Guys, I regret to inform you that there
is a global conspiracy amongst us. The
best training to gain muscle is 5 to 10
sets of 5 to 10 reps done twice a week
per muscle. Most people thrive on higher
volumes than they think, but not
everybody. The hypothesis there is that
you're either doing too much volume or
not enough volume. Not enough is almost
always the case. So, you might need to
do some higher volumes, especially to
bring up lagging muscle groups because
that's the answer for growth more times
than it's not. How do you do that? I'm
going to give you guys three awesome
recommendations that aren't just like
just do more sets.
Let me ask you an important question.
Are you training enough to make your
best gains?
You want the best results for your
physique, as of course we all do.
What if you were told that training only
a little bit every week could give you
the best results? Would you do it
unquestioningly
or would you be skeptical? Now, what if
I told you the opposite? What if I told
you that the big glaring reason that
you're not making your best gains,
especially in the muscle groups with
which you are struggling the most is
because you're just not doing enough
training. Too few sets per week, is your
problem.
Uh, that would be a bitter pill to
swallow indeed. But at least it would
kind of be really straightforward and
simple cuz doing very little and growing
your best is at least counterintuitive.
Doing more and growing your best is
intuitive. But h man, it sucked that if
it was really the case. Let's dive in
and see what's really going on here.
First, a little bit of theory.
Minimum effective volume is the smallest
amount of work you can do. the smallest
number of usually sets per week, working
sets of your exercises for any given
muscle. The smallest number of sets per
week that you can do and see the least
detectable gains. It's the minimum
amount of volume that gives you any kind
of progress.
Anything more than that is going to
cause you dependable growth. And that
growth continues
generally seemingly to increase until
you hit a very high point of number of
weekly sets. And that high point is
called your MRV, your maximum
recoverable volume. Maximum recoverable
volume means you are beating your body
up so much that it cannot recover any
volume beyond that. So 30 sets a week
for biceps is your maximum recoverable
volume. 32 sets per week is a fast
ticket to overreaching
and eventually overtraining and is not
going to dependably and reliably produce
growth for you. But the big insight here
is between these two values so long as
you can still recover, which means your
strength goes up a little bit from
session to session to session. That's
how we define recovery, a return to past
performance. If you're at least as
strong as you were and ideally just a
little bit stronger, then the more
volume you do and still preserve that
relationship of getting a little bit
stronger every time, usually the more
muscle growth gains you will experience.
This is super straightforward. If you're
doing 10 sets per week for your quads
and you're still increasing strength a
little bit each session, probably 12
sets per week of quads will grow you
more muscle. If you're starting to do 12
sets per week instead of 10 and you're
still making little bitty gains,
probably 14 sets per week will grow you
more muscle. It is not the fastest way
to make you stronger because the fatigue
comes up and it interferes with the
expression of strength. So in the short
term before you take a dload load, it
won't help your strength to do more
volume past.
But for muscle growth, as long as you're
demonstrating that you're under your
MRV, your maximum recover volume, and
demonstrating this by making a being
able to gain a little bit of strength
between sessions, even just 2 and 12 lbs
on the bar or one extra rep, that means
your volume you're doing is absolutely
causing you growth and probably you
could have more growth if you did a
little bit of volume and were still able
to perform. And if you ever look at it,
you can continue to make small gains
with much higher volumes or with much
lower volumes. And study after study
after study shows that that in most
cases the much higher volumes are going
to cause more growth.
Now how much higher?
Back about 10 or 15 years ago when most
of us didn't know each other yet. I was
already in the scientific community and
espousing my views on these sorts of
things and I was one of the biggest
adherence in the whole evidence-based
space of the idea that at some high
number of sets per week, recovery
constraints were going to make gains
north of those volumes plateau and then
regress.
