In the late intermediate stages of training maintaining a somewhat high training volume is critically important for the strength athlete.
But how much does each athlete need?
Well that varies a lot by the individual, so the recommendations I’ll make here should generally be looked at through a “conceptual lens” rather than a prescription for any one individual.
In other words, don’t get hung up on the EXACT sets and reps that I’m using in this article.
Some athletes might need a little more, some a little less. You can nudge things up or down based on your own experience and preferences.
But the point of this article is not to get into exactly how much volume we need, but how we progress our volume loads over time.
Early in the training career (first few months of intermediate training) we can usually get away with simple weekly progressions.
Literally something as simple as performing 5 x 5 for one of your main lifts with a small amount of weight (2-5 lbs) added weekly or every couple of weeks.
The obvious problem with this is that simple weekly progressions don’t last that long – especially in the absence of an effort to push up your body weight.
You’ll eventually hit a point in your training where you are squatting 5 sets of 5RM’s and this isn’t sustainable.
For underweight trainees who are consistently eating in a surplus and driving up their body weight, then simple weekly progressions last much much longer than they do for a trainee who is eating at maintenance and holding body weight constant.
Don’t worry – we can still get stronger without pushing body weight up. But we have to take a different, more cyclical, and slower approach.
Eventually everything in training has to become cyclical in nature at some point.
There are 1,000 different ways to cycle training stress, but training must be cycled in some form or fashion, oscillating between periods of higher stress and lower stress. Volume, intensity, and exercise selection all factor into how we manipulate the stress day to day, week to week, and month to month.
In Practical Programming for Strength Training we laid out a very simple side by side comparison between a weekly progression and a monthly progression. In essence the distinction between advanced and intermediate training.
In a weekly progression, volume squatting is going to look something like this over a 4-week period:
- Week 1: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 2: 300 x 5 x 5
- Week 3: 305 x 5 x 5
- Week 4: 310 x 5 x 5
So what do you do after Week 4 when all 5 sets were absolute ball busters?
Well if you keep adding weight every week you’re going to get over trained pretty damn quick.
So we move into a monthly type of frame work where we are shooting for a new 5×5 maximum about every 4-5 weeks. So it would look something like this:
- Week 1: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 2: 300 x 5 x 5
- Week 3: 305 x 5 x 5
- Week 4: 310 x 5 x 5 – LIMIT!!!!
- Week 5: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 6: 285 x 5 x 5
- Week 7: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 8: 315 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
- Week 9: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 10: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 11: 305 x 5 x 5
- Week 12: 320 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
- Week 13: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 14: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 15: 315 x 5 x 5
- Week 16: 325 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
So this is an example of how volume remains constant but we cycle the stress by waving the intensity for every 4-week block.
This will work well for some, and not as well for others. If you’re really pushing hard on those heavier 5 x 5 weeks then you may need to also incorporate some lower volume and lower intensity deload weeks into the mix to dissipate fatigue even further between each 4 week volume block.
It might looks like this:
- Week 1: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 2: 300 x 5 x 5
- Week 3: 305 x 5 x 5
- Week 4: 310 x 5 x 5 – LIMIT!!!!
- Week 5: 275 x 3 x 3
- Week 6: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 7: 285 x 5 x 5
- Week 8: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 9: 315 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
- Week 10: 275 x 3 x 3
- Week 11: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 12: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 13: 305 x 5 x 5
- Week 14: 320 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
- Week 15: 275 x 3 x 3
- Week 16: 275 x 5 x 5
- Week 17: 295 x 5 x 5
- Week 18: 315 x 5 x 5
- Week 19: 325 x 5 x 5 – New 5 x 5 PR
Conjugate / Dynamic Effort Training
In my Conjugate Training program that I use with some of the members of the Baker Barbell Club Online, I use a similar approach with the Dynamic Effort training days – which are the main volume stimulus of the program.
