Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates, Arthur Jones – all of these names have been injected back into mainstream workout culture lately, and with them, their high-intensity, ‘minimum sets, maximum effort’ philosophy.
It’s divided the training community, but truth be told, the majority of us probably could do with a kick up the arse when it comes to our training intensity – whether you agree with the ‘Heavy Duty’ training style or not .
If you’ve decided to try min-maxxing your workouts, but you’re unsure whether or not you’re pushing your frugal sets hard enough, this post-failure cluster method will ensure you’re taking no chances.
How to Use Post-Failure Clusters
The technique is simple, but certainly not easy – that’s the point: after your warm-up/ warm-up sets, perform your big working set to absolute failure (more on this in a moment). Once you’re cooked, take 10 deep breaths, in through the nose, slowly out through the mouth, then immediately grab your weights again and perform as many reps as you can. Take 10 deep breaths, and go again one last time.
If you got this right, you should have had diminishing returns on your reps across each attempt – ie, 12 reps, then 8 reps, then 4 reps.
If you’re able to maintain a relatively steady number of reps, you’ve gone too light, or aren’t pushing close enough to failure.
What to read next
Safety Announcement
This type of training can be extremely taxing, that’s why it works so well with a minimum-set workout approach, but you should use this method judiciously: 2-3 exercises in your training, for just 1 set each workout, at most.
When it comes to movement selection, with any high-intensity training you should lean towards movements that are less injurious in the most obvious sense. For example, if you don’t have a training partner to pull the bar off of your chest, don’t bench press. Same for getting stuck under squats, and for any movement where your form in your lower back is likely to break down, such as deadlifts or bent-over rows.
Pick movements that you can safely push to the point where you can’t perform a single extra rep, no matter how hard you push, and still safely rack or drop the weights.
The Best Movements to Try
Here are some that will let you play by the above rules very effectively.
