Are you running a specific program or is this a Chris_Ottawa Custom?
My own thing. I was starting to think that maybe lower volume was better and then I ended up hurting my back and had no choice but to cut down the volume. Then I started reading stuff that Sergey Ponamarev was saying about training volume and such so I decided to give it a try. My bench was going nowhere for a while but cutting volume way down got it moving again and I’m making some good progress on my squat too. Deadlift seems to be my nemesis these days, but last week was a PR.
1 Like
You see how a lot of these IPF types are into high frequency high volume full body training that takes 2-3 hours 4-6 days a week? This guy here won several IPF equipped world championships and only trains for 1-1 1/2 hours 3 days a week.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B65uY8NBhuX/
Past a certain point, training can become tedious and also you make less gains so what is the point?
I am an easy sell on programs with less time spent in the gym. As you know, I’m currently running 5th Set and the sessions are typically under an hour (squat workout can run 1hr15mins or so, lots of plate changing with BB rows, calf raises, squats, etc.), 3 workouts every 9 days. Sometimes less is more, and that has been my experience with training. 5/3/1 and 5th Set seem to be a my “standard” for training and where I’ve seen my best progress.
I’m a little envious of your program because there is nothing I enjoy more than hitting singles over 90%. That is why I really enjoyed running Conjugate and having the opportunity to “max out” a couple/few times a week (on variations). I don’t think it hurt my strength, but I seem to respond better to specificity. I got slightly better at the variations I used, and learned to strain, but I didn’t see the crazy increase in 1RM that I was really hoping I would. I learned quite a bit from it though, so I don’t consider it wasted time.
Mini rant; had some time to kill.
1 Like
Have you ever spent several weeks doing heavy singles on the competition lifts? I find that works well for me for peaking, but it’s easy to overdo it and burn out if you go too heavy or do singles for too long. You could take something like 5th set and rather than the standard peaking protocol you just start doing singles 4-6 weeks out from the meet, add a down set or two and maybe a little assistance work.
1 Like
A few years ago I was doing the high volume full body stuff because I was listening to “experts” who claimed that this was the best way to train and you need to continually increase volume. Gains were slow, training was long and exhausting, and I would have made much better progress with less.
No I haven’t, I find I’m not the best at fatigue management when I am doing heavy singles. I enjoy heavy singles, so it is easy for me to push them too hard. Even running Conjugate I had to track my resting heart rate and pull back when I saw a big spike or I’d feel like I was hit by a ton of bricks. I’d much rather do a 95%+ single than 80% x 10, though. I know others who prefer the latter.
You mean working up to a top single each workout all the way up to the meet?
5th Set has you doing singles around the 5-6 week out mark.
~5weeks out you find your max single, fatigued max
~4weeks out you are taking 90%+ of previous single, strong single
~3-2weeks out triples
2-1weeks out speed/rep/light work
Yes.
I’m not necessarily advising that you do this, but what you would do is rather than working up to a max you go up to something that maybe you could do a triple or double with and then some lighter work after. Each week add 5-15 lbs to the top set, but you have to autoregulate this and if you aren’t sure how it will go you will be better off lifting something lighter than turning it into an all out grind. You would want to go for something around a 2nd attempt or a bit heavier by the end of the peaking block, then you will know what you can handle at the meet and you should be fairly comfortable with maximal weights.
Some people get a lot out of the heavy singles, others don’t. It always seemed to work well for me, and I can lift quite a bit more for a single than I can for a double.
2 Likes
A minimum volume meta analysis just got dumped. Great timing. I reckon it’s more important to know ur minimum than maximum because how often are u gonna have the time and other conditions to make use of near max volumes but minimum will always be useful
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9XGAP2HJKd/?igshid=as5p24ip8hgw
2 Likes
Eric Helms was talking about the same meta-analysis a few weeks ago.
The thing is that doing more can theoretically produce better results in the short term, but then recovery becomes more of an issue so in the end you might make the same or even less progress with more volume.
Here is another study, the same one Paul Carter was talking about a while back:
2 Likes
Main issue I have with these studies is that a lot of people see it as less work when in reality you need to push just as hard if not harder when doing less volume. Also, as you stated, high volume is a great way to push through old plateaus if you typically train low volume.
I agree that most of your training should be on the lower side because most of us aren’t pro athletes and have outside work/stress and with that come poor eating and sleeping habits, but pushing high volume for a few weeks has its benefits.
That is true in a way, this study had them doing sets to failure and 5 and 10 sets got equal results but if you stay a couple reps short then you would probably do better with more than 5 sets. Also if you are training to increase your 1rm and hypertrophy isn’t the current goal then less volume can be better just because you accumulate less fatigue so you don’t need regular deloads and performance in training doesn’t suffer.
Even if you are a "pro powerlifter it doesn’t necessarily mean that more volume is better. Malanchev only does one work set once a week on each lift and basically no assistance work, Marianna Gasparyan does pretty much the same thing too, apparently Yury Belkin uses a similar method but I think he does more sets because most of his training videos look pretty easy. You can’t train like that without drugs or you will lose muscle mass, but low volume can definitely work and is more of a long term strategy than a method to put 50lbs on your squat in a training cycle.
