, but we're manipulating the repetitions and/or sets. So I would not say women after menopause should now train nine sets, four reps. Nope, that's really not what this study says. What I will say is we have very interesting new programming tool. There's another tool in the toolbox, so we need to decide where does it belong. So here's a couple applications. I've hinted at them, but the women with lower exercise tolerance and If you participated or attended the What, When, and Why to Exercise for Women Over 40 Summit, either in '23 or '24, I believe it was '23, I told about a study by Anne Larratti out of California where she actually had identified in menopause a term called exercise intolerance. And it's very much like it's cardiovascular changes that occur in people who have heart disease. And the same thing can occur in menopause, but it's like one of those signs and symptoms. Some women get hot flashes, others don't. Some women experience exercise intolerance and others don't. I was one of the unlucky ones and didn't realize it until I did. And I had come across so few women who experienced this that it took until I did to have a flashback and realize, oh, I do know women who've also experienced this. So just a quick side note on exercise intolerance: you're getting breathless doing activities you were used to doing. You're trained. You didn't have a, a week or a month or a year or anything off. You just suddenly Or experience this inability to, say, catch your breath doing the same endurance work. And it quite often is cardiovascular, but you're, you're not able to supply the same level of oxygen because of what is happening in the tissues. And so you reach breathlessness sooner, you reach overall fatigue sooner, you're more tired after exercise. So some of that hard to detect except For the breathlessness, that feeling that maybe for the first time in your life ever, you almost feel like you have asthma. That's a very good description of exercise intolerance. So I have a woman, say I have a client who doesn't tolerate the metabolic stress of traditional resistance training particularly well, or of going for a walk, or the regular routine she's been used to of jogging or running. Maybe she's returning after illness and maybe her recovery capacity then is temporarily poor. Because of all those reasons or any of them, longer sets leave her disproportionately wiped out. That's not what we want after exercise. So when I know someone is working out and then they feel like they need to take a nap or they're compromised the rest of the day, the family is going to do X, Y, and Z, she worked out and she now can't go. That is absolutely not what we want. So maybe technique deteriorates badly as fatigue accumulates. That happens actually with you and I, even who may be fresh. And, you know, if we're going to do a big set, it's heavy or challenging for us relative to you, relative to me. We will lose fatigue and lose form, so our technique is going to deteriorate.

Right.

As we go on. I don't necessarily want to solve that problem by making everything ridiculously light. I still want to challenge her muscle, her neuromuscular connection, and support bone density by getting that bone or the muscle to pull and create more tension on the bone. Now, potentially, I have another option with this set configuration. Use, you know, a meaningful resistance. So potentially something like the 12-rep max, but distribute the work in smaller sets. Did you know 3 out of 4 homes in the US have toxic chemicals in their tap water? I did. I lived it. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do little to remove most contaminants, and bottled water contains microplastics. So what's the solution? For me, it was Aqua True. It's the countertop purifier tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants, including chlorine, lead, forever chemicals, and microplastics. You can join 98% of customers who say their drinking water is cleaner, safer, and healthier. But look, I love all that, but most of all, I love immediate gratification. This is the best tasting water ever.

