Gonna jump on the effort wagon. You can find examples of guys that have grown muscle using low frequency and high frequency, low volume and high volume, and other progression models than progressive overload.
The one thing muscular dudes seem to share is effort over time.
Paul has kicked off a good debate but, as he acknowledges, the options are actually synergistic.
Like a few others, if I was made to choose one then it would be “effort”. Even if frequency, volume, etc, was low you could make gains, which is what HIT is founded on. Mentzer used to talk about one maximum set to failure per muscle group every 7 to 10 days.
Effort in driver’s seat with clear focus ( = tension and actual recruitment of the target muscle) - with progressive overload as “co-driver”. Letting progressive overload take the wheel all the time is waiting for a car crash to happen, since she’s concerned only with higher numbers on the speedometer. Volume is in the backseat. He just uses way more fuel when driving because he likes driving long distances (and never pays gas money, that prick). Whereas effort wants economic driving. Frequency insists on driving shorter distances more often - nothing wrong with that. But he really needs volume or (progressive over)load to guide his direction. He’s clueless on his own.
I know, I know… Really flawed and inconsistent analogy. Someone smarter than me might be able to refine it.
And yes, I’m assuming the gender of the parameters given.
My paradigm right now is the approach of 1 top set with RPE of 10/10. Then preferably a 2nd all-out set with 10-20% less weight - OR same top weight. Either way, shooting for rep record.
Addition of set-extending techniques (= more volume) is purely dictated by ability to properly execute more quality reps (and testicular fortitude on that particular day, lol) after those 2 “meat and potato sets”.
Quality over quantity, as the saying goes.
Volume and progressive overload. High frequency (especially with low volume) never had a good impact on my progress. Effort is very important, though.
I feel like if you’re worried about the best way to grow then effort is already a given.
With that in mind, I’m leaning toward progressive overload. I had a peroid of 3 months with 0 days off, 2-3 hour workouts, but very little progress on weights.
Volume, effort, and frequency were all there (in an excessive and counterproductive amount) but progressive overload was lacking so I stalled out pretty quick but was dumb and “addicted to the grind” so didn’t realize what I was doing wrong until later.
I can relate to this. I’ve injured myself with less weight than I’d like to admit in the past. Mostly from wanting to do the same movements day in and out.
I was watching generation iron 3 (they’re corny but I dig em) and there’s a part where they’re following some guys in a very poor part of Africa. Their equipment is just shy of being a broom post with buckets of rocks hanging from it. Their diet is far from optimal, they do have good genetics, I can’t say anything on PEDs cause these guys are dirt poor and getting food is a big enough issue but they have developed some really nice physiques regardless. Imo this attests to the effort aspect these guys are killing it. With equipment that’s on par with the stuff in Dwight shrutes gym for muscles ( the office reference)
Ok so it’s sort of a trick question.
But if I had to list the primary driver, it’s going to be progressive overload. Over time, for a muscle to grow larger it has to remodel itself as a means of protection against future trauma. So you have to give it a reason to do that. That’s where effort and progressive overload work in tandem to drive growth.
Volume is a factor, but only up to a point. Volume has an inverse U curve related to growth, and this has been seen in every legit study done using different volume groups to see what the outcome would be.
Frequency is also a factor, but again, only to a point. And honestly, it’s a bit overstated by most. The fact is, both natty and enhanced, the majority of really jacked dudes have trained using bro splits, hitting a muscle group once a week. People are really obsessed with hitting a muscle group twice a week but over the course of years it’s really not going to make any difference at all. I grew like a weed in the early years and pretty much only did bro splits. I just worked my ass off on low volume programs focusing on getting stronger in growth rep ranges.
out of pure curiosity, is there any article in which you gave an example of how the first splits that you did looked like? if not, would you mind doing it there? just curios about the split, the actual number of exercises and, since you mentioned a low-volume, progressive overload driven approach, how you actually managed the number of sets per exercise and muscle group.
i know what your approach looks like right now, both because of your articles and because the program you put me on last winter was based on a similar concept, but i was curios as to how it all looked like in your early years, since i’m assuming you improved your methods throughout the years and didn’t start knowing everything you know now already.
My first splits weren’t something special. I think too many guys get caught up in that all together. You could open virtually any bodybuilding magazine and find a good example of my training for those years. Most of the time it was four days a week, training each muscle group directly once in the training week.
My training then was very productive. I don’t look back now and think “I wish I had trained differently” at all. I went from 98 pounds to 215-220 within four years. So I was doing something very right during the early years, i.e. bro-splits, progressive overload, focusing on effort and training very hard.
There wasn’t anything special about the actual routines I used. It was the effort each week and the desire to move more loads for more reps.
Effort and time. You can’t have progressive overload without those two.
It’s kind of a chicken and the egg thing to me, and just the way you phrase the question can really affect what answer is appropriate. I think that at the end of the day, I probably agree that progressive overload IS the primary driver, but I think the primary driver for achieving progressive overload is effort. If that makes sense.
