I read that the general recommendation for volume for natural lifters is between 10-20 sets per week.
I’m trying to use that as a general guideline to optimize my weekly volume: I’m finding a great discrepancy between bodyparts and I need your help.
I trained lower body on Sunday (5 sets leg curls, 4 sets bulgarian split squats, 4 sets lunges, 2 sets glute bridges,10 sets calf raise all to failure or 1rep shy): My lower body and especially glutes are still sore/tired to this day.
I trained arms on Monday 15sets biceps + 15sets triceps all to failure in various rep ranges, then chest/back on Tuesday where arms are indirectly hit: I barely feel any DOMS or fatigue in arms and am pretty sure I could do another arm day tomorrow.
I’m 28yo with a stress-free life where I basically just train eat and sleep, and as you may have guessed I’m a stimulus addict.
I’m just wondering if it’s wise to think “My arms don’t feel tired so I can train them again”.
Your definition of “failure” must be different from mine. Putting that aside so we don’t fall into the rabbit hole of “what is actual failure”, not feeling DOMS doesn’t matter, but if you’re telling me you’re doing 30 sets to failure for arms and feeling nothing, something is amiss.
Do you have any physique pictures? What kind of exercise selection are you using for arms?
I used incline curls, hammer curls, machine preacher curls and 21s on db curls as a finisher for bis
For triceps: db skullcrushers, cable pushdowns, db overhead exts, cable kickbacks.
It’s not that I felt nothing, my arms were really pumped at the end of the workout. It’s just that my arms don’t feel tired, at least not in the same way that my legs or chest feel the day after a workout.
Physique pic:
Dude, you look awesome.
There may be someone on here with the expertise and accomplishments to tell you to do something different, but it ain’t me.
For what it’s worth, if I feel like I can hit something again a day or two later, I do. I just don’t do 30 sets to failure for arms. Even when I was a serious volume junkie I didn’t, but I think 99% of men would be thrilled to have your physique, so I’m not going out of my way to persuade you to change your routine, I’ll just say that I think there’s a more efficient way for you to be operating.
As @flappinit said, whatever you’re doing is certainly working.
Maybe it’s just your expectations that should change on arms. If they’re getting a pump, and obviously growing, you’re good. They don’t carry the same stress (load in the gym or role in life) as the rest of your body; I can’t make them “dead” like I can my legs either.
Thanks for the compliment, really appreciate it.
In my powerlifting days I used to skip arms altogether or just add a few sets at the end of my training, thinking they get enough stimulation from the big lifts, as a result I had really puny arms. On the other hand my chest, back and legs all grew significantly from the low rep/heavy weight powerlifting training. It all made sense when I saw a video by @Christian_Thibaudeau explaining that long-limbed lifters don’t get much arm stimulation from compound lifts and I happen to have long arms.
I also noticed from people I know that the “bros” who blast out endless sets of curls and extensions have amazing arm development.
I’m still harboring the idea of getting into competitive bodybuilding (which means taking the decision to use steroids, something I ponder over every single day). Even if I decide to go the PED route I’ll wait until I fix some injuries and milk some more natty gains.
I’ll admit I tend to obsess a lot about optimizing my training: 5 years ago I ate almost-raw bull testicles because I read some stupid article claiming it boosts testosterone 
I think what he’s doing would work even better if he just cut what he was doing in half … as a step better direction.
IMO, he’s doing way too many movements for way too many sets.
Perhaps. That’s a totally valid approach. I personally don’t get anything out of training arms hard/ heavy like I would, say, legs. Just getting a sleeve-busting pump seems to do it. That doesn’t mean the other direction wouldn’t work better in situations; David Henry certainly did just fine in the guns department doing it that way.
I believe Poliquin said something along the lines of needing to gain 15lbs for every extra inch around the arms… This is probably inaccurate - I’d say 20-25lbs per inch, but who am I?
The point is, to get bigger arms, your whole body needs to get bigger too.
+1 for the whole 15 sets to failure stuff. If every set is to failure, then you’re either an absolute unit that cannot feel pain (and who is destroying your CNS) or your definition of “failure” might need revising =)
Here’s little old me worrying and regulating myself to doing no more than around 6 sets of direct triceps work over the course of the whole week, and then there’s you doing 15 sets and hitting chest the next day.
Looking at your picture though maybe I’ve got it all wrong! It’s clearly working for you. I can’t imagine doing that much arm volume - let alone without a full rest day in between.
Honestly, don’t worry about it.
As long as you adhere to the basic principles of training and overtime, as you get more experienced, adjust the training variables to match your own genetic profile, age, recovery capacities, stress levels etc, you will have great results.
If doing high volumes of work makes you feel bad, very tired for the rest of the day (or even the day after), anxious or does not sound appealing to you (almost like a feeling of rejection coming from your body and brain to do the type of work before you even start working out), then it’s probably not the best approach for you.