I was literally the person who invented
the idea, not the actual construct
underneath, but named the term maximum
recoverable volume because I thought
that past a certain point, we were going
to see degradation of hypertrophy
stimulus with just too much volume. Too
many sets your body can't recover. It
stops growing. I was the biggest
proponent of that. and myself and other
evidence-based folks speculated that
that number of sets per week that was
too much for most people was really in
the conversation for much over 20 sets
per week per muscle. So if you're
training your biceps with six sets three
times per week, that's 18 sets total.
Back in the day, you were considered a
high volume person. I was doing lots of
programs with about 18 sets per week,
and I was considered a volume spammer. a
high volume guy for doing 18 sets per
week.
Between then and now, we have done like
a decade of university studies. Exactly.
On real human trainees
to ask the question of well, how much
muscle growth do you get from higher
volumes and how much volume is the point
of negative returns or at the very least
zero returns?
Multiple studies since then,
dozens of studies since then have shown
that compared with doing 5, 10, or even
20 sets per muscle per week, in the
research environment,
30, 40, and in one landmark study at its
peak, even 52 sets
of working sets per muscle per week
caused better gains than five, 10 and
even 20 cents.
What? So basically, if we split it up
like this, we have 5, 10, and 20 sets on
one side and we have 30, 40, and 50 sets
on another. And you have to be like,
okay, we just give these programs to
random people. Who's going to grow more
muscle? The high volume group, 30, 40,
50 sets, or the low volume group, 5, 10,
20 sets? Most of the time, almost all of
the time, it's going to be the higher
volume group of 30, 40, or 50 sets.
That's crazy.
Now,
there are realistic constraints on this.
This absolutely does not mean that
everyone needs to be doing 52 sets for
all their muscles per week. And
the following is a joke. All love and
respect. Lazy
in forums in the comments sections
already started memeing the out of
that 52 set study instantly as soon as
it came out, hoping to God
that they wouldn't have to do this, that
it was just one big joke because they
wanted to pretend they were able to make
their best gains with low volumes.
But in reality, no, you don't have to do
52 sets for max muscle growth for three
reasons at least. Reason number one is
that individual differences exist. Some
people thrive on higher volumes. Some
people thrive on lower volumes. Most
people thrive on higher volumes than
they think, but not everybody. And it
goes muscle group by muscle group. You
may have a muscle group that loves
higher volume and grows way better on
higher volumes. You may also have a
muscle group on the same body or
multiple that really do better with
lower volume. So, it's not a cart blunge
for every muscle all the time. For every
human, high volume is better, no matter
how we define it. Absolutely not true.
People have different MRVs and mess. And
you might be a low volume ideal
responder, and that's totally awesome.
Just not something you should just be
assuming, though. The next big
constraint that takes these university
studies and really hems them in is that
systemic fatigue is real.
If you just train your quads and only
your quads, the amount of total systemic
fatigue from training only your quads in
a whole week and a whole 12 weeks of
training isn't that high cuz you're not
training the rest of your body. And that
way you might be able to do like 45 sets
for quads, which is just 15 sets on
Monday, 15 sets on Wednesday, 15 sets on
Friday. You might be able to do that for
12 weeks and get better results for
growth than someone who did 30 sets or
someone who did 15 sets for quads
because systemically you have all the
bandwidth in the world. You're not
training the rest of your body. In the
real world, most of us train most of our
bodies, if not all of our bodies. So,
your total systemic fatigue is really
high, and you're adding up the fatigue
of all these sets of all of these
exercises done to crazy high volumes for
all of your muscle groups, and all of a
sudden, it goes way past your systemic
maximum recoverable volume. In the real
world, people's systemic maximum
recoverable volumes, if we adjust it to
per muscle group, means per muscle
group, much more than 20 or 30 working
sets sustained for weeks, is about as
much as most people can push. Scott,
have you ever seen someone pull off a 35
set for eight muscle group like 12week
workout plan?
>> That's insane.
>> It's insane. Everyone knows it's insane.
