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How much volume should you do?
No one on planet earth can thrive with 20+ sets/week.
Read Time: 4m 54s
Volume recommendations are completely wrong.
I’ve spent years now long digging into the literature and looking at what actually works. No one is able to recover from 10 sets per muscle a week, it’s just undoable. This means 10 sets is something you should never go above, it’s the ceiling.
Oh and a quick thing, volume doesn’t include reps but for those, trust me on the 4-6 rep range.
To understand good volume, you have to understand diminishing returns (per muscle, per workout)
You’ve probably seen the inconsistent volume advice.
“Some people’s muscles grow best from 1 set a week!” “Some need over 10 sets a week!” And you’ve heard muscles can benefit from 52 sets a week, I feel bad for you…
I’ll admit, the amount of sets you need is individual.
However it’s not a range like 1-50, it’s a range like 4-8.
You’re human (I’m assuming), that means you’re part of our species. Our species has evolved into one with insanely similar muscle growth genetics. The odds of being someone who needs less than 4, or more than 8, end up being 1 in 10,000,000.
The odds of requiring less or more, would mean your DNA is so different, that you’re no longer human.
You’ve probably heard countless of creators saying they respond well to high volume…
They don’t. They might think they do, but go back to their last peak cut, or peak bulk, they look the same. Throughout the journey their strength went up and down, but there was no overall strength gain, no new muscle.
I’m guilty of this myself.
“I have a high work capacity” is something I used to tell myself.
This is a real back day I used to do.
I did not have a high work capacity.
I wasn’t training hard. I was building up as much fatigue as possible. I was weaker than a 70 year old bingo playing grandma.
All of your sets should be around the 0-1 RIR (reps before failure) mark.
I don’t want you to waste your time.
I’ve wasted months of my life in the gym with minimal progress. When you’re starting out the novel stimulus might be strong enough to handle all the fatigue. You shouldn’t have to.
You should be able to grow as much as possible, from day one.
Let me introduce you to an equation that I’ll put on a t-shirt one day.
a.k.a. Net Stimulus
You only grow when the Gains (Net Stimulus) is positive.
This is where volume gets a little complex. Earlier told you how maxing out that stimulus occurs at around 6 sets. If you wanted to max out only the stimulus of that workout, you’d do 6 sets.
This is where fatigue comes to play, and why you usually view the equation with a weekly timeframe.
A muscle is either growing, or dying.
The stimulus from a workout lasts for about 3 days. Past this point, the muscle is dying. This means you’d ideally want to hit a muscle at least 2x a week to keep the net stimulus as high as possible.
To do that, you need to make sure the fatigue isn’t too high during the second time in a week you hit a muscle.
This new perspective adds a different cap to our volume.
It’s also one that has a few variables, so I’ll let you take determine how you’re going to split this up. Here’s what would impact the volume you use.
How lengthened the exercise is
If you’re working both sides at the same time
How many times a week you want to train the muscle
How stable an exercise is
The rep range you’re using
How close to failure you’re training
The best thing I can give you is a table to determine how many relative sets each exercise would have.
Variable | If Yes (Set Multiplier) |
---|---|
Is the muscle working in a mid range? | 1.2x |
Is the muscle working in a lengthened range? | 1.5x |
Is the movement hardest in the lengthened position? | 1.5x |
Is the movement hardest in the shortened position? | .9x |
Are you working each side individually? | 1.3x |
Are you training each muscle 3 times a week? | Spread out 10 sets per week max. |
Is the exercise free weight? | 0.8x |
Are you doing more than 8 reps? | 1.1x |
Are you doing more than 15 reps? | 1.4x |
Are you training to failure? | 1.25x |
Are you training at 2 RIR instead of 1 RIR? | .75x |
By no means is this checklist perfect, I’ll continue working on it for you.
Here’s a bit of a demo on how it’d work with single arm cable/machine preacher curls.
Preacher curls:
Working in the shortened range (1x)
Hardest in the lengthened position (1.5x)
Each side is individually worked (1.3x)
It’s a machine/cable (1x)
I’m working in the 4-6 rep range (1x)
I’m training at 1 RIR (1x).
This ends up being (1 × 1.5 × 1.3 × 1 × 1 × 1) leaving you with 1.95 RELATIVE sets of bicep.
If the muscle is being worked, but isn’t the primary mover, just call it 1 set.
So if you had a program only using preacher curls for the biceps, you’d be able to have 3 sets of preacher curls. You’d probably try and split this down the middle and have one day with 2 sets, and another with 1.
I really hope this all makes sense.
The awesome thing about this entire process is just how quick progress comes.
When you’re following proper volume that’s recoverable, your strength skyrockets. You pack on the muscle, and your new worries involve buying jeans that fit. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to follow the checklist, and workout how to divide the volume.
Any of my Deep End coaching group guys who switched to this were shocked.
It’s pretty crazy just how quickly the weight goes up when you’re getting rid of the fatigue.
Past that point, the progress is good. Plates get added, reps get added, sure not as quick as before, but now you’re actually making gains. Managing is probably the most important thing when it comes to earning stretch marks.
So here’s what you do next:
Find the right volume for you
Count a muscle worked, as 1 set (even if not primary)
Use the checklist to workout relative volume so you maximise your net stimulus
Don’t go above 10 relative sets/week
Train a muscle two times a week minimum
Grow? 🙄
It’s very likely that I’ll break this topic open more.
Volume is something people are very passionate and outspoken about. It’s also something people continuously get wrong. Being such a important part of training, it’s something you can’t mess up.
If you have any questions about this, send me an email.
I want to make sure anything missed is added, and can be answered.
Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher
P.S. Now would be a good time to recap on the best exercises for each muscle (if you forgot that lesson).
P.P.S. That t-shirt I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t exist yet but wouldn’t it be really cool if on one side it was like Gains = Stimulus - Fatigue, and on the other it was that meme with the 100s of equations where they’re trying to get the same equation, but it’s super long and wrong 😭
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