To a point. I mean, I can watch Graham Hicks bench five plates for speed reps but it doesn’t change that it’s a heavy as fuck bench.
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Five hundred pounds will always be impressive. Just over 300, much less so.
Yeah, plus holding shit down while I pin it and then sand it takes a toll.
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Yeah, training for more than 2 hours just gets tedious and boring. An hour and a half is plenty.
If I thought that 3 hour workouts were the best way to train I would do it, but I have tried some high volume full body stuff in the past and it never worked too well.
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That’s the idea, most results with least time and effort. Overuse injuries are a thing, and what might give better results in the short term isn’t necessarily the way to go for the long term. Of course for someone who responds well to high volume and/or frequency it would make sense to train more leading into a meet and then take it easy for a bit, but few people actually do that.
I have actually found that alternating totally different versions of the lift (like incline, or high bar vs. low bar) can cause some issues because you are trying to master a similar yet different movement. Not that it can’t work, but I stopped doing stuff like that and added bodybuilding assistance stuff instead and it’s working. The only variations I do right now is slingshot bench (which is still the same exact movement pattern) and Hatfield squats (which require zero technique).
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Is there not something to be said for maximum rest/recovery between sets (which could lead to a multi-hour session) though? Think you and Mark touched on this before in this log, actually.
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Yeah but that doesn’t mean spending 3 hours training. Mark does a lot of cluster sets and stuff like that, I only do a few total work sets.
The point is that high volume training doesn’t work well for a lot of people. The volume gurus would tell you that you just don’t have the genetics or whatever, but in reality you might make way better progress dong less. More work does not equal more gains.
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And then we have mad-lad pwn doing 60 rep deads.
In all seriousness, I feel high volume is not specific enough because it leaves the reader to interpret what that is.
Please tell me to sod off if what I’m contributing is too far off from PL to be of interest to you @MarkKO but to elaborate on my point, and it’s here I’ll be writing about programs I’m familiar with which are more BB-oriented or strength/hypertrophy/athletic-hybrid oriented (thus, possibly too far removed from your interests)
According to a study (Barbalho M Coswig
VS, 201) five-ten sets per muscle group led to better
results in muscle growth and strength gains than fifteen-twenty sets and people might take that in isolation and compare different programs.
The highest volume I could find in the ones I’ve been reading recently is in a high volume phase of a Meadows program. There’ll be 16 worksets (legs), or 15 sets of chest and 11 of shoulders in a workout but then it’ll be spread across 5 exercises, or 7 and everything is being hit. So, per muscle I’d say its in that 5-10 sweet spot. There’s some warmup sets on the first exercises but not on all of them.
The older CT programs might have 18 sets on a bench/chest/triceps day, but only 12 are at an RPE of moderate and above. There’s more overlap with the movements here than in a Meadows program, generally, I find. But again, it’s at the upper end of the range reported in the study.
Finally, something like BBB by Wendler, will have the lowest overall volume prescription but it’s the candidate that really has you hitting the same muscles without variation and then it’s more towards the middle of the five-ten prescription.
And I feel the low volume proponents just have a higher threshold for what they consider a work set to be. Or their writing is geared towards the very advanced trainee, and for most people asking them for training advice is like asking an elite lever alpine skiier what the best ski is when all you’re capable of yourself is not dying while going downhill.
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I don’t know enough about bodybuilding or athletic training to have a useful opinion about how it works.
What does makes sense to me is that there’s a point at which more work won’t work, so you’d need to do something to add a stimulus within that threshold of work.
Woke at 267 lbs, looking much the same as usual.
I’ve just run a PL routine last autumn.
It’s made by a danish dude who learned it from the norwegians.
They state that there are two different approaches of training.
The european way which is frequency the top dudes apparently SBD 5 times a week.
That’s one day competition lift and up to 4 days of variations.
The american way of only doing each lift once a week. Both gets results. So It’s a matter of believing I think.
Finally that deadlift Mark, how on earth could you miss a 5 lbs pr, wait a couple of seconds and then pull it, f*cking well done. And it went up pretty smooth.
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Thanks man. I wasnt going to let a stupid decision ruin things. I was almost certain I had it if my fingers didn’t slip on my nail, so I went again.
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High volume is the 2nd two groups. Not going to failure you can do more, and for hypertrophy you need and can tolerate more than for strength.
Did you think that 25 or 30 sets would do better? (insert smily face)
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That’s similar to the Bulgarian system, no?
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That’s pretty much what the Norwegians started doing a few years ago, except they train either 5-6 days a week and deadlift 2-3x. It’s like a Sheiko program spread over 5-6 days. There is really nothing to suggest that it is better to an upper/lower spilt program, they just used to train 3 days a week with a ton of volume per session (4+ hours) and a lot of people were burning out. Borge Fagerli was part of their experiment and has spoken about this.
It’s basically taking the sort of training that weightlifters do and adapting it to powerlifting.
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Got you.
Yeah, theoretically I can see how it could work.
There’s always been that attempt to take WL training and apply to PL hasn’t there? Using Prilepin’s chart has been proven to work well, but the super high frequency is a bit less sure, no?
There’s also something else I wonder about the Sheiko/Eastern Bloc approach and how it impacts its effectiveness. I think, as far as I’m aware, in Russia strength athletes are much more respected and valued and in many cases are able to prioritise training much better because their jobs are more understanding, or even sometimes getting funding from the government. So maybe there’s something there, that when you really can take three or four hours to train four days a week without having to worry about work or anything, it makes a difference.
The American way I would suspect is influenced by the guys almost all having had to work full time, often pretty hard physical jobs.
That’s just speculation though
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That’s what Sheiko’s methods are about, just he doesn’t expect people to be living in a training camp. He actually did have a camp funded by the Russian government at one time and people were training as much as 8 sessions 5 days a week, but that’s another story.
Part of the problem with the chart is that there is no mention of frequency. The book in which it was originally published is sold on EliteFTS but I have never seen it. You could do worse than follow Prilepin’s chart, but it’s not designed for PL and doesn’t take individual difference into account.
Not in most circumstances, like this IPF equippd world champion who trains 3x/week for 1-1.5 hours due to outside commitments:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B65uY8NBhuX/
Some of the best Russian lifters these days barely do any volume, like Malanichev does one work set and pretty much no assistance, each lift once a week plus slinghot bench.
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That’s the best though. They’re a pretty different situation I think.
Thanks for setting me straight on the Russians though, because I was just guessing.
Without drugs if you don’t do enough volume you will lose muscle. It still doesn’t take much to maintain muscle, but some people are training like that and bulking during meet prep due to all the shit they are taking.
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Sheiko is sort of like the old fashioned Russian methods. It works, but requires more time and effort for the same result. Right now the only elite lifter he is coaching as far as I know is Alexei Nikulin.
And some people would say that you can only train with low volume and make gains if you take PEDs but one of Sheiko’s guys who was training 8x/week with insane volume, Alexei Sivokon, is banned for life from the IPF. Both ends of the spectrum are not manageable naturally.
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