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Aqua True even comes with a 30-day best tasting water guarantee. That's aquatru.com, A-Q-U-A-T-R-U. Ultimately, we did a little more volume, right, with 4 sets of— or yes, 9 sets of 4, sorry. So we're doing 36 reps, not your typical go to 12 or go to do 24, but we're actually doing more overall work. We're just not putting it together in the same way. So hypothetically, we use that 12-rep max, we do 4 reps, we recover, we do 4, we recover. Now I'm potentially preserving more velocity, so I keep the same exact speed for 4 repetitions, same force, same repetition quality, while I reduce some of the metabolic stress that she experiences during the workout. That's really very attractive. There's also more care research showing a less stressful acute cardiovascular response with the shorter configuration in physically active postmenopausal women. And that gives me another reason to be interested in this for somebody with lower exercise tolerance. But here's the line I have to draw. It gives us a promising way to dose resistance training for women with lower exercise tolerance. It doesn't Yeah. It doesn't yet give us evidence to say this is how she should train exclusively long-term, nor does it suggest that whatever you're doing right now that is working, even if you're on a plateau and you're saying, I'd like it to work better, I would never suggest you change everything and do this. Maybe for a week if you're taking a reset week and you simply want to test it. But I think the better test might be for you and I between our 2 bigger workouts, Monday and Friday, Right. Heavier, harder, we slip in a Wednesday set of this. And there's another type of application that I'll talk about too, where we've traditionally here been talking about resistance training, picking up weights. I still would want anybody starting with this to progress, and you're still going to have to go back to that 12-rep max and make sure, am I picking up the right load now? Is it still This weight is what I need, that might get heavier. Another place to use this is with power. Women need power. And in training, sometimes they're lifting heavy enough they don't want to use speed. Maybe a little scary, but this is one place to put it. You take a woman who already lifts— maybe I'm talking to you right now— you have a heavy strength training already in place, heavy for you. I don't want to compromise that. I don't want that to go away, but I also want you to train power. When you're doing power, ideally, say you're lifting 10 pounds and you're reaching muscular fatigue at the end of your set. If I want you to do power, generally don't want that same weight where I'm going to ask you to go fast. I'm going to have you back off a little bit, and we may look for go look for an eight-pound dumbbell to do the same thing so that now we can go a little faster. Even a little bit lighter than that, 7.5, those kind of weights are a little harder to find. 5 is only 50% of it. That's a little bit too light. But we do want to back off on the weight to add the power. So could I put strategically designed power session between heavier strength exposures? Something like you do a heavy day, you do recovery day on Tuesday, you do power velocity session on Wednesday, recovery Thursday, Heavy strength on Friday. It's exactly what I've been alluding to. Now I've separated the objectives. Each workout has purpose. The heavy workouts preserve the high force exposure that I want for absolute strength and neuromuscular adaptation. The middle workout gives you another exposure to producing force quickly, and I don't necessarily want that power workout creating enormous levels of fatigue. Because it's positioned between 2 workouts, one you're recovering from, one you're preparing to do. So I wouldn't automatically use the 12-rep max here. So this is where maybe we break the rules. This is where my hypothetical program differs from simply copying the research protocol. If my specific objective is power and velocity, I'm going to choose the resistance appropriate For power production. So I'm going to ask her to move that resistance with maximal intent. So I'm going to keep the repetitions low enough that velocity remains high. And I know you're used to thinking, what? I thought speed wasn't good. But yet it is in certain places. We just don't want to be boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We're not rock and rolling. We're not using momentum. That is different. I'm going to stop the set before the fatigue substantially deteriorates the quality that I'm trying to train. And the CARE researchers instructed women to perform the concentric portion of the repetition at intended maximal velocity. And that's important to know. What that means is the concentric is the shortening. So imagine you— your arm is straight And you have now a dumbbell in it, and we want you to go fast to lift it up to your shoulder, and then you're going to pause there, and you're going to slowly bring it back down. So it's power, and then slowly bring it back down. Power, and that is your concentric. The muscle actually shortens, brings the two ends of the bone together where it's attached. The intent to move it fast matters. So as we've talked, velocity— that's a newer word. So we use the word power to describe strength plus speed. Velocity is really in reference to that, but power and velocity, real close relationship. All right, the other place I would personally like to use it Is in, say, box jumping. So step class, think about a step or your bottom step in your home, and that's a first, a first step. See what I did there? A first start. So you go to something that's fairly low, maybe it's 4 or 6 inches, and you're jumping. You can keep probably really good form if I ask you to only do 4. As opposed to try 10, try 15. Do you know at the end of those sets there is 2 things that happen? The psychological— you get tired toward the end. It's funny that