Anyone training with any sort of consistency is interested in one major goal -- making gains. 

Whether you’re interested in strength, power, speed, or size, it doesn’t matter. The reason you train (aside from enjoyment and health) is that you want to make progress on a consistent basis.

However, there comes a point in every trainee's life when the gains stop coming so easily and you reach the dreaded plateau. You’ve tried everything from deloading to varying rep ranges and changing workouts entirely. Heck, you’ve probably experimented with supersets and tri-sets on occasion, but nothing seems to break the sticking point you’re sitting at.

What’s the struggling lifter left to do?

Give up, quit the gym, and settle for your current physique?

HELL NO!

What you need is something that completely shocks the system and reignites the biological pathways of muscle growth.

 

What you need are giant set workouts!

In this guide, we’ll explain what giant set workouts are and how to build giant muscles fast using them.

Let’s get started.

 

What is a Giant Set?

During your time in the gym, you’ve probably incorporated supersets from time to time, wherein you perform two exercises back-to-back with little to no rest between. After completing both, you take your rest period.

Trisets ratchet up the intensity another notch by demanding you perform three exercises back-to-back-to-back with little to no rest between. After the three exercises are over, you take a full rest.

Giant sets are essentially supersets and tri-sets taken to the next level.

When performing a giant set, you’re performing a minimum of four exercises back-to-back, taking minimum rest between each before getting a full break. 

These exercises are all targeting one muscle group, which subjects them to an enormous amount of volume and time under tension.

But, beware, giant sets are incredibly demanding on your muscles and cardiovascular conditioning. 

Throughout each giant set workout, your muscles and lungs will be burning and you’ll be praying you can last until the full rest period between sets. 

Don’t get too comfortable during your break though, as you’ve got a maximum of 2 minutes rest between giant sets before you run through the gauntlet again.

Benefits of Giant Set Training

Giant set workouts have been around a long time, but it wasn’t until Milos Sarcev and John Meadows really popularized this style of training that it began to take off. Bigger muscles are an obvious benefit to giant set training, but that’s not all this rigorous style of training has to offer.

Benefit #1

One big advantage to giant set training is that it allows you to just induce a lot of stress on the muscles without necessarily having to resort to extremely heavy weights. 

Typical bodybuilding recommendations are that you have to go heavy and hard to grow muscles, especially bigger muscle groups like the legs and back. 

However, with giant set training, you can dial back the weight, and really zero in on form and “the squeeze” since your muscles are subjected to so many repetitions before getting a full rest period.

Benefit #2

Another advantage to this method of programming is that due to the series of exercises performed back to back, giant sets allow you to hit a muscle group from multiple angles within the same giant set, leading to a more well-rounded, all-out assault on the targeted muscle group -- resulting in more shapely, and evenly built muscle.

Benefit #3

Last, but not least, is the tremendous metabolic effect that giant sets training gives you.

Weight training on its own is great for revving up your metabolism, but the high volume combined with brief rest periods leads to massive EPOC (Excessive Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption), which increases metabolic rate and calorie burn much more than straight set training, supersets or even traditional cardio training will. That means that not only will giant sets help build bigger muscles, but it’ll also help shed fat, providing an awesome 2-for-1 training effect!

Suffice it to say that giant sets are great for hypertrophy, fat loss, and overall athletic conditioning due to the unique workout structure and make for the ultimate plateau buster.

How Giant Sets Help Build Giant Muscles Fast

Seeing as muscle growth (i.e. hypertrophy) is the primary goal here, giant sets align themselves perfectly with your goals. Giant sets combine High Volume + Short Rest, which yields maximum size gains.

Stubborn muscle growth will be a thing of the past when you adopt giant sets into your training program, and we’ve got just the program here to help you get a taste of what giant sets training has to offer. 

Just be aware this is NOT easy! 

It will demand everything you’ve got to just finish the workout, let alone push yourself to increase the weight or reps each subsequent training session.

If you’re up to the challenge, then let’s get to it and build a muscle giant!

Giant Sets Training Program

Due to the intense nature of giant sets and the incredible metabolic demand it places on you, we’ll only be hitting one major muscle group per workout, while smaller muscle groups like biceps and triceps can be hit on the same day.

How-To Perform Giant Sets

Perform each of the following workouts on separate days. Perform each exercise in the giant set back-to-back with as little rest as possible between them before resting for a period of 2 minutes (120 seconds).

After the two-minute break is up, it’s time to get ready for the next round of exercises.

For all exercises, maintain proper form and keep body English (i.e. swinging) to an absolute minimum.

Each exercise is performed for 10-12 reps, and each giant set will be performed 4 times for a complete workout.

Get ready, because giant sets are about to rock your world!

Monday - Chest

A1 - Barbell Bench Press

A2 - Low Incline Dumbbell Press

A3 - High Incline Dumbbell Press

A4 - Standing Cable Crossovers

A5 - Pushups

Tuesday - Legs

A1 - Back Squats

A2 - Leg Press

A3 - Romanian Deadlift

A4 - Leg Extensions

A5 - Leg Curls

Wednesday - Back

A1 - Seated Cable Rows

A2 - Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns

A3 - Underhand Grip Lat Pull Downs

A4 - Neutral Grip Chin Ups

A5 - Dumbbell Pullovers

Thursday - OFF

Friday - Shoulders

A1 - Barbell Push Press

A2 - Seated Arnold Press

A3 - Barbell Upright Row

A4 - Dumbbell Laterals

A5 - Face Pulls

Saturday - Arms

A1 - Tricep Pushdowns

A2 - EZ Bar Skullcrushers

A3 - Overhead Cable Extensions

A4 - Dumbbell Kickback

A5 - Bench Dips

B1 - Incline Dumbbell Curls

B2 - EZ Bar Curls

B3 - Seated Dumbbell Curls

B4 - Hammer Curls

B5 - Chin Ups (focus on pulling with biceps instead of back)

How to Make Progress with Giant Sets to Build Muscle Fast

Making gains with Giant Sets is just like any other style of training -- you need to follow the principles of progressive overload. 

That means to make appreciable size gains, each subsequent workout, you need to force your muscles to do more total work. This can be accomplished by:

• Adding reps, 
• Increasing the weight, 
• Increasing the number of sets, or
• Decreasing the rest between sets by some amount.

Examples of this could be

• Reps
  
  If you performed 10 reps on an exercise this week, aim to complete 11 or 12 reps on that exercise for every set of the giant set next week.
  
  
• Increase the weight
  
  If you performed 12 reps on every exercise for every set in a given workout, next workout increase the weight by 5 or 10 pounds for each exercise and aim for 10 reps per set.
  
  
• Decrease rest
  
  Instead of resting 2 minutes between giant sets, reduce the rest by 5 seconds so you’re only resting 1 minute 55 seconds between giant sets.

Fuel Your Workouts with Ape Sh*t Max

Training with giant sets isn’t easy. It demands the most of your mind and body.

To help support focus and athletic performance during these daunting workouts, we created Ape Sh*t Max.

Ape Sh*t Max is a high-energy, great-tasting pre workout supplement formulated using research-backed ingredients to help you push harder in your workouts for bigger better gains.

If you enjoyed these tips, check out more workouts here!