For the most part I hold training volume pretty constant, but I wave the intensity across a very broad range, between 60-80% of 1RM. In addition, I also use rest time as a factor here. In lower intensity weeks I use short rests – like 30-60 seconds between sets. In heavier weeks, we move up to between 90-120 seconds of rest between sets in order to maintain bar speed.
For a very simple Bench Press cycle I use a 5-week wave:
- Week 1: 10 x 3 x 60% (30-60 sec rest) – 10 sets of 3 reps
- Week 2: 10 x 3 x 65% (30-60 sec rest)
- Week 3: 10 x 3 x 70% (60-90 sec rest)
- Week 4: 10 x 3 x 75% (60-120 sec rest)
- Week 5: 10 x 3 x 80% (90-120 sec rest)
Then in week 6, we drop back down to 60% but maintain the volume.
For Dynamic Effort training we can cycle the stress further by incorporating slighty different movements. If in the first 5 week wave we operate off of a Competition Bench Press 1RM, then in the next cycle we might change to a Close Grip Bench Press and use a 60-80% wave based off of our best Close Grip 1RM which is going to yield a different absolute number on the bar, but a similar training effect.
In another cycle, we might drop bar weight down to between 40-60% of 1RM, and add light band tension to the movement.
So volume is constantly maintained, but stress is varied each cycle.
You can apply this concept to Dynamic Effort Squat training as well.
Perform a 5 week wave with a straight bar and straight weights with 60-80% of your 1RM.
The next 5 week wave can be a 60-80% wave using the Safety Squat Bar.
The next 5 week wave might go back to a straight bar, but dropping the bar weight down to between 50-70% and using light band tension.
The idea is simple – keep your training volume high, but don’t burn yourself out by doing the same thing week in and week out for months on end.
The closer you get to a testing date, the more specific you’ll obviously want to be with your exercise selection.
CAT Training
Another system I’ll use for training volume is CAT Training (Compensatory Acceleration Training) made popular by Dr. Fred Hatfield.
In principle, CAT Training and Dynamic Effort Training are basically the same thing. The idea is to use a slightly sub-maximal load but with an emphasis on BAR SPEED rather than pushing your sets to the limit all the time. It’s a less stressful way to accumulate volume for a more advanced lifter in my opinion. It’s high quality training stimulus that generates far less fatigue.
In practice, the only real difference (at least how I use it) is that CAT Training tends to operate at a slightly higher overall intensity and slightly lower volume.
I generally start the training cycle with bar weight in the 75-80% range and build the volume and load up from there. Perhaps by the end of the training cycle we’re operating closer to 85% but it might not be a “true” 85% because hopefully a few months into the training program we’ve actually gotten stronger. So what was a true 85% in week one might actually be closer to 80% by the end of the cycle.
I’ll usually start trainees off with something like 5 sets of 2 at 75%. Pretty easy but it introduces them to the concept of intentionally moving each rep with max volitional speed.
Then each week I’ll add a small amount of volume while holding weight constant.
I generally build trainees up in 4 week waves and then deload in week 5, and start the cycle back over with the same or slightly heavier weights.
Usually for the Squat and Bench Press a 4-week wave will look like this:
- Week 1: 5 x 2 x 75% (5 sets of 2)
- Week 2: 5 x 3 x 75%
- Week 3: 5 x 4 x 75%
- Week 4: 5 x 5 x 75% or 6 x 4 x 75% –
The idea is to maintain fairly fast bar speeds all the way up into week 4.
Then I’ll take it back down but up the poundage a bit. So 3 of these CAT cycles might look like this:
- Week 1: 5 x 2 x 315
- Week 2: 5 x 3 x 315
- Week 3: 5 x 4 x 315
- Week 4: 5 x 5 x 315
- Week 5: 5 x 2 x 320
- Week 6: 5 x 3 x 320
- Week 7: 5 x 4 x 320
- Week 8: 5 x 5 or 6 x 4 x 320
- Week 9: 5 x 2 x 325
- Week 10: 5 x 3 x 325
- Week 11: 5 x 4 x 325
- Week 12: 5 x 5 or 6 x 4 x 325
Because there is such a big volume drop from 5 x 5 to 5 x 2 then I can usually consider that a deload even though we’re bumping the weight up slightly. If not, then I often consider a true deload every 5th week with a bigger drop in volume and intensity before starting the next cycle.