Effort is the thing I most often observe to be lacking for unsuccessful lifters. Volume is very often there, along with frequency and even time. But the lack of real effort is why you can find so many people who go multiple years in a row of dedicated, consistent lifting with nothing to show for it. No discernible growth, no results. I find in those cases that both progressive overload and effort are lacking. I also find that people like this WANT to be progressively overloading, but aren’t able to do so, which is why I value effort the way I do.
I’ve gotten very strong while only having a few consistent things in my training. Progressive overload, and effort. Volume and frequency often lack for me, and I still make progress.
The problem with defining “effort” is that it can’t really be quantified.
If I say I train really hard, that’s entirely subjective. I’ve trained with guys that said they train hard that trained like pussies. But to them, they were.
Progressive overload is at least quantifiable. If I am squatting 405 x 10 and work up to 500 x 10, then my legs will have grown to accommodate the ability to move that volume.
And I’m totally not disagreeing with the effort part. The truth is, I don’t think that most guys train hard enough. Which is why they do more volume, or think that volume is the answer. Because they simply don’t put enough effort into their working sets to make them truly count.
I also thought as far as effort goes you can get pretty far with 4 reps in reserve. I wouldn’t say low volume with 4 reps in reserve would be THAT hard and so it wouldn’t require much effort.
But if you progressively overload with 4 reps in reserve you will grow
No you really won’t. There was a six week study that looked at that very paradigm and the growth was basically non-existent. Even at ultra high volumes.
4 reps in reserve is basically a warm up set, and it’s not going to be challenging enough to cause remodeling at the cellular level even with a massive shit ton of volume being performed.
I’m now confident we are defining effort as same as intensity, right?
In that case its definitely a tricky factor. Progressive overload reigns supreme, since, like Paul said, its easy to measure. And will force the intensity (and will also increase the volume).
Maybe RIR was the wrong term to use. I wanted to make a point that you don’t have to put forth a ton of effort in individual workouts as long as you’re progressing weights/reps over time.
That’s my take on it anyway but it might depend on your definition of effort and what qualifies as high and low effort training
Effort, pushing to failure with maximal acceleration, forces adaptation and growth, which leads to the ability to handle higher weights because you now have more muscle. Since you are now also stronger, to cause further growth, you need to lift a heavier weight to maintain the previous amount of effort required to cause growth.
The internet makes the claim that “progressive overload”, as in lifting a heavier weight alone causes muscle growth, which ends up in people doing stupid things like 1,000lb rack pulls from right below the crotch. This is normally due to people not having much experience in the gym interpreting it in a way that makes sense to them.
If you can lift a weight with 4 reps in reserve, it means that you can handle a heavier weight. Progressively increasing the load week by week to that heavier weight gives your muscles very little reasons to adapt and grow until you finally reach that weight. If you experience an increase in “strength”, it probably means things like technical improvement and neural adaptation to a specific rep range have occurred without much muscle growth.
Shit, old meatheads knew this without even needing to use terms like “progressive overload” or using any brand named progression models. It’s the internet that’s over-complicating a very simple and basic thing like this.
I think the term progressive overload is actually a pretty old meathead term (I’m spanning over 30 years of training here and it’s one of the first things I learned…well before the internet). I don’t think the internet is making the claim that progressive overload is one of the main drivers, I think that’s decades of anecdotal evidence and research that shows there is a direct correlation with strength to hypertrophy gains.
That is entirely the wrong point to be making and one that isn’t supported by real life or research. Which was my point. If you’re leaving 4 reps in the tank then you’re not forcing the body to adapt to anything. There’s no significant amount of stress with 4 reps left in the tank to force a disruption in homeostasis. The body is going to yawn at sets with 4 reps left in the tank. So how are you ever going to get stronger in the proper growth rep ranges if you never ask the body to adapt to significant stress? It’s not going to happen.
We’re talking muscle growth here. You can actually get stronger in the lower rep ranges which are neurally dictated, without growing. So that kind of training can get you stronger in a movement due to more efficient intramuscular coordination, but it’s going to do basically nothing for muscle growth.
We’re from different parts of the world so it was not something I heard of until I began reading the internet lol. The part I wrote about “effort” was in response to “progressive overload” with “4 reps in reserve” in the post right above mine. I wasn’t disputing your point about progressive overload. In fact, the way you described how you trained in this thread is almost exactly how I’ve been training my whole life.
The point I was making is that old meatheads(where I live) just did progressive overloading without calling it that. It was common sense that you have to get strong to get big and vice versa. It’s certainly an important factor, and something people nowadays who fail using bro splits overlook until they find a program with some form of progression model. What I normally tell people when they have a problem with “what program to choose” is similar to what you wrote above about quantifying progress, which is get on a program with a proper progression model.
I do, however, think that “progressive overload” is being misinterpreted by a lot of people on the internet along with ideas like the over emphasis on volume for muscle growth.