1 Like
Friday, March 6 - Deadlift day - “medium” session
Deadlift
515x3x3 - Didn’t feel as explosive as I would have liked but still fairly easy, first set about RPE 6, last set RPE 8. I think the issue is partly psychological because I go into this expecting it to be easy but it still requires effort, whatever.
No RDLs this week
Barbell Row
355x8
Close neutral grip chin ups
bw+40x10 - last one wasn’t full ROM, should have stopped at 9 but I can’t help myself sometimes.
Barbell curl
125x13, 11
Next week I will pull something heavy, the week after an easy session with 485 for 5 singles and not much else.
1 Like
That and genetics. A lot of people tend to reference elite lifters when they reference these things as well which doesn’t work for everyone (I used to run similar approaches as well and started pulling like KK a few years back because of it was good for KK it should be good for me. All it did was ruin my lockout and made me realize I’m not KK haha).
Malanichev is such an anomaly as well, but it should also be noted he was a jacked teen-twenty + year old before he started doing the “main lift only” thing. Dude had an insane base built prior to PLing. Obviously you’ve been doing this for a while and have tried your share of training modalities I’m sure, just delving further into these points for passerby’s to your log.
Solid deadlift day btw. I know you haven’t been pleased with it lately but it seems to be moving right along.
1 Like
Well remember, I’m not training like those people, I’m just using a lower volume approach. Sergey Ponamarev, who is Marianna Gasparyan’s coach and husband, has said over and over that the way most PLers train is counterproductive and his main point is that lower volume and frequency are better. According to him, most elite lifters doing high volume training are succesful in spite of their training and it’s due to genetics, drugs, or both that they got to where they are.
I would have thought this was a bunch of nonsense at one time, but after I hurt my back I couldn’t really push the lower body volume while I was coming back from that and surprisingly I ended up making some decent progress and setting some deadlift PRs, hard to say with squat since I hadn’t been pushing low bar squats without wraps before that but numbers were going up and up. My bench press wasn’t making any progress so I thought I would try cutting back the volume and it turned out that was exactly what I needed. I also tried benching only once a week, two times, but after a couple weeks I could tell I was getting weaker so twice a week it is.
The question is, who do you follow? If you aren’t elite then you can’t expect to do what elite lifters are doing, but I think you can learn more from them than some mediocre guys who aren’t going anywhere. Also there are several recent studies showing that too much volume is no good, the exact numbers will vary from person to person but unless you are a real outlier then something moderate is most likely the best approach.
A huge thing in powerlifting is longevity, you aren’t going to go from intermediate to world champion in a training cycle but you can beat yourself up and end up with a bunch of overuse injuries in a few months if you overdo it. I feel better now than when I was doing more volume, and I’m also stronger too. I don’t think that significantly more volume would even result in more gains for me, but even if it did it would it be worth it? I was getting tricep tendinitis and all kinds of aches and pains before, how long can you push through that before it becomes a serious problem?
1 Like
Completely agree. As with anything that comes with training, I do feel a lot of it is trial and error without a coach. Some people benefit really well from training one way, while others train completely opposite. A lot of it boils down to specificity for sport and actually showing up. Doing a 5x5 is better than an all out set of 20 if you’re 6 weeks out or something, but if an athlete enjoys the set of 20 more and doesn’t show up for the 5x5, it isn’t any better. But I suppose if you want to be great, you’ll do whatever gets you there so that becomes invalid. who knows. Haha
See I’m the exact opposite. If I trained the way you do, I’d be destroyed in no time with sets of 5 and less at such a high percentage. So for me, doing a ton of volume keeps me in the game longer and progressing more. I’ve made the best progress of my life doing high volume sets, but I’m also in my mid twenties and highly active in my profession. My goals aren’t PL specific and that’s where we differ due to the specificity of sport.
The main reason I stay reading all you guy’s logs is because I enjoy seeing what and how you guys do things. It’s also a good frame of reference for new people coming to the site to see that training how vinny or Pwn train is going to be vastly different from you or cast.
1 Like
That’s a pretty extreme example, sets of 20 aren’t really conducive to increasing your 1rm because the weight has to be so light plus you aren’t even going to activate the strongest motor units.
You don’t necessarily need to do low reps unless you are training for a PL meet, but again all the evidence points to too much volume (in terms of number of work sets) being counterproductive. If you are making progress then it cant be that bad, but if you are doing a ton of volume then it’s quite likely you could make equal or better gains doing less work. Even the “high volume guys” like Israetel and James Krieger have concluded that beyond 8-10 work sets per session is generally junk volume and can be counterproductive. Based on the current evidence, it looks like somewhere between 5-10 sets per muscle group per workout is going to be the maximum you can benefit from, and how close to failure you push is going to affect that number as well.
Those guys are strongman competitors so endurance and work capacity are much more important for them, PL is all about absolute strength.
Saturday, March 7 - 2nd bench day
Slingshot bench
450x2 - felt heavy, moved slow, this is the most weight I have ever had in my hands.
405x5 - This was actually supposed to be 410, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I kept my ass down this time. My feet wanted to move but I made sure not to let them, looks like I found the right setup so that I can push as hard as I want with my legs and my hips don’t come up but it’s not the most comfortable.
JM press
285x7, 6
Neutral DB pushups
light+super mini bands x11 - I think one set is enough.
1 Like
Staying in the pocket or whatever that means lol
I don’t get it
It was supposed to be some semi-challenging submax work, and it was.