For the Deadlift I’ll often use a slightly less aggressive cycle with exact sets and reps varying mainly based on bar speed.
- Week 1: 5 x 2 x 405
- Week 2: 6 x 2 x 405
- Week 3: 5 x 3 x 405
- Week 4: 6 x 3 x 405
- Week 5: 3 x 2 x 365 (true deload)
- Week 6: 5 x 2 x 415
- Week 7: 6 x 2 x 415
- Week 8: 5 x 3 x 415
- Week 9: 6 x 3 x 415
- Week 10: 3 x 2 x 365 (true deload)
- Week 11: 5 x 2 x 425
- Week 12: 6 x 2 x 425
- Week 13: 5 x 3 x 425
- Week 14: 6 x 3 x 425
If you complete a 4-week cycle and perhaps the bar speed wasn’t as fast as you’d like, then you can repeat the same weights for another 4-week cycle but try and marginally increase the training volume in the next cycle.
- Week 1: 5 x 2 x 405
- Week 2: 6 x 2 x 405
- Week 3: 5 x 3 x 405
- Week 4: 6 x 3 x 405
- Week 5: 3 x 2 x 365 (deload)
- Week 6; 5 x 2 x 405
- Week 7: 5 x 3 x 405
- Week 8 : 6 x 3 x 405
- Week 9: 5 x 4 x 405 (new volume PR)
There are potentially a lot of ways to work this, but the idea is that each training block is marginally more stressful than the previous one whether it’s by slight increases in load or slight increases in volume.
What about the other days of the week?
For more advanced trainees I typically only devote 1 day of the week to a volume stimulus using the main / primary / competition lift.
On other days of the week I’ll typically use supplemental exercises (variations of the main lift) to fill in additional volume.
Most of the time, my strategy here is to use the same supplemental exercise for the same length of time as I’m using for cycling the main lift.
So if I’m training the Bench Press in the format that I illustrated above (4 week cycles) I’ll use a supplemental lift later in the week and then change that movement out every 4 week for something different…coming back to it in another cycle or two.
With the supplemental lifts I’m usually pushing trainees to a higher RPE at every session and so it’s useful to only stay with that movement for short periods of time, swap it out, and then come back to it in another block and try and set new records.
So it might look like this:
- Week 1: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 2, Thursday – Close Grip Bench Press 4 x 8
- Week 2: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 3, Thursday – Close Grip Bench Press 4 x 6-8 (add 5-10 lbs)
- Week 3: Monday – Bench press 5 x 4, Thursday – Close Grip Bench Press 4 x 5-7 (add 5-10 lbs)
- Week 4: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 5, Thursday – Close Grip Bench Press 4 x 4-5 (add 5-10 lbs)
- Week 5: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 2, Thursday – Floor Press 4 x 8
- Week 6: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 3, Thursday – Floor Press 4 x 6-8 (add 5-10 lbs)
- Week 7: Monday – Bench press 5 x 4, Thursday – Floor Press 4 x 5-7 (add 5-10 lbs)
- Week 8: Monday – Bench Press 5 x 5, Thursday – Floor Press 4 x 4-5 (add 5-10 lbs)
In Week 9, you might return to Close Grips on Thursday and run through the next 4 weeks trying to beat your previous performances by adding either reps or load.
In this fashion, the volume goes up every Monday, but comes down slightly every Thursday as weight is added to the bar and the reps are allowed to fall accordingly. So the total volume more or less stays constant each week between the two exercises. I don’t know how important that is, but that’s generally just how it plays out.
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