Knowing what I know studying and learning all things training from the greatest like CT, Charles Poliquin, Stéphane Cazeault, Eugene Teo, John Meadows and Wolfgang Unsöld and from my own experiences with myself and clients, I can tell you one truth: there are many, many ways to program training to reach your goals. You have high volume and low intensity, high intensity and low volume, high frequency/high intensity/very low volume, low frequency/low volume/high intensity, average volume/intensity/frequency which is the most popular among PT’s, etc.
As you can see, there a lot of options to choose from but what is always recurring is the fact that you need to match volume, intensity and frequency in their appropriate ratio’s to get good results. Is volume is high, frequency and intensity need to be lower. If intensity is high (pushing every set close to or too failure), volume and maybe frequency need to be lower. If frequency is high, volume needs to be lower and intensity should be either high (very low volume) or moderate (low to moderate amount of volume).
Since Minutia is following a body part split, which is usually the preferred split of of trainee who has bodybuilding aspirations, is a stimulus addict and needs higher volumes to get a pump, sweat and feeling of achievement, and based on his current physique and low life stress, this might be the right approach for him to train.
Doing all sets to failure is BS though. It’s not possible. When you take a muscle group through a couple of sets to REAL failure, those muscle fibers are completely cooked. All sets performed therafter are not taken to failure, you simply have to stop the set because the local fatigue inside that muscle is so high that it is not able to contract hard anymore. Taking sets to true failure also greatly increases CNS fatigue (although it may have a much smaller impact on smaller muscle groups like tris an bis). Once CNS fatigue kicks in, it’s ability to excite muscle fibers to contract hard goes down tremendously. Those first couple of sets might have been taken to failure, everything thereafter was just the muscle being completely fatigued really.
that´s not true! you can´t go to failure on all sets! Why? because Dorian said so…
I will say, for me, I feel 9-12 weekly sets each for biceps and triceps (direct work, I know they get worked elsewhere) is what’s required for growth. 6-8 is maintenance. “How” is relevant; I’m just chasing pump on these.
I’m going the @flappinit route of not getting into the failure conversation on this one!
So how do you define training to failure ?
When I said 15 sets all to failure I meant that I stop every set when I can’t get another rep with strict form.
Well, the devil is in the details.
Training to true muscular failure means you don’t stop your set until you have completely recruited and fatigued your fast-twitch muscle fibers.
The higher the rep count, the longer it takes to recruit the growth prone fast twitch muscle fibers. They don’t get recruited until you reach 80% of your maximum of what you can lift at that moment. For example, when you do a set of 6, the weight will automatically recruit the FT fibers from the get go because the weight already represents 80% or more of what you can maximally lift at rep number one. However, when you decide to pump out a set of 12, you’d start with a weight that is about 70% of your 1RM. So it takes about 6 reps (about 2-3% fatigue generated per repetition) before you get to those FT (IIx) fibers because the less growth prone slow twitch (I) and intermediate fibers (IIa) will get recruited and fatigued first. If your goal is bodybuilding, you’d still want to recruit and fatigue those IIa’s because the goal is gaining as much muscle as possible. That’s why 6-12 is usually the rep range that bodybuilders use on almost all their exercises to reap the biggest gains.
Now, once you have recruited and fatigued your FT muscle fibers, any extra volume that you do, has a diminshing effect because you have already provided the stimulus needed for adaptation and growth. The ‘failure’ that follows in the remaining sets is simply your CNS and muscles saying ‘you’re done, there’s no more effective reps left to gain because everyone is tired and wants to go home’.
So yeah, it’s kind off confusing because you can still pump out reps but once you have passed that treshold for growth, you have nothing more to gain from it.
Let me make a point that taking sets to true failure will not allow you to come closer than 2-3 reps in the 3th or 4th set of your highest rep target. So let’s say you’re doing bicep curls for 5 sets of 12 to true failure. On that 3th or 4th set you won’t be able to get above 9-10 reps. If you do, that means you took your set to ‘mental’ failure and not true muscular failure.
I actually did a test on one of my clients to see how far off true failure he really was. Btw, 95% of trainees do not know how to train hard and don’t even come close to failure on their worksets. It’s not unusual for them to still leave 6-10 reps in the tank on each set, I’m not kidding. Anyway, I said to him 'imagine that I would hold a gun to your head and ask you to rep out your set as if your life depended on it" He went all out and got 7 reps more than what he thought he could do. That’s a big difference in terms of how many effective reps he’s getting at the end of his workout.
You don’t need to train to failure (almost never actually unless you’re the low volume, high frequency, super high intensity guy/girl) to get maximum results BUT you do need to come close enough. About 1-3 reps in reserve depending on your preferred (volume, frequency or intensity) way of training is the goal. That’s why you see so many people in the gym who never change because they’re not willing to actually do the work.
I’m not saying all this to belittle you, I simply wanted to help you understand what true failure is.