That is not what this chart says. I don’t think you understand what you’re looking at. The last column is the very very highest any COULD do. Saying “people are doing this” is disingenuous.
I’d say most are doing somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd columns. So you can see, it’s not too far off your own arbitrary 4-10 range…
So please stop with all the hyperbolic contortions — we really are NOT that far apart. This is a discussion forum, not a Fox Noise show.
Perhaps there is no evidence that periodization is necessary for bodybuilding.
Can we at least agree that it’s Interesting that 2 guys who were big into periodization won a combined 16 Mr Olympias.
And a guy who believed in Muscle Confusion won another 7.
And a dude who took a couple easy weeks in the beginning of a training cycle won 6.
Like 4 dudes who organized their training have Half of All the Olympias. Obviously, not evidence, but is that an “indication” or something?
I guess you could look into it a little better too. It seems overly complicated at first, but once you get in there, you will see it’s probably not very different at all from how you’ve always programmed you own workouts.
All that high volume stuff, and the de-sensitivity you are seeing are older videos I promise you. The current system really doesn’t get into the minutia weeds that far like he used to.
The dual vids with Dr Pak (more of a TF all-the-time advocate), show good research for getting by with lower volume
I think this is kind of the crux of it. I tend to lean more into your camp, where I don’t like a ton of sets, I really hate lots of tempo lifting or movements I find awkward, etc… but I think there are folks that lean a different way and can get more out of higher volumes.
I was going to jump into something similar. “Failure on what?” is certainly pertinent. I feel like I can approach infinity on leg extensions; one set to true failure on squats and I might not train anything again for a week or two.
This would just prove my point. That it was a way to have a novel concept to make money. There was no real science behind it. Just the promotion that it was evidence/science based. Otherwise, why would he remove stuff and simplify it? Don’t you want MAX GAINS?
Of course, they are. It is the maximum recoverable volume. If they were not, why would it exist and why would there be a range?
The point is that you work up in volume through every week and mesocycle. You reach the top and then require a deload after you have overreached. “Specialization” mesocycles will have you reaching further.
That is also why frequency is included your volume “landmarks” for MAV and MRV will depend on how often you train. One may recover from 15 sets of laterals training 1x a week but, may do laterals 4x a week for 10 sets giving you a total of 40 sets.
Yeah, real close all but 3 are practically double the volume and again, you work up in volume every week. No one is staying at their MEV using RP.
"MEV: your minimum effective volume. Notice that, unless you literally want to make the slowest gains possible, your average weekly training volume should be above your MEV, which is the minimum volume required to make any gains. That said, your MEV is a great place to start the first week of your mesocycles and build up from there. "
It doesn’t prove anything. I am betting the whole desensitivity angle had something to do with his doctorate thesis and has a space near-and-dear in his heart. The vids are still there for those who want to pursue them.
However, I believe Simplicity Sells right now. And that’s where the app comes in. Based on your feedback, it tells you to add weight, reps, sets the next workout. The app is the main sales pitch right now.
It helps quite a bit, but as I replied to someone else: After a few weeks, it became clear to me that it was simply a more organized version of what I already did for tracking. And, that the RP workouts similar to what I like to set-up.
Who are all these people that are moving up in volume every week? Where are you getting this data? Are you going around surveying people? You are basing your argument on the far right end of the bell curve — your MO, from I’ve seen.
Only if you reply that 1) you never got sore, 2) your 2 or 3 or ? sets were easy and you weren’t challenged at all, and 3) you have no joint aches in this area, will the program (app) tell you to add sets. It is NOT the automatic volume adder that you’re making it out to be. Again, just enough knowledge to be dangerous and you come in with yet another assumptive argument.
And besides that: If you answer ‘Easy’ on #2, then IMO you were laying back too far to begin with. If i did 8 reps last week and it tells me to do 9 this week; and when I get to 9 it was ‘easy’, you can bet I ain’t stopping at 9 just because it prescribed that # for the workout. Thus, I will rarely be prescribed more sets. In fact, I usually add them myself the last 2 weeks of the cycle. That simply means I go from 2 sets/exercise to 3… no more than that.
Most people will stay in the MAV zone, except maybe for any specialization muscle groups they’re focusing on. And once again:
“Everybody moves up in volume, Every week” is a faulty premise to begin with.
The current focus is to drop in Intensifiers, as opposed to just adding set after set. And yes, some IFs add volume, but not all of them.