when runners go out the door and they say, I'm gonna do 6 miles today, well, you start getting tired at 4. Like, it's just a mental thing. But if you start and you're going to do 10, That fatigue actually doesn't come in until about 8. So it is very psychological. We kind of pace ourselves where I know I'm going to have to do this. So mentally, you want to be talking to yourself and you want to be saying the right thing. That's an important thing to realize as well. But I like the idea of using, let's just do 4 really high-quality jumps, take a little break, Do a minute, and I don't like to stand still. I don't know about you. I like to use every minute, so I might do a core exercise in there. I might do a balance exercise in there, and then we come back and we do the explosive jump. So I haven't compromised either of the movements that I choose. That's an important distinction. I wouldn't move to another cardiovascular thing or a very taxing strength training exercise either if I were doing box jumps. But between strength training exercises, I definitely will throw in a balance exercise because that's not disruptive, but it certainly is using my time really well. Okay, now the caveat. This matters. Here's something I would have expected to be different that wasn't in this study. The acute study did not demonstrate that the 4-repetition configuration resulted in clearly superior post-workout neuromuscular recovery. But that surprises me. During the workout, velocity loss was lower, meaning it stayed constant because you're only doing 4. You don't lose it like I discussed earlier. If you're doing 10, we start losing it, but almost All of us could maintain something 4 times. Power loss was lower. We maintained it through that set. Lactate was lower. So the accumulation of the acid essentially that occurs. The workout looked less fatiguing by several measures, right? Total. But post-session explosive performance declined similarly across different configurations. So whether I did those 4 sets of 9 repetitions or I did 9 sets of 4 repetitions, it was about the same. So I think that's really interesting because it tells us we can't automatically say short sets won't interfere with your next workout. We don't have the evidence for that yet. But I would say this is where you and I need to test it. Can we do that one? In midweek and feel pretty good about it. So total volume may be the elephant in the room that we have to look at. And I think in part that's what that study really shows or hints at. Those women who were still performing 36 repetitions per exercise— so breaking 36 repetitions into 9 sets of 4 doesn't make 36 repetitions disappear or something we can ignore. The researchers suggest that total training volume may ultimately have more influence on overall fatigue than set configuration alone. So I would say to you, this means it's really important for you to plan a workout. And I think the older we are, the more that's true. We all, at every age, have a budget for time and energy. But I think as we get older, you may say, "Well, I'm retired. I've all the time in the world." But you don't have all the energy. It changes. And I can say, you know, at the end of a workday, I feel pretty good. I still feel I want to go for an evening walk. And and yet, do I feel the way I felt when I was forty-five? Or 42? You know, to be honest, I don't think so, right? So the researchers suggested here total training volume may ultimately have more influence over total fatigue than the set configuration alone. So 36 reps is 36 reps no matter how you split it up, is really what they're saying. That's a huge programming point. So if I'm inserting a power workout between 2 heavy strength workouts because I specifically want a low recovery cost, I'm probably not going to copy the study's total volume exactly as it was done. I'm going to have to control that too. So now my hypothetical power prescription has 3 pieces: short sets, a load appropriate for power— so I'm going to lower the load The amount of weight a little bit and deliberately modest total volume. And that's more interesting to me. So what would I actually be trying to accomplish by doing this? I'm not trying to sneak another really hard workout into the week, but I'm trying to answer this question. Can I expose myself or a woman to power more frequently without compromising the heavy strength work that I don't want to give up? For muscle's sake, for bone's sake, for the benefit that it goes a little bit deeper. That's the application I find most compelling. So I can preserve my heavy strength exposure, I can add a high-quality velocity stimulus, and instead of deliberately chasing exhaustion or having to deal with that by adding another workout, I can control the volume. So this workout has a different job. My Wednesday workout, which is what I'm calling this between those two workouts, so it may be a different day of the week for you, is really for explosive things that I'm not putting in the other ones necessarily. Again, for time's sake. So where I would not go with the research, I don't think we can say women over 50 should stop doing longer sets. I would not say that. I would not say women or postmenopausal women shouldn't. Train to fatigue. I, I think it's absolutely required, to tell you the truth. I would not say 4 repetition sets improve recovery for your next workout. We can't say that. 9 sets of 4 is now the optimal strength training prescription after menopause. No, we can't say that. And I wouldn't say that this is only for frail or high-risk women. I don't think so. I think the population studied matters, and it included physically active postmenopausal women. So we shouldn't turn, you know, a finding in active women into frailty protocol without evidence. What I think we can say is shorter sets can preserve repetition velocity, power, and force, and reduce some of the metabolic stress and perceived exertion compared with longer sets when work is otherwise matched. The