I recently bought the books Essential Exercises and Advanced Exercises by Chris Beardsley and Paul Carter. I can’t share all the details, but both books include full-body routines at the end.
In Essential Exercises, the weekly volume adds up to 6-9 sets per muscle group. However, in the Advanced Exercises book, the full-body routine with a back/shoulder focus includes training the back only twice per week—with just one set each time!
The authors aren’t reachable via Instagram, and contacting them would require paid options. The books don’t mention anything about training volume.
Does anyone here know why the recommended volume for advanced trainees is so low? I understand something like 2x3 or 3x3 sets, but why only 2x1 set? What’s the reasoning behind this?
Yes, I have read the book. I understand that the training program is an example program based on the exercises listed in the book. I also know that the exercises are designed for advanced athletes and can be incorporated into one’s own program. However, the question remains how the program was structured and why only one set per exercise is performed with 1 RIR. Additionally, why does a back-focused program include only two exercises, each with just one set, even when it’s the first exercise of the training day?
They are big on managing and minimizing fatigue. Also…1 set done properly is enough to elicit hypertrophy. When done multiple times a week = weekly net stimulus.
2 back exercises is enough. Frontal plane and sagittal plane.
It is entirely possible to build lots of muscle with low volume if the intensity of the lifts is high. It’s called high intensity training. The big figures in the HIT world are Ken Mentzer and Dorian Yates. Yates trained for 45 minutes three or four days a week, got huge, and won Mr. Olympia six times. But, just like training with lots of volume, it doesn’t work for everybody which is why most people don’t do it.
As marine stated, they emphasize minimizing fatigue as it is important for recovery and being able to go back to the next workout at max intensity.
Any fatigue accumulated that is past the optimal growth stimulus is counterproductive for hypertrophy - it requires more time and resources to recover from. This would negatively impact your next training session.
Beginners and intermediates generally need more sets to hit the optimal growth stimulus because they are less efficient at recruiting desired muscle fibers.
Advanced lifters are more efficient at recruiting (and therefore fatiguing) desired muscles. So they actually need less volume to reach stimulus and avoid over fatiguing.
Otherwise they risk fatigue from the first session impacting intensity negatively at the next and then miss an opportunity to more frequently stimulate growth
Carter and Beardsley tend to load very heavy, like in the 4-7 range with 1 RIR
Their reasoning is reps above RPE 7 or ~85% stimulate the most hypertrophy. Taken to its logical conclusion, that essentially means that any reps under 85% or RPE 6 should be avoided.
Hence, very very heavy loading
It’s based around the size principle, which just says as you approach concentric failure you recruit bigger/faster motor units, pretty much regardless of absolute load.
The closest you lift to your true “potential” when fresh, the greater recruitment you get out of those big-boy muscle fibres. The more you lift under fatigue, the less likely you are to recruit the big fibres due to their metabolic & fatigue profile
Hence, you mightn’t want to strive for 3 x 25 with 1 RIR, since you might be fatiguing mentally or cardiovascularly, not muscularly. Likewise, you might want to avoid long drop sets, even to 1 RIR, since the prolonged fatigue (and reductions in load) might mean a lot of the reps aren’t “stimulating”
The effective reps model is inherently reductionist, but I like it for the way it simplifies strength training
