The Tyranny of the Set: Why Nature Never Invented Five Sets of Five

Walk into almost any gym in the Western world and one assumption goes unquestioned. Every exercise is organised into sets. Three sets of ten. Four sets of eight. Five sets of five. Rest. Repeat. It is so universal that few people stop to ask an obvious question: who decided that this was the natural way for human beings to exercise?

At first glance, this may seem an odd topic for a political and philosophical blog. Yet one of philosophy's oldest tasks is to question assumptions so familiar that nobody notices them. Weight training provides a surprisingly good example, one which may resonate with younger men. Many readers work where lifting is often done, e.g. farming, and physical culture, fitness and strength are of greater relevance to these men, than in the life of inner city university elites, who lift nothing heavier than the collected works of Karl Marx!

The answer is that nature did not. The "set" is not a biological law but a human invention, a remarkably useful one, yet an invention nonetheless.

Sets evolved as a practical method for organising resistance training. They make workouts easy to record, simplify progressive overload, and provide a convenient rhythm of effort and recovery. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Indeed, they remain one of the most effective ways of developing muscular strength and hypertrophy. The problem begins when we mistake a useful convention for an immutable law of human movement.

Our evolutionary history tells a different story. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings did not perform three sets of ten anything. They carried injured companions until they reached safety. They hauled animal carcasses back to camp. They climbed trees, dug roots, chopped wood, threw spears, wrestled enemies, and walked vast distances carrying children and supplies. These activities were organised around tasks rather than repetitions. One continued until the work was completed or until exhaustion made further effort impossible.

Modern strongman competitions retain something of this older logic. Competitors carry enormous yokes across a field, drag trucks, lift Atlas stones, or perform farmer's walks over a prescribed distance. Success is measured by completing the task, covering the distance, or lasting the longest. Nobody pauses halfway through a truck pull because they have completed their first set.

Loaded carries illustrate the point perfectly. A farmer's walk has no obvious "set" built into it. One simply picks up the implements and walks until the finish line or until grip strength fails. Likewise, sled pushes, sandbag carries, rope climbing, and many forms of military conditioning are organised by distance, time, or mission completion rather than arbitrary repetition schemes.

Traditional martial arts reveal the same principle. Sword practitioners may perform hundreds of continuous cuts. Staff spinning often continues for prolonged periods. Kata are repeated until movement becomes instinctive rather than until a prescribed number of sets has been completed. The objective is mastery of movement, not satisfaction of a numerical formula.

This distinction reflects two fundamentally different conceptions of physical training. One is exercise-centred; the other is task-centred. Exercise-centred training asks, "How many repetitions shall I perform?" Task-centred training asks, "Can I complete the work?" Both have value, but they develop somewhat different capacities. The former excels at isolating muscles and carefully managing fatigue. The latter more closely resembles the unpredictable physical demands encountered throughout human history.

Functional fitness has partly rediscovered this insight. Firefighters do not rescue victims in sets. Soldiers do not carry wounded comrades in sets. Farmers do not move hay bales in sets. Parents do not carry exhausted children home in sets. Real life rarely announces that one has completed eight repetitions and deserves ninety seconds of rest.

Even endurance sports illustrate the point. A marathon runner does not think in sets but in kilometres. A mountaineer thinks in summits. A swimmer measures laps and distance. Human performance naturally lends itself to goals beyond simple repetition counting.

Bruce Lee and Isometrics: Lee famously used heavy isometrics: maximal effort holds in key positions, alongside dynamic work. He built functional, explosive power and a lean, dense physique without grinding out endless moderate-rep sets. His approach emphasised quality, intent, and specificity over volume.

Grip and Forearm Development: Many old-time strongmen built crushing strength with short, intense holds and varied implements rather than high-rep curls. Practical use trumps arbitrary volume.

None of this diminishes the enormous value of conventional strength training. Sets remain one of the greatest innovations in exercise science because they permit systematic progression, objective measurement, and careful management of recovery. Without them, modern strength coaching would be considerably less precise. The mistake lies not in using sets but in assuming that every worthwhile form of physical training must conform to them.

Perhaps the healthiest training philosophy is therefore an eclectic one. Squats, presses, and deadlifts benefit from structured sets and repetitions. Loaded carries, climbing, sprinting, martial arts, and practical labour often benefit from a task-oriented approach. Human beings evolved to perform both.

There is also a broader philosophical lesson hidden within the gym. We frequently mistake conventions for necessities. Once a practice becomes widespread, we begin to assume that it reflects nature itself rather than a useful human invention. The set is an example of this phenomenon. It is an elegant organisational tool, but it is not written into our biology.

Nature never invented three sets of ten. Coaches did. The fact that the invention works extraordinarily well should not prevent us from recognising it for what it is: a convention, not a law of nature. Sometimes the best measure of fitness is not how many repetitions we complete before resting, but whether we can simply finish the task before us.

The history of ideas often consists of human conventions becoming mistaken for laws of nature. In science, philosophy, politics and even the gymnasium, methods that begin as useful inventions gradually acquire an aura of inevitability. The humble training set may be another example. It is an excellent servant, but perhaps we have mistaken it for the master. Like much else.