Grease the Groove vs Failure | How To Use Both Methods

greasing the groove versus doing sets until failure what's the difference what are the different effects of them and how do you balance both of them that's what this video is going to be all about how's it going everybody and welcome back to minus the gym for those of you new to the channel really quick my name is ryan i'm a certified personal trainer and i'm here to help you get in shape at home with no gym necessary and in my last video i was explaining a few tips that you can use to improve your pull-ups really fast and one of those tips was to do sub-maximal daily sets also known as greasing the groove and a great comment came in from jacob who basically said hey great tips but i'd love to learn more about what it means to grease the groove versus letting muscles rest between workouts because i thought that was important too and that's absolutely true and that's why i wanted to make this video to explain and make clear what's the difference between these two different styles of training so first i want to explain what greasing the groove is and what sets until failure are so that we're clear on what i'm talking about so greasing the groove is when you do daily submaximal sets meaning every single day preferably seven days a week you are doing that exercise to about 50 percent of your rep max some people recommend doing even less than 50 percent but i have seen success with 50 even 60 percent it all comes down to your total rep max and i'll explain what that means in just a second so i'm going to use the example of push-ups in this video because i did pull-ups in the last one but just keep in mind you can do any exercise you can use this for dips for handstands for push-ups pull-ups squats lunges you name it alright so let's say you can do 20 reps that's your max push-ups in a set when you're completely fresh so 50 of your rep max would be 10 reps all right so what you'd want to aim for roughly 10 reps in a set a little less like eight reps would be fine a little more like 12 reps is fine too but the idea is you are not going to or near failure when you're greasing the group you would do this multiple times throughout the day there's no set correct number on how many times you could do five sets you could do six you could do four you know i've even gone as much as eight or ten or so so it really comes down to how frequently can you do it now let me explain what sets until failure are i think most people know what this is but sets until failure are basically like in a formal workout you would perform your push-ups all the way to 20 reps which is your rep max and at 20 reps since that's your max you should reach muscular failure meaning you can no longer complete another rep without losing correct form the same thing applies here when i say sets until failure even if you go near failure which according to science would be within one to three reps short of failure so with the 20 rep max example if you were to stop at 18 reps that would still be considered near failure so that's what greasing the groove is and what sets until failure are now let's talk about the effects of each of these styles of training so with greasing the groove really what you're after here is not building muscle it's not hypertrophy because you're not going to or near failure you're not going to trigger that hypertrophic response instead what you're doing with greasing the groove is you're blazing that neuromuscular pathway through your central nervous system okay because in your brain you have these brain cells called neurons and the neurons they fire signals down your central nervous system like through your spine and everything and to the muscles and tell the muscles to contract and this applies to anything for any movement even just wiggling your fingers you're signaling a muscular contraction with your brain now when you think about someone learning how to play a musical instrument like if someone's learning how to play piano or guitar or anything we all know that it's recommended that you pick up that instrument daily and i know this from experience because i play guitar and i'm trying to learn piano in my free time and the more often you practice the better and it's because of this concept of blazing a better neuromuscular pathway so you can control those muscles better and have perfect timing with it well the same concept applies to your fitness with our example of push-ups if you perform push-ups multiple times a day every day just like picking up your guitar multiple times a day every day you're going to be practicing the movement and you're going to get better efficiency with your brain signaling to the muscles and what that efficiency produces is actually faster stronger muscular contractions and what that will lead to is the two main benefits of greasing the groove it's actually improved technique and increasing your reps because again you've strengthened that signaling system through your body now that's greasing the groove and the effects of it now let's switch gears back to sets until failure and what the effect is of that so when you do sets till failure right science has shown that and i was wrong in previous videos by the way i was saying these rep ranges like five or less reps for strength and that's still true that still holds true but then i said eight to 15 reps for hypertrophy and actually there's a lot of science out there saying anything about five reps all the way into the 30 rep range or even higher i've heard all the way up to 70 reps you can signal to your body you can trigger that hypertrophic response all you need to do is go to or near failure so the sets we do in our formal workouts where we go to or near failure remember near means within one to three reps of failure the whole purpose behind it is to signal your body to trigger that hypertrophic response so you've broken down the muscle fibers so much that your body is going to respond by repairing and rebuilding those muscle fibers stronger than they were before that's why the overall benefits of that style of training are improved hypertrophy or increased muscle mass and also increases in strength so that's really how these two different styles of training have different effects i used to spend a lot of time at different gyms everything from ymcas to la fitness and gold's gym and something that was very common is that i would see these guys you know and and women lifting very heavy weights but doing it with crap form i'm sure you've seen it too and it's like well how could that be that they've increased the weight so much they built that strength right and they have so much muscle mass but their form isn't that great how is that possible well it's because they don't practice the movement with a greasing the groove style they don't practice that movement every day they haven't taken the time to really improve technique they've just been focusing on those once or twice a week workouts where they're doing sets to or near failure so they've built the strength they've built the muscle mass but they haven't focused on technique so i hope you can see how these two styles of training are both very important okay so hopefully now you're seeing that it's important to practice a movement as well as treat it as a formal workout to build strength and hypertrophy now how do you balance both of them okay so here's the thing and this is i think a lot of people are surprised to hear this if you are greasing the groove correctly meaning you're keeping it to a reasonable volume i don't know five to ten times a day practicing the movement is is reasonable in my opinion and in my experience and you're keeping it to about 50 percent of your rep max even a little less is fine you won't be breaking down the muscle fibers much you won't be signaling a hypertrophic response and then once or twice a week when you actually do your workouts you should feel just fine your workouts should not be impacted by greasing the group now something important that i want to emphasize is that even if your max doesn't increase when you start greasing the groove that doesn't mean you haven't improved remember the forgotten training variable technique all right you might be experiencing great improvements in your technique you know your form might be very tight much tighter than before but you're not going to know that unless you're recording yourself with your camera or your phone and really analyzing your technique so always keep that in mind technique is the forgotten training variable and it's something that we have to pay closer attention to it's not just about how many reps or how much weight i hope that makes sense remember to play it safe with greasing the groove err on the side of caution it's not about accumulating a lot of volume or breaking down your muscle fibers it's about just frequently practicing the movement okay think of greasing the groove just as practice it's not meant to exhaust you the workouts are for exhausting you right going to failure is for exhausting you but greasing the groove is about practice okay i hope that clarifies for you how greasing the groove compares to sets until failure traditional working out and how to balance both of them if you have any more questions just let me know in the comments section down below i do my best to answer all the questions and when i see a really good one like this i'll make an entire video about it alright so don't forget to subscribe if you want to learn more from me hit that like button if you want to help me out in return and i will see you in the next video talk to you then [Music] you

Channel: Minus The Gym

Views: 112,936

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Id: _Ib_Hqv9qKA

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021