In Part 1 of this article we addressed two relatively “big picture” items that can influence your training volume.
First, was the big item you can’t really do anything about – genetics. It all exists on a big spectrum so there aren’t really any absolutes, but in general the more gifted natural athletes and lifters can do better on lower volume training programs, while lesser athletes and struggling lifters often respond better to higher volume programs.
Second was the issue of training goals – which oddly enough, people often do not clarify as Step #1 when they look at program design.
Are you training primarily for physique and hypertrophy (bodybuilding) or primarily for strength? Of course the two can, do, and should overlap but you still need a primary focus for your program in order to keep things oriented in the right direction.
I tend to design training programs with higher volumes for the strength athlete. That is to say lots and lots of sub-maximal sets in the 60-80% range of 1RM with a major emphasis on bar speed.
For hypertrophy, the overall volume is a bit lower as I’ll use a potentially smaller number of sets, but far more sets taken to failure or right up to failure. Training with a higher RPE / lower RIR necessitates a lowering of training volume.
In Part 2 we’re going to zero in on a few smaller issues that may also effect training volume.
Hopefully an awareness of these issues helps guide you in your decision making and gives you a better ability to make adjustments to your programming.
Range of Motion & Exercise Selection
In general, the longer the range of motion on an exercise the more potential that exercise has to create muscle damage. Longer ranges of motion create more time under tension per rep and per set and therefore more overall stress per unit of work. This is amplified by movements that have long slow eccentrics.
More muscle damage/fatigue, more time under tension, longer eccentrics are all potential contributors to a more profound hypertrophic response from a given exercise – but it’s easier to overdo – so recognize that exercises that fit this bill might need to be performed at a lower overall training volume, relative to a similar exercise with a shorter range of motion.
Lets look at an overly simplified example.
Suppose your coach wrote on your training plan this week – “Deadlift Assistance 4 x 6”. And lets say you choose to do Standard Romanian Deadlifts where the barbell is lowered to just below the knee, but your training partner chooses to do Romanian Deadlifts standing on a 2″ platform with the barbell lowered all the way to the floor.
Assume you are both the same height and both use 225 lbs…..who did more work?
Obviously your training partner performed far more work. On Paper you both did 4×6 or 24 total reps with 225 lbs. But it wasn’t the same 24 reps.
The 2″ Deficit RDL is far longer range of motion, a longer eccentric contraction, more time under tension and therefore it’s likely that far more muscle damage was created from his 24 reps than with your 24 reps. Perhaps more damage than he can adequately recover from in a reasonable amount of time. Or just simply – more work than he needs to be doing to create a stimulus and thus generating unnecessary fatigue.
For Quad training – rock bottom Hack Squats or Deep High Bar Squats are an extremely long range of motion vs say a leg press. While it might not be that big of a deal to casually bang out 5 sets of 10 reps on a Leg Press, a “casual” 5 sets of 10 on a rock bottom Hack Squat might leave you limping for the next week or more.
I believe that for maximally effective hypertrophy training you should actively pursue exercises with the longest range of motion possible – at least as part of your programming. I believe these types of exercises have the most potential for growth across their constituent muscle groups and are the most efficient way possible to train.
You may find that when you prioritize long range of motion type of exercises that your volume (and your loading) may have to be adjusted to accommodate, but that you’ll be able to get far more stimulus with far less volume.
Range of Motion & Your Structure
Not all muscle groups / exercises can or should be trained with the same amounts of volume. One of the factors that might play into this is your individual build or structure. This actually ties directly into the range of motion argument. Although you might not necessarily be trying to actively accentuate the range of motion with your exercise selection, your body type may produce a range of motion that lends itself to excessively long (or short) ranges of motion and this can and should factor into your programming.
For instance I’ve found that high deadlift volumes are best reserved for those who are built well for the deadlift. When a guy is built like an Orangutan and his deadlift stroke is short and sweet, he’s going to put less stress on his back and overall nervous system with each rep and each set. Therefore he can and probably should do more set volume if he wants to build up his deadlift.
Guys with shitty deadlift structures (T-Rex arms and long femurs) are going to set up with more horizontal back angles, and higher hips, and this creates far longer ranges of motions, more time under tension, and far more stress on the lower back. In this case, he may want to be aware of how high set volumes on the Deadlift might be tougher to recover from than for his well-built training partner.
More on exercise selection…important for physique athletes….
For physique and hypertrophy oriented athletes I generally recommend that they pay attention to soreness patterns the day or two after performing a movement as well as the pump they can achieve in the muscle during the session with a given exercise. If we’re oriented more towards a bodybuilding program then every exercise we perform must be in the program because it is highly stressful and stimulative to the muscle group being trained.
If you are a bodybuilder……if you get no pump in your chest during a bench press and very little soreness in your chest the day after a bench press then I’d argue that a flat barbell bench press may not be the best tool in your tool kit for chest development. Either that or you are benching like a power lifter and not like a bodybuilder.
I see a lot of guys that keep upping their bench press volume hoping that it will eventually start to build up their chest. More sets, more days of the week, etc.