So the the comments lazy JK all
love and respect the low volume people
had a real good point there that in the
real world one does not simply and
that's absolutely true. Another
constraint is time. If you really want
to put in as much volume as it require
to max out your growth for all muscles.
I mean like you're going to need like 12
hours a week. Most people don't have 12
hours a week. So what you end up doing
is fitting as much volume as you can
into like 3 to 6 hours a week that
you're able to train. That's mostly what
people can do and that's okay. There's
no need to pretend that it is the best,
but it's all people have time for.
Now,
that was the fun part of the video. Now,
the serious part.
Guys, I regret to inform you that there
is a global conspiracy amongst us.
It is called the Club of Sevens. That's
how they call themselves. That's what
they prefer to be called. If you call
them that, every single time they will
deny it. They'll say, "I don't know what
you're talking about." Or, "Isn't that
that one thing that Mike Isert made up
in one of his videos?" No, no, it's
real. And I don't mean to scare you, but
it is a global low volume cabal.
That's right. The same people behind
closed doors that are interact with the
Illuminati, the lizard people, and of
course, the hardcore just live bro,
don't over complicated crowd, the gym
bros. They have come up with a training
method and they think it's the truth and
they will yell at you online about it.
It's the Club of Sevens and it holds the
global reigns of power. Scott, the
ancient Egyptians and Samrians, they
knew about the number seven, didn't
they?
>> I guess so.
>> You should Scott, have you ever looked
at a clock face and seen the number 52?
>> No.
>> No, but you've seen the number seven,
haven't you, pimp?
>> Sure.
>> Starting to add up.
>> Yeah, true.
>> What the hell is all this stuff and
stuff? Fair point. Well, well take it.
What is this Club of Sevens thing? It is
a group of people that will tell you the
best training to gain muscle is 5 to 10
sets of 5 to 10 reps
done twice a week per muscle.
They'll tell you that with their dying
breaths. Now, they don't even say per
week. They say per seven days. What the
hell is a seven thing about? Well, seven
is almost the middle number between 5
and 10.
These folks are spreading on the
internet like wildfire.
5 to 10 reps per set, 5 to 10 sets per
session,
two sessions per week, they say, is the
optimal for muscle growth. And any more
is a stupid idea. Now, this approach has
wisdom to it. This approach has wisdom
to it for sure.
This style of training, five to 10 reps
per set, five to 10 sets per session,
two sessions a week, is amazing for
beginners because it's not so heavy that
their technique is going to go to
It's not so high rep that their
technique is going to go to and
it's not so much volume because they
don't need that much volume because they
respond really well.
Intermediates sometimes would just
reduce their effort and do mailin sets,
very, very high reps in reserve if they
do too much volume or their technique
starts to suck. So for intermediates
that don't have a ton of bandwidth for
training, this is an amazing way to
train.
For folks looking for a great
combination of strength and size, sets
of 5 to 10 with such low volumes allows
you to train heavier and keep a lower
overall systemic fatigue profile for the
entire training block, which means you
can add more weight between sessions and
thus your strength expression is higher.
So if you're looking for a combo of
strength and size, especially in the
short term, this is a great way to get
it. And some people have muscle groups
that are more fast twitch dominant that
take a long time to heal from high
volumes and a shorter time to heal from
lower volumes. For those muscle groups,
this is great muscle groups like chest,
muscle groups like hamstrings. And many
people are really going to respond super
well to 5 to 10 reps, 5 to 10 sets two
times a week. For that, it's amazing.
But this is an incomplete approach. It
doesn't work well nearly as well as
higher volumes do for the following
cases. First, stubborn muscles that
won't grow much. This has been tested
directly. When people have trouble
growing, they assign them to either a
low volume group or a high volume group.
