So we’re on the same page then. I propably misunderstood some of your earlier posts.
No worries my dude.
Yeah, that’s for people who have absolutely no life.
That’s more than I would have thought, but I suppose you have experience coaching plenty of these sort of people.
To be fair, Nuckols did do well in powerlifting, held a squat world record at one point too. I don’t think he’s complete bullshit, but he is definitely wrong about certain things and will never admit it. He’s not bad at reviewing data, but then again a lot of the data is fucked up.
If I had to give a prize for worst study ever it would be Schoenfeld’s BB vs. PL study. There were really no useful takeaways from that, unless you thought that doing multiple triples to failure was a good way to get bigger and stronger. It looks like Schoenfeld ahs done some decent work, but that one was complete shit and these other guys keep referring to it every now and then like it was some sort of gold standard research, I can only shake my head.
Kirk was coached by Marty Gallagher too, was he not? I have read several of his articles as well as his book with Coan, it sounds like his approach to training is very similar to yours - moderate volume, maximum effort into each set.
Well, there are some powerlifters who do well with mostly submaximal volume, lots of low rep sets nowhere near failure. Like the people that Sheiko coaches, and there are some Norwegian guys training 5-6x/week. But again, that’s not a hypertrophy-focused approach, you can get bigger training like that but it’s going to take a lot longer. I also don’t think that it’s necessary for anyone to squat and bench 5-6 days a week, if your technique is shit then you could make some fast improvements like that but after a month or two it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you have to train three times as much for the same results then I don’t see the point.
Weightlifting is a different story since technique is even more important that absolute strength. And there are a lot of powerlifters who are chronically overreached and getting all sorts of overuse injuries, less volume would mean less of those problems and possibly better results. There exists a theory that more volume is always better than less, but that theory is wrong.
Nobody is saying that volume is useless, the point is that enough is enough. If you can do more volume and still recover but your results are not better than doing 25% less, is it worth doing that extra volume just because you can? Building up your work capacity can be useful, but this isn’t the same as training for a marathon. More is not always better.
I don’t say this is false. I think we’re pretty close to each other in this topic. I just had a talk with one successful powerlifter and he said that he sees people doing too much volume. “Don’t do more than you need.” was the exact quote.
I actually just checked Wesley Smiths approach and he seem to do (or did when he was on the top) a shit ton of volume during off-season, but did cut the volume drastically pretty far away from the meet. Most of his time he did 3-5 work sets per movement per workout.
I also recall his saying that he is so big and strong that he can squat heavy only 2-3 times per month. So even that he has spoken about high volume, he uses it personally (and most likely with his clients too) for only short periods.
Beginners are really the ones that can benefit from volume the most. They basically can’t overrun their systemic recovery because they are so weak. And they will grow like weeds just due to the byproduct of the neural adaption. 5 sets of squats, 5 sets of presses, and 5 sets of rows is 15 sets. With their loading ability (which is low) that will take all of an hour max.
Yes but Greg has no business writing about things like muscle growth or dieting. He has almost zero of the former and zero experience in the latter.
Brad does good work, but it was actually his high volume study that was a total shit show. I mean a total and absolute shit show. And the weird thing is, the evidence based community is still propping it up as something worthwhile. Hell, even from a practical standpoint it’s not worth anything. Is anyone really going to do 5 sets of squats at 12 reps to failure, with 90 seconds rest between??? No. Especially not after bench, incline, pulldowns, and rows. Just nope.
Yes he was, but Ed did some of his programming too. Marty and he were/are very close.
ANNNNND your last sentence there is my biggest gripe with the high volume crew. They do a lot of junk, for basically no reason, and don’t realize they would be getting similar if not better results by doing about half of what they do.
1 Like
He was probably doing more volume than Paul recommends, but he also wasn’t going all out on every set either so the volume is more manageable. He also did a lot of speed/CAT work. But he’s also influenced by Israetel (they wrote a book together) so keep in mind his high volume bias.
So a basic 5x5 or do you think more reps and pushing each set harder is better at that level?
Yeah, that’s even more ridiculous than the BB vs PL one. I don’t really follow him too closely, it looks like he puts out some useful info once in a while but when you consider this kind of shit it’s hard to take him seriously at all. I mean anyone who has been lifting for a month or two could tell you that this is not a good plan, and this guy is supposed to be an expert.
I saw Israetel post something on Facebook recently saying he might teach a course with Schoenfeld and called him “the best of the best”, but maybe that says more about the state of sport science than it does about Schoenfeld’s abilities. He sounds more like a cult leader than a scientist.
That’s why when I see someone like you putting out information that contradicts them I pay attention, because I know their stories just don’t add up.
Here’s another question for you on the topic of volume and frequency: for so-called “hard gainers”, what sort of approach would you recommend? Josh Bryant was saying that people with a higher percentage of slow twitch muscle fibres are the ones who will normally have trouble building muscle and also they will be able to do more reps at a given percentage of their 1rm than someone on the opposite end of the spectrum. This is mostly based off some of Fred Hatfield’s research. So Josh is saying that these are the people who would benefit more from high volume and increased frequency, as opposed to the low volume approach that was recommended for these types in the past.
I’m more on the opposite end, I can’t do more than about 6 reps at 80% if that so his recommendation for me is more moderate volume and full recovery between sessions.
