Does Training Volume Get A Bad Rap?

Training
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Yeah, you make a good point. And on top of it, he had some pretty harsh words for Schoenfeld and Israetel and then he turned around and changed his tune plus had Schoenfeld on his podcast, seems like he’s trying to attract attention more than anything.

The overall point that he is making, which is that you don’t need a ton of volume to build muscle if you push close to failure on work sets, is correct, but it kind of looks like he is trying to promote a particular style of training (HIT) as the only way to go. Perhaps because he is trying to “carve out a niche” for himself, rather than just being another coach out of many.

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The title of that thread made it sound like a general discussion about building some muscles. Then like Chris said, it turned out to be about a specific type of training. having a style and a niche is cool, but it was a little confusing.

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And there ( in your Garage ) you don‘t have to worry about them other forms around you whilst simultaneously hoping to meet her in the sauna after chest training either- really a plus for them with kids at home :crazy_face:

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This is me exactly. I am not a fan of Paul Carter’s approach to training, because I don’t like to do those styles of workouts. I don’t care what a study says (which I take with a grain of salt anyway) if my main goal is to be strong, fit, and feel better. After reading his comments on his long thread, I personally don’t care for the way he conducts himself either.

For me, my aesthetically best results came from doing ring work and hard bodyweight work: ring dips, muscle ups, ring push ups, pistol squats, and hill sprints. I would do one day of heavy pulling in the gym: high pulls, shrugs, deadlifts, and weighted pull ups. The volume was on the higher side, but I didn’t necessarily do any intensifiers.

These days, I respond best to 531 workouts or similar workouts where the focus is on clean, strong reps and not failure. This, to me, translates the most into feeling good, remaining athletic in sports, and looking good (no one would confuse me with an in-season bodybuilder, but who cares?). Also, I tend to like workouts with a few things that are more natural moves: squats, pull ups, dips, for example. I simply have no interest in doing cluster sets of ultra slow eccentric leg curls.

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Well, to be honest, He’s had harsh words for a lot of people he’s recently cozying up to as he tries to make a name for himself as an author/online coach. Nothing new, and let’s be honest, we’ve seen it done before,… that’s how you get your name out there in the current era of doing things (it used to be by actually accomplishing things, but hey, now I’m sounding like an old man -lol).

If I truly have any issue, and I don’t dislike or like the guy, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever popped into his forum before Brad tagged me recently, even after seeing his articles, is that he’s adamant about how he views things, and seems to forget that there are plenty of other people out there with knowledge/experience/background to intelligently disagree with him. I can very easily quote studies and pull example of high level bodybuilders to back everything I advise.

That aside, let me stress the problems I had with how that other “discussion” was going:

1- leaving out all the other variables that play in. There is no ONE driver of muscle growth, and “all the science” (as he likes to put it) supports a synergistic interplay of factors that can work in one of several manners depending on how you put them together.

2- Ignoring the recovery angle (and of course the unique physiology of each trainer), and how some people, especially more advanced athletes can indeed push certain variables more, even without the others taking a hit (Intensity and Volume do NOT have to be a mutually exclusive situation! I personally might need more rest periods between sets, but my strength never lagged on work sets even a couple of weeks out from a contest).

3-- Speaking like he knows exactly what every competitor and coach is doing, which is fine if an author is discussing specific individuals he’s working with, but in terms of the top Natural competitors,… I like to think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what a serious ton of them do considering my own background in the sport (but heaven forbid I describe my own experience or BG that in answer to a question to support my stance -lol)

S

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@The_Mighty_Stu this is just a question I am curious about, sorry to get a bit off topic. Has there been any HIGH LEVEL competitive bodybuilders that used a full body setup exclusively to create their physique? If so who were these individuals? I know the volume would be more spread out over the course of a week vs in a single session.

That’s why I think paused squats are so effective. The weight is way lighter, but sitting in the hole for 5 seconds and then having to go up makes the lift 10x harder. I have noticed ever since I slowed down my curl movements (2-3 seconds down, 2-3 seconds up) I can literally feel every fiber of my biceps working and oddly enough all my elbow pain has gone away 100%. I do a lot of pressing and pulling, but the slow really concentrated curls has made my elbow pain disappear. Probably because I’m actually working my bicep solely vs just moving my elbow joint pointlessly.

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He contradicted himself a few times as well. I asked him what he thought about short vs. long rest periods and he responded that he thought timing rest periods was a complete waste of time and he has never done it. Then I read about this “350 method” of his. From his site:

So I wanted to elaborate a little bit more and give some examples of what I am going to dub the “350 method” here. The only reason I have to give it a “name” is because otherwise every time I talked about it, I would have to say “well, 3 sets of as many as possible with 2 minutes rest between sets, until you can do 50 reps with it.”

