Years wasted doing low volume strength training programs have cost me muscular size. There’s really no argument anymore. Research continues to pile up showing a dose response relationship between training volume and hypertrophy. Long after I maxed out my neurological adaptations to heavy loads and improved my motor skills with practice, I continued to pound away at high intensities, doing very little total work. As a result, I am at 82% of my muscular potential after many, many years of lifting.
The good news, there is no physiological reason I can’t continue to gain muscle even at 55 years of age. Having stayed lean and healthy all my life, training pretty much continuously, I have avoided the natural decline in strength, muscle and connective tissue health associated with aging. I continue to tweak my training with new information I’m obtaining from the Bayesian PT Course as I strive for the optimal individualized programming to maximize my results.
I lift every day now, which makes it easier to divide up the volume, and makes for a very consistent, structured day for my diet. I keep increasing the total number of sets I do per muscle group, currently at 16 sets per week. It seems hard to imagine I can do even more, but my theoretical optimal number is 24 sets per week. Whether I can handle that or not will depend on my connective tissue and joints most likely, since the data is pretty clear that muscles recover from the work quite readily. To assist in keeping my parts healthy, I have added a lot of variety to my training, limiting the big lifts like Squats and Bench Press to once each week, and I no longer Deadlift at all.
Currently at 180 lbs and 13% body fat, the pursuit of swoleness continues unabated. If at some point in the future I choose to once again pursue Powerlifting, I can only assume the extra muscle would pay off handsomely in increased strength potential.
Joe's Blog 