Building Muscle and Strength Made Simple - The 3 to 5 Program

One of the simplest program designs I have come across is the 3 to 5 Strength Building Plan. I found it in Kettlebell Rx by Jeff Martone. Perform 3 to 5 weekly strength training workouts. Perform 3 to 5 basic exercises in a circuit. Perform 3 to 5 sets of each exercise. Perform 3 to 5 controlled repetitions per set, stopping one or two reps short of failure. Rest 3 to 5 minutes between sets and shake out the tension in the muscles. It’s as simple as it is effective. Probably better than 95% of the programs you’ll find in the current Muscle and Fiction magazines.

These simple program parameters are back-up by scientific research.

1) 3 to 5 repetitions

First let’s look at the repetition range of 3 to 5 repetitions. A challenging weight should be approximately 85-90% of your one repetition max (see chart below). Studies have shown that training with weights close to your 90% 1 rep max produce greater muscular size and strength gains than lighter loads (70% 1 RM).

2) Stop one or two repetitions short of failure

Bill Pearl

Second, we will examine the recommendation to stop one or two repetitions short of failure. Going to failure too soon in your workout will hurt your performance, and undercut your total workout volume/progressive overload. A 2007 study by The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research suggested that training to failure should not be performed repeatedly over long periods, due to the high potential for overtraining and overuse injuries.” Another study which had lifters using loads that were 75% of their 1 rep max concluded that, “Fatigue and metabolite accumulation do not appear to be critical stimuli for strength gains.”

The 2007 study by The Journal of Strength and Conditioning also asserted that habitually going to failure may result in decreased resting levels of testosterone and increased resting levels of cortisol, which are counter-productive to hypertrophy. It may also make you more susceptible to overuse injuries and overtax your nervous system, especially when performing taxing movements like the squat and deadlift. Only the genetically gifted and or those using performance enhancing drugs can routinely train to failure on all sets. Powerlifters are some of the biggest, strongest people on the planet, and they rarely train to failure. They generally have a target number of repetitions that they want to achieve to have a successful workout. We will do the same. You want to generate power on each repetition, and power is mass times acceleration. As you approach failure, the weight will slow to a grind; at that point, you are not generating much power.

Pre-steroid era bodybuilding legend Bill Pearl often criticizes proponents of going to failure every set, by saying that it quickly led to overtraining, injuries, and mental burnout. He argues, who wants to go to the gym with the goal of constantly failing. He advocates stopping one or two repetitions short of failure. Some recent studies have suggested that going to failure isn’t required to achieve muscle growth as long as a sufficiently heavy load is used, 75 to 90% of your 1 RM max, 4 to 10 repetitions are performed, and enough volume, 3 to 5 sets are performed for each exercise. Bill says that workouts should be a positive experience that leaves you feeling great, not wiped-out. His advice follows a bodybuilding axiom, “stimulate, don’t annihilate” your muscles into growth. The key to muscle growth is progressive overload, not training to failure.

3) Rest 3 to 5 minutes between sets

Next we will look at the recommendation to rest 3 to 5 minutes between sets. Forget those 1 minute rest intervals in the fitness magazines. Your performance from set to set will decline quickly. Short rest intervals and training to failure repeatedly will increase human growth hormone levels, but I haven’t found any studies that correlate it with long-term increases in muscle mass. I have found studies that have concluded just the opposite. Countless studies have demonstrated that progressive overload is the key to muscle and strength gains. If you want to build strength and muscle its best done naturally by resting 3 to 5 minutes between sets. A study conducted by the Kennesaw State University found that subjects that rested 2.5-minutes between sets made substantially greater gains in muscle mass than the subject that only rested 1-minute between sets. Eastern Illinois University conducted a study that concluded, “When the training goal is maximal strength development, 3 minutes of rest should be taken between sets to avoid significant declines in repetitions. The ability to sustain repetitions while keeping the intensity constant may result in a higher training volume and consequently greater gains in muscular strength.” Another study by the State University of Rio de Janeiro found that resting longer, 3 to 5 minutes, between sets led to more repetitions being performed over multiple sets and higher rates of muscular power. These two factors would result in greater overload being applied to the muscle. Progressive overload is required to produce increases in muscular size and strength. I could site more studies, but I think is pretty clear that resting a minimum of three minutes between sets is best for producing strength and muscle gains.

4) Perform Exercises in a Circuit

Last we will examine the recommendation to perform exercises in a circuit. Performing exercises for unrelated muscle groups in a circuit will allow you to perform more sets, without sacrificing performance by shortening rest intervals between sets. Structuring your workout so that you are performing three or more exercises in a circuit will allow you to rest 3 to 5 minutes before coming back to an exercise. Avoid rushing between exercises. Give yourself approximately 45 seconds to catch your breath. The programs in our future book, The Fat Loss Habit, will generally allow you to rest 3 to 4 minutes between sets. For example:

I hope you have found these suggestions helpful. Could you please Like and Share if you enjoyed this post. Best wishes and best health!

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