Anyone Read "The MAX Muscle Plan 2.0" by Brad Schoenfeld?

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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Is it any good? Please give a brief review if you have read it! What is the main ideas behind the training regimen?

Adding @average_al since we’ve spoken about this in a Darden thread some months ago. Did you buy the book?

Update: I’ve ordered the book today. Appearantly John Meadows was involved, and that is a sign of practicability/quality. Something for the open-minded @davemccright?

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I haven’t read this book, but I can say some of Brad’s recent conclusions include:

  • There is no upper limit of volume for hypertrophy per muscle, but there is likely a systemic limit
  • There is potentially a volume limit per session
  • Intensity techniques (drop sets, etc.) really should just be seen as time-efficient volume
  • There is benefit to training a muscle more than once a week, and probably a benefit to training more than twice
  • As long as a set is taken to failure, similar hypertrophy can be achieved with loads as low as 30% 1RM; again, there’s a practical limit (you likely quit before failure with such low loads)
  • He seems to practically land on 10-20 sets per muscle, per week, split over 2-3 sessions
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Do you think that 10-20 sets applies for secondary muscle groups like biceps? Because if so it sounds like quite a lot of curling…

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He talks about methods of counting pulling/ pushing volume toward those muscle groups. Like a pull-up is not exactly one set for biceps, but it’s not 0 either. The important thing is just that you keep some standard for yourself, so you know how to adjust based on your results.

Practically-speaking, I think it’s easiest to just count those secondary muscle groups on their own, but cut the recommendation by 1/3 to 1/2; so you’d do 5-12 sets for biceps, for instance.

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I’ve heard a lot of people who have enjoyed this book. Definitely something I plan to check out at some point. Let me know what you think of it!

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