Recently, there has been a news story about whether or not size gains equal strength gains. Back in October, there was a news story on Vince Gironda’s 8 sets of 8 routine. The news story on strength and size gains links multiple training styles and explains what it is about them that are effective at accruing mass. The Vince Gironda routine, German Volume, circuit training, rest pausing, super sets and giant sets etc. are all unified in a sense because they all act to cross items off of a list called “10 Reasons Why Bodybuilders Are Bigger Than Powerlifters.”
German Volume does 10 sets of 10 with 60 seconds rest intervals. Vince Gironda liked to do 8 sets of 8 with 15-30 second rest intervals. It is easy to see how these two systems are similar. Milos Sarcev advocated giant sets. All three systems are good at building up glycogen between workouts, getting blood to the muscles and even challenging the cardiovascular system by keeping the rest time between sets very short.
“Sarcev postulated that such exercise medleys were the most effective vehicles to drive glycogen and protein to muscles”
So what exactly are giant sets? Perhaps if German Volume uses 60 second breaks, and Gironda liked 30 second breaks, then giant sets are zero second breaks between sets/exercises. You can think of them as four or more exercises for the same or neighboring muscle groups performed back to back with zero rest between the sets/exercsies. The author of this article talks about how this is exhausting and very difficult to keep the intensity up. A perfect recipe for muscle gain and fat loss.
“A lower body giant set might consist of leg extensions, front squats, leg presses, leg curls, and lunges...”
As talked about in the article, giant sets can be an every once in a while thing. Just as well, they can be a long-term foundation of a lifters scheme (though it was not recommended in the article to do year round). For instance, Milos Sarcev strongly favored them for constructing routines.
An example of a workout could be for instance 6-7 exercises for 3 rounds or 8 exercises for 2 rounds (chest, back, legs, shoulders). Rest time between rounds was suggested to be 2-4 minutes, with zero rest time between exercises/sets.
For a full list of giant set basics, a tip sheet and a sample shoulder workout, be sure to read the full article. I have also included below a video of Milos Sarcev and Dennis Wolf performing a chest routine pre-contest.
Header Image Source: Milos Sarcev YouTube Channel