I thought it was funny this popped up in my YouTube feed. (They’re always watching)
Paul you got a good shout out in it as well.
4 Likes
One by Jeff Cavaleire (might be spelled wrong) from AthleanX popped up in my feed too. Basically echoing the same sentiments haha, popular topic at the moment I guess.
2 Likes
Lol it’s like those ads for random things you talk about popping up on your Facebook feed 
.
Maybe this topic will break fitness internet lol
ultimately it doesn’t matter there are ppl doing the same exact thing they always have and won’t change because (insert reason here)
I’ve said it before but most of the muscle I have gained was running 5/3/1 PR set followed by amrap at first set last which was something I found in Wendler beyond book. I was basically doing what meadows was but didn’t really know. Mine was mostly due to time restraints and I couldn’t do 2 hour workouts.
2 Likes
You know, my best bud Scott Stevenson has some thoughts on that whole hardgainer thing and the slow twitch fiber stuff. Basically, as you probably know, we simply have a mix of both. And the percentage really isn’t a vastly different, i.e. what makes someone “more fast twitch” is usually a very small percent over the slow twitch. Yes, there’s outliers but this is generally the case.
Anywho, basically it’s much ado about nothing really. There’s the theory that bodybuilders, many of them, have lots of slow twitch fibers and that those fibers are the reason a lot of them can do high rep style work, with minimal rest, and low loading and grow like weeds.
Think about it. Even the SIZE principle says you’re going to start activating the smallest motor units and they fatigue before the largest ones do. So the high rep, minimal rest style of work, nowhere near failure, with a lot of metabolic stress/accumulative fatigue is fatiguing a lot of low threshold motor units, and not really tapping into the high threshold motor/larger motor units.
I’ll hit him back up about it. He knows shit about these things that like 0.1% of the “evidence based” peeps do, so I’ll chime back in about it when we talk.
1 Like
There’s another former T-Nation writer who started consistently IG posting about this topic since this thread and Paul’s IG posts regarding it went up.
Who might that be?
I haven’t seen anything on that one. I’d be interested to read their thoughts
He lays that out pretty well there. TL;DW is that he personally ramps up to 4 " quality sets" (basically defined as sets to failure) per workout, aka one top set to failure of 4 exercises for the body part or exercise, and trains the muscle twice a week. So a total weekly volume of 8-10 “quality” sets.
1 Like
Correct. And every guy I talked to leading up to that article, from an anecdotal standpoint, was within that range, i.e. 8-12 working sets a week per muscle.
IF you can’t get it done with that, you’re flat out not training hard enough. I won’t move from that position.
He mentions extended sets as well (drop sets etc) in some of his other videos. Not every workout or every movement but some.
What he talks about It’s so similar to Dorian Yates blood and guts program and training methodology it’s crazy.
You know what Paul, you got me thinking about Schoenfeld. I swear I remember learning something from him, but I can’t remember what and now that I look at it, it was probably bullshit.
So on his Facebook page he recently posted about his book “MAX Muscle Plan” being translated into Italian. I saw a copy of this program a while back, one thing was that it included very short rest periods, even for compound lifts. A site called Verywellfit has a review of his book that says this:
" The MAX Muscle Phase is where it all comes together. The plan involves 25 to 30 sets per session, multiple sets per exercise at a rep range of 6 to 12 exercises per set with rest intervals of 60 to 90 seconds between sets, according to Schoenfeld.
He describes how the muscle phase, building on strength and metabolic phases, allows for increased time under tension for muscles and that this increases your capacity to tolerate greater volumes of work and thus muscle increases."
So aside from the high volume theory which even his colleagues agree has it’s limits (and this goes beyond those), he also has you resting no more than 90 seconds. That part is very interesting, seeing as he conducted a study that found this to be very suboptimal:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284711582_Longer_Interset_Rest_Periods_Enhance_Muscle_Strength_and_Hypertrophy_in_Resistance-Trained_Men
“Twenty-one young resistance-trained men were randomly assigned to either a group that performed a resistance training (RT) program with 1-minute rest intervals (SHORT) or a group that employed 3-minute rest intervals (LONG). All other RT variables were held constant
…
Maximal strength was significantly greater for both 1RM squat and bench press for LONG compared to SHORT. Muscle thickness was significantly greater for LONG compared to SHORT in the anterior thigh and a trend for greater increases was noted in the triceps brachii,
…
The present study provides evidence that longer rest periods promote greater increases in muscle strength and hypertrophy in young resistance-trained men.”
So not only is the Suboptimal Muscle Plan still on the market with no 2nd edition and no corrections offered for its glaring errors, he is having it translated into other languages five years after his study which found that excessively short rest periods will negatively affect hypertrophy. The guy is a fucking charlatan.
Thank you once again @Paul_Carter for challenging this fitness cult and encouraging others to examine what is really going on. It’s easy to just look at their recommendations and conclusions of studies and say “hey, these guys are experts, they are scientists and they run all sorts of experiments, they know what they are talking about”. It looks like their advice is a combination of half-truths and blatant lies.
2 Likes
CTs best damn workout for natural lifters also is about 9 hard sets per body part per week. As is Max OT, a popular program in the early 2000s
I’m seeing a pattern
1 Like
Even Arnold’s old programs in his body building bible had you taking sets to failure. I don’t think his programs could be said to be low volume lol but they were all working into failure on the last set if I remember correctly.