work that you do on a day like this could have, you know, a contributing effect to your overall weekly routine. And I think now we have a way that we can do this without imposing too much fatigue within a set. To negatively impact your ability to recover or the ability to be ready for your next workout. But the only way for you really to know is to test it for yourself. We've always manipulated with strength and conditioning load repetitions. So the weight you're lifting, the repetitions you do, the sets, the amount of rest between, the volume that you would do. And the frequency. And volume is honestly— is a factor of load and repetitions and sets and frequency. So volume set in there is almost an overstating of the other variables. So now pay attention to how the repetitions themselves are distributed, and you can change the physiological experience of a workout without necessarily changing the resistance or even the total amount of work. So is there a lesson for women over 40? I don't want you choosing your workout based on how exhausted it makes you. Exhaustion during the workout should be very temporary and over. And the word fatigue is probably better, but not overall body fatigue, like I'm tired, but muscle sore. Ooh, I gotta put that down. Yes. And then a minute later, you should be saying, okay, I'm ready to go again. That's what we're after. I want you to know what we're training. Why would I do this? And if today it's absolute strength, I probably need to choose an appropriate high-force stimulation. That is, how can I get you to lift the weight that you— is the heaviest you safely can lift? If we're training hypertrophy, that is muscle growth, muscular endurance, or metabolic capacity, then I'm going to make different decisions about repetitions and fatigue— muscular fatigue, again, just to clarify. If we're trying to manage exercise tolerance while still providing meaningful resistance, shorter set configurations may give us another very useful option. So the question is not how hard was that workout. The question is, did the workout create the stimulus that we intended and leave you able to adapt to it. So my 2 biggest uses of this research right now— because when there's one study, there usually has to be more, there has to be another study employing it, looking at it from a different angle— and indeed there is. It's what's happening right now. But here's where I would put it for my lower exercise tolerance clients, I would use it as resistance training, and I would put low-fatigue power exposure between 2 heavier-load days. That is what I'm most excited about. So we're going to do some jumping, but we're going to do 4 repetitions. We're going to keep really good form, and potentially with 4, we can jump a little bit higher, a little bit sooner. Because we still keep the springs. And when we do 10 in a row, we get tired faster. So that is the scenario we discussed earlier. I'm going to just summarize it. Heavy strength day, say Monday. Day 2 is maybe you do interval training, but it's basically recover from that heavy strength. Maybe you're walking today, doing yoga today. Then day 3, that's your short set. We're going to do this steady application of adding power, power-appropriate resistance training, or very low reps per set. Maybe you're doing power movement like jumping. This is your, your way to get the spring back in the step. You're gonna have another recovery-type day, and then you'll lift heavy again on Friday. So why I might use it, it adds another opportunity to train velocity. It also, if you're looking for getting more sets in during the work week to stimulate maybe a little bit more muscle growth, maybe more body composition change than you're seeing frequently, this is probably an easier way to do it, employing it without disrupting your recovery or creating more exhaustion because that would be kind of going backward, I think, or trying to take, you know, one step forward but going 2 steps back by just adding more and then getting more tired and ending up disrupting your heavier workouts now are not as high quality. That would be counterproductive. What I like most about this research study is that it's, it's not giving us some magic new set and rep prescription, but it is showing that a lot of things work. You know, if we use the analogy of diets, you see a lot of people who are healthy. Some are eating more of a plant-based diet, others are eating more of a carnivore diet or a keto or a paleo, and seemingly what they're doing appears to be working for them. That doesn't mean it will work for you, but it means that there are a lot of ways to get results. And I think that's what this really shows. A woman doesn't necessarily need less resistance because she has lower tolerance for fatigue. A power workout doesn't have to leave her exhausted to have value. And heavy strength work doesn't need to disappear because we found another useful tool. And in fact, I would say don't let that disappear if you're able to lift heavy safely without paying for it later with With aches and pains is what I mean. We can keep the strength stimulus, we can deliberately train power, and we can become much more thoughtful about where fatigue belongs in your program. All right. I really look forward to your questions on this one. And I think it's an interesting study. What I'd love to know is, are you engaged enough to try it, to try the application? And where would you put Personally. So I'd love to hear from you. You know that if you DM me on Instagram— that's a direct message, by the way— that's where I am most of all. We have a community coach still on Facebook at Flipping 50 Insiders. You can join that group if you're listening to podcast, you just want to have conversation or carry it on over there. And of course, if you're a member or already in-app, you have the ability to use the community to communicate with us as a VIP monthly or annual member.

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