In this article, I would like to share my experience and opinions regarding giant sets. A giant set consists of four or more exercises for the same muscle group. There is to be no rest between sets. The only way that you can accomplish this is to have the exercises and the amount of weight set up before you start your giant set. An example of a giant set for the chest muscles would be to start with a set of bench presses, then move immediately to dumbbell flyes, followed by a set of dips and a set of barbell incline presses.
The benefit of giant sets is that you keep the muscle under tension for a substantial amount of time without rest. This creates a great deal of muscular fatigue and also produces a tremendous pump within the muscle being trained. Many bodybuilders use giant sets because giant sets are a good method for building muscle size.
My Early Experience With Giant Sets
My experience with giant sets goes back almost forty years. About a year after I started training with weights in 1979, I became familiar with a bodybuilding trainer named Vince Gironda who often wrote for Muscle Mag international. At some point in the early 1980’s, I bought some of Vince’s courses. One of them was called A Muscle Has Four Sides. The course is based on giant sets consisting of four exercises per muscle group. Each individual set within a giant set was to be performed for 12 reps, which means that each giant set was made up of a total of 48 reps. The four exercises are designed to hit the same muscle group from four different angles. Once again, these four exercises must be performed without any rest between exercises, and I must also add that each set within a giant set was to be pushed to the point of failure. The intention of this procedure is to fully exhaust the specific muscle being trained and to get the best pump possible.
Vince’s original course was based upon a training split in which the muscles of the body were divided into three different workouts, and each muscle group was to be trained twice per week as follows:
Day 1: Chest, back, and shoulders
Day 2: Biceps, triceps, and forearms
Day 3: Thighs and calves
Day 4: Same as day 1
Day 5: Same as day 2
Day 6: Same as day 3
Day 7: Rest
As mentioned earlier, each muscle group is trained with four sets, but Vince also said that each workout could be performed twice per day, which means that each muscle group would be hit with eight total sets twice per week.
Even though Vince normally advised his students not to train to failure, he made an exception with A Muscle Has Four Sides. When doing this program, he said each set should be pushed to failure.
Completely Burned Out on Giant Sets
In my early days of training, I had it drilled into my head that anything short of failure was a complete waste of time and would provide no stimulation to the muscles at all. When I tried Vince’s program, I pushed each set to the absolute limit of my ability to repeat reps and found myself completely burned out within a couple of weeks. I have yet to try a workout for biceps that was any more painful than Vince’s giant set program when pushing to failure. Unfortunately, it was a lot of pain, but no gain.
Adjustment: Stop Each Set Before Reaching Failure
Fast forward from the early 1980’s to 2021. I now have more experience and have learned that it is not necessary to push to failure to stimulate strength and muscle size. With this in mind, the idea passed through my head that I should try something new, or something that I hadn’t tried in a long time, like giant sets. I quickly dismissed the thought because I had tried Vince Gironda’s giant set method a few decades earlier and it quickly led to burnout. Then it hit me that the use of giant sets might not lead to burnout if I adjusted the way I did them by stopping each set a few reps short of failure. So, I gave it a try a was very surprised at how good it felt. It pumped my muscles and my whole body felt energized for the rest of the day. I was also surprised at how quickly I improved in terms of my ability to perform more reps on my second, third, and fourth set. It only took about a week for this improvement to take place. I was even more surprised to find that after doing a giant set for my chest, followed by a giant set for my back, and a giant set for my legs, I could return to my chest, and I was almost as strong, if not just as strong as I was when I started my workout with the previous giant set for my chest. In other words, my ability to recover between sets sky rocketed.
Giant Sets and Precision Point Training
In one way, it seems that the use of giant sets would be inconsistent with the precision point training principle that states, “Keep repeating sets for a muscle group as long as that muscle group is at full strength, but if you reach the point where a muscle group begins to weaken, stop training it.” When doing giant sets, you definitely violate this principle, by training a muscle group while it is in a weakened state. This is because you never give the muscle a chance to recover between sets, so the muscle group becomes weaker and weaker with each successive set. However, at this point in time, I would adjust this principle that is based on training as long as you are at full strength, but no longer. The adjustment would be to say that if a muscle group recovers back to full strength within five minutes after completing a giant set, it will not have a detrimental effect on your training by causing overtraining. Having said this, I must mention that it may take a couple of weeks of performing giant sets before you develop the ability to fully recover your strength within five minutes after completing a giant set.
How Many Sets Within Each Giant Set?
What does a giant set look like? I suggest looking to Milos Sarcev. He is a bodybuilder and trainer who is considered a master when it comes to giant sets, and there are several videos of him online guiding bodybuilders through giant sets. However, I would caution you that his giant sets often include much more than four consecutive exercises. He’s in to totally obliterating a muscle. My own personal preference for best results is to perform four or five consecutive exercises for one set each to make up one giant set.
If you choose to do giant sets, you will have to find the right number of sets for yourself, and you may need to work your way up to a giant set before diving into a full-blown giant set of four or more exercises for the same muscle with no rest between exercises. For example, you may want to start with a super-set for the same muscle group, which would consist of two consecutive sets, or you may want to start with a tri-set, which is three consecutive sets for the same muscle group.
Intensity of Effort
When it comes to my own training, the amount of effort that I put into each set is very, very important. If the set is too easy, it won’t stimulate muscle size or strength. Likewise, if the set is too hard, it will not stimulate muscle size or strength because you won’t recover. This being the case, I stop each set within a giant set a few reps before reaching failure. This practice allows me to stimulate a muscle without killing it to the point of making it hard to recover, and it also leads to a good pump.
If you watch the videos below: the first video shows a bodybuilder who is doing a giant set, but he is not pushing each individual set within his giant set to the point of extreme strain and struggle. He maintains the same rep pace throughout each set. In my mind, this is how you would apply precision point training principles to the use of giant sets. In the second video, you will see a bodybuilder who pushes some of his sets very hard to the point of struggle, strain, and grinder reps. I personally prefer the amount of effort the bodybuilder is using in the first video. If you watch both video’s, you will see the difference in effort. You can try both methods and decide which is better for yourself.
Video 1: This bodybuilder stops short of grinder reps and extreme strain:
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Video 2: This bodybuilder grinds out strenuous reps for some of his sets:
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If you want to improve your muscular endurance, plus your muscle size and strength, giant sets are a good option. However, it’s easy to overdo it with giant sets, so it essential that you adjust the amount of sets and the intensity of each set according to what is most beneficial for your own body. When doing giant sets, do them for at least two weeks in order to give your body a chance to adapt and improve. After that, do them as long as they keep working. If your giant set training stops working, try another form of training for a while before coming back to giant sets at least six weeks later. My hope is that if you choose to try giant sets, that this information proves to be helpful. May God bless you with the best of training.
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Additional Resources
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Link to A Muscle Has Four Sides Book Review