Real G’s drop the volume as they go forward.
Real Gs that wanna paint themselves in a corner, sure.
I saw it as a springboard for the idea that I could handle a lot more volume than my years with HIT had programmed me to believe. It shouldn’t be a crib sheet for every workout design. You find your own levels.
I’m still doing way less volume than many in that camp. But, on the other hand, I’m doing more hard or TF sets in a workout than most steadfast HITers would consider doing in a week (or even 2 weeks, in some cases).
Willful suspension of disbelief goes a long way. When you can train with the same mindset required to watch a good sci-fi movie, you’ll do as good as you can given the material provided. Buy in, trust the process, what ever you want to call it, it works.
Insecurity is a killer. Like the opposite of the Willful suspension of disbelief. Thats what eliminates people entirely. They want to know the results before exerting the effort.
Coaching is great. Let him/her do the thinking. You do the lifting. The big hole I see in a lot of the sciency science with a side of science is that it doesn’t matter how right a coach is if your preference is to chill. Pushing as hard as you think is necessary can be a whole different ballgame than being pushed as hard as someone else thinks is necessary.
Imagine 2 rooms. 1 has a High Volume of paint on the floor. The other has a Low Volume of paint on the floor. Which room has more Open floor space?
It’s wild that the idea of doing more than “too little,” but less than “too much” causes so much confusion and heart ache.
Egg heads were just trying to Clarify and De Mystify the situation with some organization. But the jargon they decided to use had the total opposite effect.
Hypertrophy is difficult to point out precisely at given time, so it’s really hard to say excactly what rate you’re growing. That’s partly the reason this whole volume debacle has been so strong around in the bodybuilding circles.
In the strength world you’ll see far less heated discussion about this, since it’s really easy to say if you’re getting strong or not.
If you are adding weight to the bar, change nothing. If you’re not progressing and feeling recovered, do more volume. If you’re not progressing and feeling like shit/fatigued, do less volume.
In hypertrophy training you’ll need to trust the process, since it might be hard to see the difference in weeks. That’s why people are so vocal about it.
Imagine a joke that doesn’t make your argument as well as you think it does, as well as missing the point.
High Volume wasn’t even what I was alluding to when I said paint-yourself-in-a-corner (though you very well could, but that wasn’t my point). It wasn’t a “pro-High Volume” argument, but a "I’ve done the ever-lessening volume thing, and it’s a big ass mistake’ argument.
Hypertrophy is metabolically expensive. And low volume, along with the asymptotic weight levels you’ll be using, simply aren’t the right kind of stimulation to convince your body to pay that price. SOME amount of increased volume – even in short periods – may be the missing link.
This was really well put.
I get it, though. We’re investing time away from work/ family/ life/ etc., so we want there to be an answer. It’s much harder to accept some.
I might be totally over simplifying what occurs, but I used strength as a metric that dictated my food response. I suppose I had always done sufficient volume to add hypertrophy, as it typically took me 90+ minutes of lifting weights per session.
I always strived to get stronger every workout. If I wasn’t getting stronger I added calories or considered a workout adjustment. As I look back, whenever I got stronger, I also got larger muscles. Maybe because my workouts focused a set and rep range that I considered optimal for hypertrophy. Most everyone having reasonable success adding muscle did about to the same amount of volume, but maybe that had more to do with copying others who were making gains, as opposed to believing that we had found the optimal training program.
Of course there was a wide variety of intensity levels that people did. Forced Reps were all the thing in the 1970’s and '80’s. I found them of little value at all, but many believed trying harder is king. And there is little harder than doing multiple forced reps at the end of a set. It was my observation that those who did the most forced reps made the least progress.
was it because not enough recovery?
not enough calories?
Too much forced reps?
Or just forced reps?
and full disclosure…i am not a fan of forced reps
That would be a big reason by itself.
But I would guess those people had a number of hurdles. Maybe the biggest is that they seldom saw results from their efforts and genetics might be the greatest hurdle.
Remember there was no internet to find possible sane training options. The magazines were the only method of getting training ideas, and Weider had the largest audience. Those Weider programs were pretty much the standard for overtraining.
Progress is the greatest motivator. Those who made progress stuck with it at a high percentage rate. Those who made little if any progress almost always lost interest. In the 1970’s and ‘80’s no one lifted weights to improve their health.