Can You Build Muscle With Only One Set Per Exercise?

New research suggests you can play whack-a-mole with your gym routine

Photo by Rodrigo S on Unsplash

There are tens of thousands of different exercises at your disposal.

I would know as I’m currently building a home exercise program platform for a physical therapy software company. It’s wild how many ways you can perform a row. Here is a “brief” breakdown.

High row, mid row, low row.

Now do all those while standing with your feet together, standing on one leg, standing on a BOSU ball, sitting, and kneeling.

Now do them with a cable column and a resistance band.

Now change your grip and orientation to do wide grip, narrow grip, inverted grip, or neutral grip.

Use different attachments on the cable column, such as a rope, a handle, and a bar.

Don’t forget about dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells. Those add new versions like the bent-over row, upright row, plank or pushup row, landmine row, and three-point row.

Now change the grip and base of support for all of those versions.

That’s a lot of ways to do a row. Yes, the subtle variations won’t have dramatic impacts on muscles worked, but in rehabilitation and elite…