The Day Logan Learned Everything He Knew About Exercise Was Wrong
Nine years ago, our very own Logan Herlihy was the picture of “doing everything right” in the gym.
Six days a week.
60-90 minute long workouts.
Multiple sets of every exercise.
And he was getting results. But he was also feeling exhausted trying to maintain that routine for years on end. He was simply burnt out. Always hovering one bad night of sleep or a long day at work away from skipping another workout.
Sound familiar?
Then everything changed the day he stepped into a small studio gym in Minnesota called My Strength Studio. No rows of treadmills. No 30-piece machine circuit. Just four or five pieces of equipment and the owner Kevin ready to put him through a workout as part of a job interview.
Logan remembers thinking, “This doesn’t even look like a real gym.”
But what happened next rewired everything he believed about exercise.
The Workout That Lasted 5 Minutes and Felt Like a Marathon
The workout was simple: three exercises leg press, pulldown, chest press performed using a super-slow protocol. 10 seconds lifting the weight and 10 seconds lowering the weight. He was instructed to take take each set to true momentary muscle failure the point where you cannot complete another rep with proper form. True muscle failure ONLY happens if you actually try to complete the next rep and after a great struggle you cannot complete the rep.
He was supposed to do five exercises. He didn’t make it past three.
“My lungs were burning like I’d just run a marathon. My muscles were shaking like I’d suddenly developed Parkinson’s. And the workout… lasted maybe five minutes.”
Then he spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch his breath.
It was the first time Logan had ever experienced true muscular failure and the first time he realized just how much momentum, gravity, and wasted motion had been doing the work in his old routine.
From that day forward, he never went back to six-day-a-week, 90-minute gym marathons. He discovered something better: a method that’s faster, safer, and more effective and best of all backed by science, not tradition.
Why That Short Workout Was So Effective
Most people even many fitness professionals never truly train to momentary muscle failure. They stop when it gets uncomfortable, or they follow arbitrary numbers like “3 sets of 10” without ever challenging their muscles to their true limit.
Why? Because they haven’t studied exercise science. Instead they're just doing what their high school gym coach taught them, the workout routine their favorite influencer does, or what they see other people at the gym doing.
As Exercise Physiologists we don’t care about tradition. We study the science of exercise and human physiology. Whatever the latest scientific literature says is the safest, most effective, and most importantly efficient way to lose fat and build muscle is what we want to do both in our own workouts and with our clients!
1. One Set to Failure Can Be Enough. Here’s Why
The idea that one set of an exercise could match the effectiveness of three or four feels wrong to most people. It goes against everything we’ve been taught about “more is better.” But science says otherwise.
A meta-analysis by Carpinelli and Otto and later work by Krieger (2010) show that performing a single set to momentary muscle failure can produce strength and hypertrophy gains equal or greater than multi-set routines — particularly in non-athlete populations. That research continues to replicated in studies and has become the standard for strength training research. For busy professionals, that means you can build significant strength with far less time spent on exercise.
The reason comes down to how muscles recruit fibers. Your body recruits motor units in a size-dependent sequence — smaller, endurance-oriented fibers first, then progressively larger, more powerful fibers as the demand increases during those really uncomfortable reps. But many people never tap into those high-threshold fibers because they stop too soon.
Training to failure forces your body to recruit every available muscle fiber. That’s the physiological trigger your body needs to adapt and it’s why one all-out set can often do the job of three half-effort ones.
And while some research shows that training at ~80% of your maximum effort can yield similar results (Schoenfeld et al., 2015), there’s a catch: No one can reliably tell the difference between 70% and 80%. But you can tell when you’ve hit failure. It’s an objective, repeatable point and that makes your training far more precise and effective.
2. Momentary Muscle Failure: The Catalyst for Growth and Change
Reaching muscle failure isn’t about punishment it’s just human physiology. When you push a muscle to the point where it can no longer contract with proper form, you create an environment that forces adaptation on multiple levels:
- Mechanical tension: The prolonged and increasing tension on the muscle fibers is the primary driver of strength and hypertrophy.
- Metabolic stress: As the muscle fatigues, it accumulates metabolites like lactate, which signal anabolic pathways and trigger growth.
- Motor unit recruitment: As mentioned earlier, training to failure ensures maximal recruitment of high-threshold motor units, the fibers with the greatest potential for strength and size.
Research from Schoenfeld and colleagues (2015) shows that these three mechanisms, all of which are maximized near failure, are the core drivers of muscle adaptation. Stopping short of failure leaves much of this potential untapped.
This is why so many traditional workouts underdeliver. They may feel challenging, but they never consistently push the muscle to the point where real change is triggered.
3. Slow Tempo Eliminates Momentum and Forces True Muscle Contraction
One of the most profound changes Logan noticed was how different each rep felt when he slowed down. By taking 10 seconds to lift and 10 seconds to lower, he removed two of the most common crutches in the gym: momentum and gravity.
When you move quickly, momentum does part of the work for you which reduces the muscle’s time under tension and lowering the stimulus for adaptation. A slow tempo forces the muscle to generate continuous force throughout the movement, dramatically increasing time under tension, a key factor in hypertrophy (Keeler et al).
This approach also improves neuromuscular control — your brain’s ability to recruit and coordinate muscle fibers — and reduces injury risk by keeping forces smooth and controlled. It’s one reason high-intensity training is among the safest forms of strength training, even for older adults or beginners.
4. Minimal Rest, Maximum Cardiovascular Benefit
Perhaps the most surprising part of Logan’s first high-intensity session wasn’t how his muscles felt it was how his lungs did!
“My lungs were burning like I’d just run a marathon.”
This isn’t just anecdotal. Resistance training performed at high intensity with minimal rest elevates heart rate and oxygen demand, creating a cardiovascular stimulus similar to traditional aerobic exercise.
Research by Steele et al. (2012) shows that brief, high-effort resistance training can significantly improve cardiovascular health markers, including VO₂ max and blood pressure. That means you’re strengthening your heart and muscles simultaneously — a critical advantage for busy people who can’t afford separate “strength days” and “cardio days.”
Why This Matters for Busy Leaders
If you’re like most of our clients, time is your most precious resource. And it’s probably why fitness has felt like a never-ending chore in the past. You were told you needed 60–90 minutes a day, six days a week. You were told “more is better.”
But Logan’s story — and decades of research — prove otherwise.
You don’t need more time. You need more intensity.
When every rep is deliberate, every set is taken to true failure, and every session is designed around your physiology — five minutes can change everything.
That’s the foundation of what we do at Reformed Fitness. Two 30-minute full-body workouts a week. No wasted time. No guesswork. Just science-backed training that fits into your life and transforms your health.
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Book your FREE Discovery Call today and we’ll show you how two short workouts per week can finally deliver the results you’ve been chasing.