A recent study, albeit on rodents, adds to the increasing body of evidence around the total volume of work required to force a muscular hypertrophic adaptation in the body. The bodybuilding rats performed either 1, 3, 5, 10 or 20 sets of resistance exercise. Muscle samples were obtained and researchers found that 1 set did not increase muscle protein synthesis. Every other set combination did. Interestingly, and this confirms what other studies have shown, there is a dramatic diminishing rate of return as volume increases. Increased muscle protein synthesis plateaued after 3 to 5 sets (another hat tip to individual differences) and more sets did not produce more signaling.
As I wrote about in my recent hypertrophy specific training post, volume is a grey area and this study doesn’t do much to change that. We know we need some volume of work, but how much varies based on the individual, with diminishing rates of return for piling on more work, and recovery has to be factored in because we need to expose to the body to another bout of stimulus relatively soon to avoid detraining and basically just spinning your wheels.
Izzy makes a great point about volume that I must have glossed over in previous readings of his work, but it clicked for me this last time. Rather than worry about managing volume, with all its grey areas, we manage fatigue instead. How the work we did affects us is what we can actually manage, vs. trying to come up with a target amount of work based on the studies we have. Sure, we could say “do 3-5 sets” but that’s not particularly useful in any practical context. 3-5 sets each time we train? For every exercise we do? What about overlap between muscle groups? What about training frequency?
Izzy borrowed the concept from Mike Tuchsherer, and I borrowed it too in UL 83 without really understanding it. Exposure to the weights is the stimulus. How much exposure determines the magnitude of the effect of that stimulus. Izzy uses the suntan analogy and that’s a pretty good one. Exposing your body to direct sunlight is the stimulus, and depending on how long you are exposed to the stimulus is how much effect it will have.
The more volume you do, the more fatigue you will create and the longer it will take to recover from the work. Everyone is different. If I tried to do 5 sets of 5 at 85% of my 1 RM, I’d be toasty by the end of the workout, if I could even get 5 sets of 5. Someone else may cruise through that workout. So the volume wasn’t optimal for either of us. If instead, we could come up with a way to manage the effect of the volume on that day, during the workout, we could find the optimal volume for that day for that person. We can get pretty close using rates of perceived exertion and monitoring our fatigue levels during the workout itself.
To quote from Izzy’s book:
Why Autoregulate Volume?
“This autoregulation of volume is critical for so many reasons…. it doesn’t necessarily matter how much volume you do, it matters what effect the volume is having. By managing fatigue, instead of volume, the volume is autoregulated until it has the precise effect we want it to have.
For older lifters, it will take less volume to reach the same amount of fatigue. For lifters having a great day, it will take more volume than usual. Regardless, the volume for that session is completely optimized to the lifter.”
Brilliant is it not?
Joe's Blog 