I would suggest that you quit doing larger doses of something that has never worked for you in smaller doses. Either get rid of that exercise or learn to perform it right, rather than just do more of it.
If the Bench Press is a good exercise for your structure then more benching might potentially yield some more progress. In fact it probably will….provided that loads are still trending upwards over time and you aren’t stripping off tons of weight off the bar simply in the name of more volume.
The same thing for Squats and Quad development.
Low Bar Squats are a great exercise for strength. But depending on your build, they might be terrible if you a physique athlete trying to bring up your quads.
If you are built like me, low bar squats are all hams, ass, and adductor.
So if my low bar squat is growing, but my quads aren’t….why would I just keep doing more low bar squats?
The answer isn’t more volume in this case.
The answer is better exercise selection for your build. So perhaps more volume, but more specific volume.
One added day of 2 sets of Rock Bottom Hack Squats is going to be more stimulative to the quads than adding 2 more days of 3 sets of more low bar squats.
Frequency and volume be damned if the exercise itself is shitty for your build.
On the other hand…..if you have programmed in the RIGHT exercises – you’ll find yourself doing far less training volume.
Mind Muscle Connection & Effort
It’s repeated often that in order for a muscle to continue to grow over time, that training volume must continue to also grow over time.
I disagree, in part.
It’s not that simple.
I think it would be better stated that in order for continued growth to occur over time that STRESS must also grow over time.
Volume is only one way of adding a training stress, and it’s often a poor way to try and continuously drive more muscle growth over a very long period of time.
New trainees often have very poor mind muscle connection. Even something as simple as a bicep curl and they can barely get a pump. String that out to more complex exercises – like back exercises – lat pulldowns, barbell rows, etc and they can hardly feel a thing in their lats during the movements.
No pump, very little actual lat fatigue, and very little post workout soreness.
This is common in inexperienced trainees with poor mind-muscle connection.
Not surprisingly, these types of trainees generally have to do a lot more sets and reps of a given exercise to get anything out of it.
They literally have to just use tons of set volume in order to generate enough of a stimulus to cause any growth.
Sometimes it works – for a while -and to a degree, but where does this trainee go with this approach over a 5-10 year period? Just keep piling up more and more sets every few months? It’s an inefficient approach at best, it’s highly fatiguing, and worse – it just doesn’t work.
The better approach is to learn how to do more with less. Instead of bludgeoning a muscle to death with 1000 club strikes, learn to “kill it” quickly with more precision – a dagger to the heart to keep with the silly metaphor. A shorter but more intense effort.
This is where mind-muscle connection comes into play. This is a hard concept to teach (i.e. impossible) in article format. It has to be learned in the gym and some guys “get it” faster than others.
Those who don’t get it, often deny it’s existence or relevance.
But you have to be intentional with HOW you perform each rep and each set of an exercise. You learn to create a mental connection with the muscle group under load, stay connected with it during the set, and direct all of the stress of an exercise to that muscle group.
An experienced bodybuilder can probably take a 30 lb dumbbell and curl it for 50 reps if he wanted to.
Or he could take that same 30 lb dumbbell and induce failure at 15 reps.
Tempo, execution, and mind-muscle connection are what make this happen. And that’s how we want to train for muscle growth.
The idea is to make the muscle fail quickly.
Doing more of your sets in this manner will mean far fewer sets overall.
5 sets aren’t needed because you go the job done with 2.
This doesn’t necessarily apply equally to all exercises in the gym or even every set. For growth, you still need a focus on loading and progression. Sometimes this means a bit more focus on moving the weight and a bit less focus on the muscle.
This is why I like “top set + back off set” so much as a staple protocol. In this format we get to take advantage of moving a heavier weight, perhaps even with a little looseness in the form, and then peeling weight off and 100% focusing on failure sets, mind-muscle connection, and focus on the muscle vs the load. It’s the best of both worlds.
Effort……
The effort part of the equation is three fold. First is the effort to actually push to failure as opposed to stopping a set when it gets hard. I believe failure (or very close to it) is necessary for optimal growth.
Second is the effort to try and push a set to a new weight or rep PR as often as possible. Training to failure is not enough, just like volume is not enough, if there is an absence of progression over time.
Third is the effort to be intentional with your sets. For my strength athletes we talk about being intentional with our bar speed. For sub-max sets to be effective we need to move them faster. So I have to get them to stay focused and not just go through the motions with sub-maximal weights.
The same is true for my physique clients….I have to keep them focused and intentional with each rep and every set in order to make it count.
Cliched techniques like feeling the target muscle lengthen on the eccentric, feeling it stretch deep at the bottom end of the range of motion, feeling it contract on the concentric, managing the tempo, and keeping stress OFF of other muscle groups are all important to establishing a mind-muscle connection and helping make a muscle “fail quickly.”
Mind muscle connection can be the difference between a searing painful pump in the biceps after just 1-2 sets and simply having tired arms after 5 sets. The guy who achieves the former, more consistently is going to grow more over time. It isn’t necessarily the pump that causes the growth….but the intention and effort behind the set that caused the pump that causes the real training effect we’re after.
