I’ve been trying to get to grips with the relationship between volume and intensity. From everything I’ve read, the literature seems pretty clear that 10-12 sets per muscle group per week is about optimal for most people. How you want to segment that ballpark range split-wise is up to you, but beyond this, you may end up eating into your maximal recoverable volume (although to some extent, it’s still unclear what the upper range of valuable volume is).
But what I’m confused about is the intensity portion. Dorian Yates was known for using lower volumes but high intensity; if you look at his Blood and Guts workouts you’ve got only two work sets but taken to absolute failure, so he’s shy of that 10-12 sets per week but makes up for it due to how hard his sets are.
I’ve tried to read as much as I can on the topic–and perhaps I’m missing something crucial–but barely any articles that discuss it talk about how hard each of those 10-12 sets per body part per week should be.
They classify them as ‘working sets’ as in excluding warm-ups in the volume count, but there’s quite a broad range there from sets that feel decently hard, to one rep shy of failure, to all-out Yates-style 100% max with extra negatives.
How do you go about figuring this out for yourself? As I assume this can drastically affect recoverability and potentially the effectiveness of each set for muscle groups.
Think of that set range per week in the perspective of effective reps in a week. Once you understand the actual number of effective reps in a set, you can calculate backwards how the low volume high intensity approaches compare to higher volume lower intensity approaches intersect.
To figure it out for yourself, you gotta try it out! Use different volumes in your workouts and develop a “feel” for how hard you need to go and what your body responds to.
Instead of sticking with a fixed number of sets and adding reps/weight in the “regular” way, cycle through Low, High and Medium levels of volume.
Low Volume, Heavy Weight Day: 6 sets of 6 reps.
High Volume, Light Weight Day: 10 sets of 10 reps.
Medium Volume, Medium Weight Day: 8 sets of 8 reps.
Then stick to that for awhile. If you force yourself to stop at 6 sets, it may be a disappointing workout the first time. You might be like, “that’s it?” But then you’ll learn how to push hard and make 6 sets “enough.”
And maybe you only make it half way through the 10 sets on light day before you figure out you need to use strict execution to limit the weights and stop at technical failure so you don’t get exhausted.
Imagine Dorian for Low Volume days.
I like to think of Charles Glass on High Volume days.
After a couple months you’ll get volume, intensity, and exercise all figured out.
Interesting, thanks. I’m not quite sure how it works though: you’re using a higher percentage of your 1RM as the reps get lower, so if effective reps are the key, wouldn’t that make the lower end of the hypertrophy rep ranges better for building muscle?
4 sets of 8 with bench is going to tax the muscle more than 4 sets of 12 by that logic, surely, as with the latter, you’ve got a few reps at the beginning that are easy.
Wouldn’t that mean that lower volume, high intensity was usually always better because it provides the most opportunity for effective reps?
Personally, I’m going to get sick of doing either, so it makes sense to alternate periods of each. There’s not really a “this works so that doesn’t” scenario here.
To the question of effective reps, the idea is a rep has to be ~80% of your max right then to be effective. As you point out, earlier reps fatigue you, so you can get to those effective reps at the end of the set even with lighter weight (it just takes more reps to get there).
The idea is a set to failure gives you ~5 effective reps; it’s a set of 5, it’s every rep from start to finish because you began with 80+% on the bar. If it’s a set of 12, it’s still those last 5 because it took you the first 7 reps to get there.
The thought, then, is not every set would be to failure in a higher volume program. Now you’re getting fewer effective reps per set, so you have to do more sets. Let’s say we leave a couple reps in the tank, so we get 2-3 effective reps per set. Now that 10-12 sets equate to ~20-36 effective reps.
To apply that to a high intensity plan, you’d take every set to true failure. So we get those same effective reps in 4-7 sets. If we start accounting for the set-extending methods typically used (rest-pause, etc.) that essentially add “mini-sets” of effective reps, we see how some of these programs with really few “working sets” can still deliver enough effective reps.
Even if those first few reps of the 4x12 are easier, it’s still something that needs to be recovered from. Different exercises may call for slightly different rep ranges, none of which would be “wrong” when it comes to effective reps if taken close enough to failure with good technique. The reason why 4x12 on a big compound exercise like the squat (or bench as used in the example) might not be seen much is because the overall total volume load is a bigger drain on recovery, especially when training within good proximity of failure. Even with higher volume workouts you’re more likely to see a Squat be something like 4x6-8 because 4x12-15 could cause all sorts of problems on top of recovery debt. Things that lead to fatigue in other ways could potentially cause form breakdown. Higher rep ranges will be seen on less technical, or isolation exercises but the overall total volume load on these exercises is much lower therefore less likely to cause a recovery debt, and the higher reps may be better for joint integrity, injury prevention, and safer overall to hit the money maker reps with because form breakdown is less likely to happen. In theory you could do bicep curls for sets of 4-6 reps and accumulate enough effective reps. For most people that wouldn’t be comfortable or safe though. A lot of this stuff can be very individual but the general recommendations are the general recommendations for a reason. Most people should stick to them.
You can look at this from a different angle. Higher volume can be seen to provide the most opportunity because you’ve got more sets (more opportunities) to hit within a couple of reps of failure. If training low volume you absolutely must be training hard to accumulate the amount of effective reps you’re after. How hard to train is the correlation of how many sets you do. Say with low volume you stopped the set when you actually might have been able to grind out another rep or two, it could be a lost opportunity. With 3-4 sets there are more chances to accumulate effective reps. As long as you are progressively overloading within a method you enjoy it’s unlikely one is truly better than another. As has been previously mentioned, a good thing to do is phase between them both instead of marrying yourself to just the one idea.
I think mental fatigue is a big factor too. I have to actually focus on doing everything right on a squat, or I screw it up/ increase my injury potential; it’s easier to maintain that focus for fewer reps.
Flip side, I don’t have to think about a leg extension at all and I’d actually rather have a few reps to start feeling it in my quads vs. have to do some crazy mental gymnastics to get there from the get-go!
For sure man, it was actually one of the things I was thinking about when I mentioned fatigue in other ways. If I go over 10 reps on a squat with a decent weight, all my cues definitely get looser because now my body is more focused on all-round exhaustion. I can likely still do more reps safely but now it’s a battle of how the callouses in my brain are driving me forward on a particular day rather than a traditional progressive overload that’s more predictable and measurable.
That makes a lot more sense to me now, though I’m still somewhat confused despite your excellent explanation.
I’m still not totally sure why, other than for variation’s sake, there is reason to bother with the higher volume stuff. If you’re having to do more sets and ultimately more reps to work through the same effective reps you could’ve got by just using a lower volume method, where’s the advantage of high volume?
EDIT: Reading your post in conjunction cdep89 has given me the answers I need so far as the differences between higher and lower volumes and their utility. Thanks!
Thank you all for your responses, I’ve learned a lot here.
It’s clear to me now the advantages and specific utility of different degrees of volume and intensity, and the idea of effective reps has changed how I think about them.
