# 6x6 training



## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Been trying out Vince Gironda's 6x6 method for the past week just for something a bit different to keep me entertained whilst I'm cruising before I start cutting next month, and I thought I'd give it a shoutout as well as see if anyone has tried it or other Vince G training methods.

It's a "sets straight across" method in which you take your 12RM and do 6 sets of 6 reps with it, with only 30 seconds rest inbetween sets. For something with low reps like this, it's surprisingly tough due to the short rests and cumulative fatigue. Bloody good fun, has you breathing heavier than a paedo in a nursery, and sweating more than one too :laugh: Big compounds like squats and pullups are brutal.

Obviously it's a high volume, low intensity routine, so naturally there are going to be a lot of sets and only a few sets each workout are taken to failure or near failure. If you do 5 or more exercises per workout you'll be in the 30-40 set region, which is fine as it's a volume routine. I personally have been doing my usual amount 6 exercises per workout, so 36 sets total. Completely different to the minimal amount of sets that I usually do during my usual HIT training.

Obviously it's only been a week so there will be no results yet, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. Besides that, Vince Gironda used this type of training on several trainees who went on to create some of my favourite physiques of all time (such as Larry Scott and Mohammed Makkawy), so it's obviously an effective method of training to have worked for many.


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## Jamieson (Jul 11, 2014)

Be interesting to see how this works out for you.

I'm a big HIT fan, have been for a number of years and have made really great progress using high intensity/low vol, but every now and again I look at the higher vol stuff but just struggle with the idea of adding lots of sub maximal work, or what I would perceive as glorified warm up sets, to then culminate in 1 or 2 'hard' sets at the end.

Anyway, keep us posted as to how it works.


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Jamieson said:


> Be interesting to see how this works out for you.
> 
> I'm a big HIT fan, have been for a number of years and have made really great progress using high intensity/low vol, but every now and again I look at the higher vol stuff but just struggle with the idea of adding lots of sub maximal work, or what I would perceive as glorified warm up sets, to then culminate in 1 or 2 'hard' sets at the end.
> 
> Anyway, keep us posted as to how it works.


Yes mate, first time I went back to messing around with GVT after about 6 months of nothing but HIT, it just felt wrong :lol: You've just gotta keep in mind that it's the cumulative fatigue that will take care of the hypertrophy so going to failure is never necessary. Obviously you'll likely hit failure on the last set, or sub-failure if you manage to get all the prescribed reps, but if you were getting all of them each and every time then that's undertraining IMO. The thing I like about this training style though is that the weights are still moderately heavy and the reps are moderate-low, so it's hardly all pump & fluff training; yet, whilst still lifting decent weights, the cumulative fatigue build-up over several sets gives you the same advantages (e.g. pumps and flushing) that you'd get from doing a high rep routine.

Yeah I'm only gonna be doing this for another week, then have a week off before I start cutting. Actually really considering this style of training for my cutting phase tbh - as I said the weights are decent, and you're fitting so much work into an hour and it certainly kicks your heart rate up, so it's gonna burn a lot of calories. But yeah, I won't know how well I'll gain on it until I actually use it on a bulking cycle which won't be for a while yet, but I respond well to moderate weights and also respond well to GVT, this is pretty much elements of both so I reckon it'll work well for me. Tbh the only thing I don't respond well to is low rep training, anything less than 6 reps does **** all for me for some reason.


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## ianm2585 (Mar 14, 2010)

i done this a few years back as you say a lot of fun dropped it after a 8 week run and modified it to coincide with a ph cycle doing 8x8 on cycle and dropping down to 6x6 and 5x5 on pct worked well and retained more vince knew his stuff.


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