What about the modified variations like 5/3/1 BBB. It’s not designed with the goal of “Fine tuning aesthetics” in mind but one could for sure bulk up adequately with it.
As to the study and rep ranges… I believe sticking to high reps can be extremely draining and arguably more dangerous with certain compound lifts like squats/deadlifts.
Do a set of deadlifts for 20 reps to failure, not only is it exhausting as hell but form starts to seriously degrade around rep 15.
531 specifies not to failure. The wording changes, depending on edition, butbits always not to failure.
My understanding is that this is written with the aim of getting bigger to play (for example) American Football. Subtlely different in my mind to training for aesthetics. Training to win the battle of the team bus, not the battle of the bedroom.j
If we can agree that volume is a driver, is there an optimal volume. The study had a target volume of 28 to 36 working repetitions. Those ranges seemed to provide very similar outcome.
Is there a minimum volume? What would be the lower limit?
Is there a maximum volume? What would be the upper limit?
Are these limits the same for natural and enhanced athletes? (I would say we would all agree the natural athletes cannot tolerate as much volume as the enhanced athletes.)
It is not the main driver so, it will depend. It does not matter how many sets you do if you half ass it like most trainees. Progressive overload and mechanical tension is key.
I do 6-10 sets per body part.
If the study meant anything at all it showed that volume was “A” driver. Those subjects were performing far above half-assed for they, in some cases could not achieve the rep goal on some of their sets (I do understand that beginners are not capable of achieving a maximum “effort”, because their movements and mind-muscle connection is not sufficiently trained.)
How many total reps? At 10 reps per set that equates to higher volume than the test, by a good margin.
That fact that they could not complete the rep goal means nothing to me. I believe they most likely did not truly push themselves (as with most studies and beginners). They also lack the experience to truly work the muscle.
Total reps depends I ramp up to a weight in a given rep range (depends on the exercise) perform 1 or 2 sets and 1 or 2 back off sets. Rep ranges can be from 6-25. I only get around 6 reps if I perform a second working set in a certain exercise.
Squat:
3-5 warm up sets
1 all out set 10 reps
1 set around 6 reps
1 back off set 10-15 reps
But it can vary. Auto regulation is very important.
I’d be the first to contribute if someone decides to crowd fund one.
I get what you’re saying, but I’d also see it as an opportunity for one to condition oneself to maintain proper “form” even while extremely fatigued. You can say something similar for any other movement like t-bar rows if they’re done later in the workout when you’re already really tired. Letting your “form” degrade and losing your focus on the target muscles renders it to being junk volume. Learning to focus despite being fatigued to the point you just want to go through the motions to complete the set is pretty valuable IMO.
Not that I’d do anything for such high reps with maybe the exception of calves. High reps for abs are out of the question because I get horribly painful ab cramps. Lower to mid ranged reps for most exercises with the occasional dropset during the last set seem to work best for me so I don’t fuck with what has produced the most consistent results.
But I think of back day and how I just sometimes “switch off” after the 2nd exercise because I’m just so mentally and physically exhausted both from training and my work day prior to that. At this point it’s either replace what I wanted to do with something easier like straight armed pulldowns or pack up and go home rather than waste my time and energy.
After doing Deep Water, my conditioning(as in work tolerance) improved and I was able to soldier through the entire workout while maintaining focus. I realized that my hip flexors were giving me problems halfway through the program so I made sure to really focus on maintaining my “form” or I’d inevitably fuck them up really badly. Cursing really loudly helps a lot.
I’ve currently lost it again, though. I mean the conditioning. A short layoff because my hip flexors were still giving me problems contributed to that.
Just some random thoughts. Not really making any statements with much conviction. Just saying you (most experienced lifters, at least) CAN learn/condition yourself to not let form degrade so much to the point that you will incur any severe injuries if you really consciously decide to do it.
Especially when they could just ask a bunch of muscular people what they do.
There was one about TBT vs splits for hypertrophy that did this. They did a survey on lots of competing bodybuilders and 99% of them did splits. THEN they did the actual study on students with “training experience” with some kind of silly, terribly designed split that no one in his right mind would do just to keep the volume and exercises consistent with the TBT routine. Fucking lmao-ed.
And you know what I think the real problem is? Most people who read shit written about studies cited in articles don’t read the actual studies.
I’m no way near as big or strong as some people on here but surely the main driver for hypertrophy is food?
If you use a typical BB workout on a calorie deficit you wouldn’t gain any size (would you??). Whereas if you use the same workout with a calorie increase above maintenance you would add size.
Is that correct?
Can you gain size on maintenance calories? I assumed to gain size you need to gain weight.
I guess Mike Israetel is a good place to start with his Maintenance Volume (MV), Minimal Effective Volume (MEV) and Minimal Recoverable Volume (MRV) concepts.
You can look all of this up by searching for his name and some of the above terms but the specific sets/reps have been removed from his site (probably because people see them as rules and not guidelines/a starting point and miss the point) so I’ll put up a screenshot:
The numbers under the MV, MEV, MAV, MRV are sets per week. Frequency is training session for that muscle per week. Where MV/MEV is 0, it assumes you are doing something which hits that muscle (like a bench for front delts).
As you can see it’s a lot of work but I guess we often say you are very likely never going to overtrain.
This is a serious question and not snark:
If we’re counting indirect work, and these are meant to actually be ranges and not necessarily averages, how could one train quads and chest 1.5x per week?
Let’s look at this like a business.
Volume = advertising/marketing
Intensity = demand for your product
Nutrition = production/ distribution
Sales = gainzzzz
You could do as much advertising as humanly possible and even if demand is low you would reach enough people to see some sales.
If demand is high you can get away with less advertising and get your sales.
Either approach is useless if you do not have the production and distribution in place.
Too much production with not enough advertising or demand and you build up way too much stock, you become a fat fuck…
I love the analogy, but advertising is a demand driver. With training, volume and intensity have to be trade-offs. This is an outstanding concept; we just might have to tweak it a tiny bit
The frequency assumes an even split of the volume.
So a frequency of 2x for a volume of 12.sets should be 6 sets across two days (or close to it)
A frequency of 1.5x would split that as 9 sets on one day and 3 on the other.
I’m not too big a fan of this btw. I think there is too little early in the cycle and too much later on but the basic idea is good enough and an okay system if you want to move away from templates
Got it! That makes sense, thank you.
I knew the guy is a PhD, but that is the most complex math I think I’ve seen on this subject
Haha and that isn’t even starting to cover how you individualized it
Depends on how shit the product is!
If advertising is pushed too hard and the demand is there along with the sufficient production/distribution then you can see short bursts of success but its not sustainable. At some point machines will break, staff will go on strike, raw materials will run out.
You then need to back off, or upscale and out source to China. (Take steriods) 
All silly analogys aside, surely taxing a muscle enough to have to adapt is the driver of muscle growth. Volume is one tool that can be used and manipulated to achieve that.
I remember reading from Thibs about needing x amount of reps over a certain percentage of effort in order to stimulate growth. Similar to the “inroad” way of thinking. Higher volume is a way to reach those reps that count whilst using a lighter load and may suit some people better depending on there preferences/ abilities.
