Singles in General Training

Hello Dr. Feigenbaum, Dr. Baraki,

I was watching a well respected individual in the strength and hypertrophy world over the weekend and this individual asserted that doing singles on compound movements in developmental training, excluding a peak, is detrimental to one’s strength and hypertrophy progress. The basis for this assertion is that singles are extremely more fatiguing than triples or fives, and impede session-to-session recovery from a strength standpoint, and are pretty straightforward from a hypertrophy standpoint in terms of a lack of volume and poor strength to fatigue ratio. The individual also claims that there is data to support the claim that singles do not build “strength” and goes on to say that singles pose a higher risk of injury due to “the sheer force required”. I put strength in quotation marks because I think that in this individual’s context strength may be subjective, as they claim that a single repetition is an exhibition.

While I understand that the topic of defining strength is nuanced, I see Dr. Baraki doing singles fairly frequently on the gram and I would say they have gotten him stronger, so is their any data to support that x1 @8 is more fatiguing than x5 @10? Also, is there any data to support that singles pose an increased risk of injury? Could this be a misinterpretation of the data that powerlifters have more injuries than bodybuilders, powerlifters do singles, therefore singles cause more injuries?

Thank you in advance!

There’s no real data showing that singles are more fatiguing that multi-rep sets performed at similar exertion levels, as this is heavily influenced by individual factors including previous training, expectations, etc. The rating of fatigue and rating of perceived exertion are also separate concepts.

Singles performed at sub-maximal intensity seem to be well tolerated by those who routinely perform them as predicted by the repeated bout effect (from a muscular damage standpoint). The cost is certainly non-zero, but not really quantifiable. I’d argue that for a powerlifter, the cost of 1 @ 8 is worth it compared to doing a set of 10 @ 8.

Being very familiar with the data on trained lifters, it is not really possible to suggest that practicing singles at heavy loads don’t improve performance in powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. In untrained lifters, the data is less clear. There are also many ways to get strong.

The injury risk thing is 100% made up compared to other forms of resistance training. The injury incidence between BB and other PL isn’t as large as advertised either, if any exists at all.

Starting with the methodology, only one of the four studies used to determine the bodybuilding injury rate actually included a formal definition for what constituted an injury. In comparison, four of the seven studies used to determine the injury rate in Olympic weightlifting and five of eight studies in Powerlifting, defined what an injury was. We’ve already discussed the implications this has when calculating injury rates and, unsurprisingly, only one study on bodybuilding actually calculated the injury rate per 1000 hours at 0.24- about the same as walking. Siewe 2014

Interestingly, the same data showing that bodybuilding has a lower injury risk than other forms of resistance training uses a different statistic, injuries per athlete per year. The included studies found that Olympic weightlifters incur 1.0-1.7 injuries per athlete per year, respectively, whereas bodybuilders have 0.3-1.8 injuries per athlete per year. Seems pretty close, no?

One way to look at these findings is that bodybuilders spend more time training per week than powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters, yet incur a similar number of injuries per year. However, data on time spent training suggests that bodybuilders train ~7 hours per week during the competitive season and 5 hours per week during non-competitive seasons. Siewe 2014 In contrast, data tabulated over 2 years found that competitive weightlifters spend an average of ~8.9 hours per week training. Raske 2002

Additionally, many of the subjects studied for bodybuilding were not actually competitors, but rather recreational trainees. In contrast, nearly all of the subjects in Olympic weightlifting studies were recruited from competitive organizations, e.g. clubs, meets, etc.

So, what does this mean? It seems that the methodology limitations make comparing studies inherently difficult. There are problems with calculating injury rates when we don’t define what an injury is, account for the differing amount of time spent actually training, or compare similar groups of competitors. Does competitive bodybuilding have a lower injury risk than CrossFit or Olympic weightlifting? I’m not so sure and I think that’s more complicated.

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Thank you very much for taking the time to give such a thorough response Jordan!