In my continued obsession over refuting Dr. Mike Israetel’s untested hypothesis for the Maximum Recoverable Volume for hypertrophy, and his resulting recommendation that one should use volume increases as the primary programming variable for improving hypertrophy outcomes, I will demonstrate, using evidence, logic, reason and math, the obvious flaws in his guesswork.
In Dr. Mike’s hypertrophy programming, he recommends starting a “mesocycle” at a relatively “low” volume of 10 sets per muscle group in the first week, and then adding sets each week to reach one’s MRV (maximum recoverable volume), followed by a “deload” week to reduce accumulated fatigue, and then begin a new “mesocycle.”
I use quotations marks for “mesocycle” because the whole concept of a mesocycle comes from athletic endeavors where one has to organize training to achieve peak performance for a given competition. Pursuing hypertrophy does not produce a hyper trophy at the end, rather hypertrophy is a byproduct of weight training and if pursued as the sole desired outcome of said weight training, will be a continual pursuit. There is no logical reason to break it into the cycles used for peak performance sports. Periodization of training has some purported benefits for strength outcomes, although not consistently superior to non-periodized training plans, but none for hypertrophy. This stands to reason as the whole point of periodized training is to peak for a given performance. If one were competing in Powerlifting for example, it might be beneficial to program one’s training to slowly increase maximum strength levels as the competition approaches, then decrease total volume of training to allow any accumulated fatigue to dissipate, while keeping intensity high to hold on to maximum strength gains, and then compete, so the competition occurs in a relatively reduced state of fatigue while keeping fitness level (in Powerlifting determined to be absolute strength level) at peak performance.
I put “low” in quotations because 10 hard weekly sets (with hard defined as heavy enough to recruit high threshold motor units from the first rep, which is around 85% of 1RM, or a lighter set taken to close proximity to failure {1}) has been demonstrated to produce hypertrophy in most trainees–categorized as “moderate” volume in this study–so it would arguably be a mischaracterization to call that a low volume of training.
Finally, I put “deload” in quotes because it is also a sports performance concept not applicable, at least not directly, to hypertrophy outcomes. The point is to reduce fatigue to allow the underlying fitness, theoretically being masked by the accumulated fatigue from training, to be displayed. Again, since hypertrophy is not an athletic performance, rather a byproduct of lifting weights, it’s just not relevant. There’s no reason to deload the training stimulus other than to not produce any hypertrophy stimulus that week. Not sure why anyone looking to get jacked or swole would want to skip a week of inducing hypertrophy. Now, it could be possible that a deload would be beneficial if you’ve done so much training volume that you are regressing due to exceeding your recovery capacity, but that begs the question: why do that in the first place?
Here’s the math portion of my argument, and it’s simple math so don’t get nervous.
Week 1: 10 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training.
Week 2: 12 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training.
Week 3: 15 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training.
Week 4: 18 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training.
Week 5: 20 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training.
Week 6: 0 hard sets of hypertrophy oriented training (this is the deload week, which won’t be a literal 0 sets, but the sets you do, typically 6 or so, will not be hard sets as defined above, therefore are not hypertrophy inducing sets).
There’s a mesocycle under a simplified version of Dr Mike’s volume ramping strategy. Over a 6 week period, you will perform 75 sets of hypertrophy oriented training. Keep in mind we’re not even considering quality of these sets which is a big caveat. How effective are those sets in Week 5 after 4 weeks of steady increases in workload culminating in the highest workload week of them all?
75 sets of hypertrophy training divided by the 6-week mesocycle provides an average of 12.5 sets of hypertrophy stimulating workload per week. That’s less than the 14 weekly sets I do right now, which is a very manageable workload for me as a 56-year old man, albeit with many, many years of training experience. Dr. Mike’s programming produces less workload–less volume–than a static weekly volume approach.
In summary, the entire premise proposed by the good Dr. conflates sports training concepts like mesocycles and deloads with hypertrophy training, where they serve no purpose and arguably don’t belong. The system overly complicates the hypertrophy process for no obvious benefits, with some serious downsides. The downsides include increased training time, increased and unnecessary fatigue, increased and unnecessary injury risk and a wasted week of non-training called a deload to make it appear to have a beneficial purpose. I will continue this series shortly addressing some of the other specious claims made by Dr. Mike in promoting his scheme.
{1} Hypertrophy
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