…

Don’t cheat your rest periods like a weak bitch. Two minutes.

But yeah, timing rest periods is stupid and he never did it.

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To me, this is all in a nutshell
(Wonder why I missed that article…)

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100%!

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70

Very nice progress on this it seems. Honestly when I read your reply the first thing I thought was “ why didn’t I cut accessory work out.” I feel like there’s enough volume on big movements to cover everything.

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Depends on weight. Doing high reps i find 30 secs is good. For low reps rest 90 secs to 2 mins

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Definitely. I’m in the process now of franensteining it into alternating periodization for squats and deads but linear for bench.

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I would think rest time would be very important for HIT. You’re essilentially building more fatigue with less rest which is what to failure sets are trying to do. Push the limit if the muscle. If you’ve ever ran blood and guts you’ll find that rest breaks are as much a part as the rep ranges are. 1 minute between warm ups sets and working sets. Pretty strict

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I don’t know how to interpret this. Two full-body workouts, 1 UB, 1LB?

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It’s based on an average, it’s not twice a week every week, or once a week every week, so its 1 and a half. That’s why using weeks is a bit confusing lol.

With your upper/lower example it would be 3 sessions a week. U/L/U week 1 L/U/L week 2.
Obviously if you trained 4 times in that week your then hitting 2 times a week.

Push/pull/legs would work better split over 4 or 5 days to hit the 1 and half a week. If you only did 3 sessions it would only be 1 times a week. But if you trained 6 days you would hit the twice a week again.

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He means training each muscle once every five days.

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That’s a much easier way of putting it lol

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The thread went down a bizarre path. There were several times in the early parts of the thread where PC said the above.

As the discussion continued and he seemed to get frustrated with the volume questions (and the “evidence-based” crew) he really doubled down on the low volume stuff and got a bit of tunnel vision about the discussion.

The funniest part is how a discussion whose focus was that effort and progressive overload are far more important variables than frequency and volume ended up being bogged down by debate over volume :smile:

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Steve Reeves was one of the first names to come to my mind as well. He had an amazing physique, although I don’t think he carried as much mass as some of the latter individuals (Park, Pearl etc). That’s not to say he was doing anything inherently wrong, as you’ll always find people who can grow off anything they do, and he was someone who actually did think about what he was doing.

Reeves did do full body sessions early on, actually I’m fairly certain most trainers did full body back then because that’s just what the thinking was. Hit everything, rest, come back and do it again. It may have been the same exact session 3x/week, but as Ryno pointed out, these guys were training for hours every session. Additionally, they weren’t doing many different movements for each body part, so while the development was certainly good (and anyone today would be lucky to sport a physique like Reeves in his prime!), it wasn’t the level of development that you would see a lot more of once the idea of splitting things up and hitting something else while you were recovering from the previous session became the norm.

Have there been any high level competitors who have employed this approach? I won’t pretend to know it all, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that there haven’t been any in the last few decades. This sport is about standing on the shoulders of those who came before you. That means that we’d be foolish to ignore any of the approaches or techniques that have already been tested, figured out, and adopted by so many successful trainers and bodybuilders. This is especially important in our current era of armchair experts, keyboard warriors, and wanna be fitness authors/coaches trying to make their names by challenging what’s been working for countless people with much better results than they’ve ever achieved -lol.

When I started coaching Rob Stein, his time was very constrained. He had a full time job teaching, and a part time job doing his composition. So he was able to dedicate time for a 2 way split. I don’t recall all the details at the moment (it was a few years back), but considering all the variables and constraints we had to deal with, he did pretty damn amazing (2nd place at a very tough contest). The following year, with more time on his hands, we both knew we had to rachett things up, and that meant a better split that was more conducive to making the kind of progress we needed. Long story short, he came in bigger, tighter, nabbed a pro card, and walked away with an amazing physique, AND a ton of knowledge about how his body worked (we discovered a lot of patterns in terms of water retention, cardio types etc). Now, I can brag about Rob for a whole thread, but the point is, when presented with the option for a better split, volume, etc etc, we both knew that was the better option. Success leaves clues, and anyone would be foolish to ignore that truth.

S

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Yeah, I didn’t really get that. The “evidence based crew” is typically the folks online screaming about this study or that, and how it backs up their decisions and thinking, and here’s PC dismissing or admonishing them while simultaneously repeating how science is on his side -lol.

My thoughts on science and studies are always twofold:

1- Most studies aren’t conducted with serious bodybuilders in mind, and the training protocols clearly show this (not to mention a clear and obvious disregard for all of the many other factors that play into achieving “results”)

2- Some of the best bodybuilders in the world, throughout the history of the sport know next to nothing about science, and yet they know what works (look at what has always worked for the best trainers!) and often you can find a study that will be at direct odds with what is obviously working for them and countless others -lol.

S