The high volume group almost always
produces better results than low volume
group. The hypothesis there is that
you're either doing too much volume or
not enough volume. Not enough is almost
always the case. Muscles that fail to
get very pumped and very sore, they're
just not getting disrupted from a given
amount of volume. They almost always
grow better if you give them more volume
so they can become more pumped and more
sore. Some of your muscles get pumped
and sore from two sets, some from eight
sets. The ones that need eight sets,
they really need the eight sets to give
you your best growth. Another way to
tell is some of your muscles, you might
do three sets of squats and your quads
are cooked. Well, your quads probably
don't need much more volume after that,
but you might be able to do three sets
of lateral raises and have essentially
the same performance on lateral race set
number four as you did on set number
one. like two reps different muscles
that continue to perform at high levels
set after set after set probably respond
better to higher volumes. You want to
get them to a place where they finally
start to fatigue. That's where the
growth comes from. Another thing, and
these are all really going to be the
same muscles that meet all these
checklists. Another way to put it put it
is muscles that seem to be 100%
recovered the day after training. Scott,
what's a muscle in your body that like
doesn't matter what you do to it, the
next day it's like hit it again?
>> Delt.
>> Delt. Yeah,
>> that's delt. For many people, you do a
bunch of side laterals, the next day
you're like, "Oh, my delts." Probably
not. You're probably like, "I can do
more side laterals." Which probably
means that delts for you are going to
respond way better in growth from higher
volumes. Not 10 sets per week, not 20
sets per week. We're talking about far
north of that.
These muscle groups that heal really
rapidly, that don't seem to get
disrupted, and that typically, probably
because they're slow at twitch and
muscle fiber composition, aren't your
strongest muscle groups, typically
respond to higher volumes better. This
is proven by theory and empirical
evidence. But why is you want bigger
biceps, just do 30 sets a week for
biceps such unpopular advice? And why is
minimalism do a little bit less and
you'll have better results? Why is that
so much more popular? I think it's a
moral case of why minimalism is so
tempting. If you do sets of 5 to 10
reps,
you do 5 to 10 sets of those and you do
it twice a week, it's not a lot of
training compared to the alternative.
You get to go heavier. That means it's
more fun. Heavier training is more fun
for most people. You do fewer reps,
which means less pain. What hurts more,
a set of 20 or a set of five? It's not
even close. A set of 20 for sure. The
burn is psychotic. You're doing low
volume, which means less work. which
means you're not bothered to do as much
work because work is hard.
In addition to that, because of these
lower volumes, you accumulate less
fatigue week to week, which means you
can jump up by 5 and 10 lbs on the bar
instead of 2 and 1 half to 5 lbs. You
can add two reps every time you come in
instead of one. That is amazingly ego
boosting.
So, let me get this straight. Lower
volume training is more fun, less
painful, less work, and gives you bigger
short-term ego boosts by strength gains.
Well, where the do I sign up? Of course,
I'm interested in that sort of thing,
and I don't blame people at all for
being interested in it, and it
absolutely seems like the ultimate hack.
But here's the reality, folks. Sometimes
it's just thankless labor that gives you
results.
The reality is that all is well until
your muscles don't follow the minimalist
rules. When your biceps or your triceps
or your calves or your hamstrings or
your quads or your back or whatever it
is just are not progressing and growing
very much from very low volumes and then
when you do higher volumes they
progress. In those cases, this is just
thankless labor. It's just more work
that causes more gains. And this isn't a
guess in the middle of nowhere. This is
exactly what the empirical literature
says,
guys. I have no dog in this fight. I'm
just reporting the situation on the
ground. I love heavy low volume
training. I did it for like a decade
before anybody knew me.
And I fuss with high volumes, but man,
they get boring and tiring.
It's just that when a certain amount of
volume doesn't get you more jacked, more
times than not, higher volume almost
certainly will.
So, you might need to do some higher
volumes, especially to bring up lagging
muscle groups because that's the answer
for growth more times than it's not. How
do you do that? I'm going to give you
guys three awesome recommendations that
aren't just like just do more sets. They
are, but in a clever way. You can always
increase straight sets. You can, but
these three methods are going to hook
you up and they're way more fun. Number
one is increased frequency. Like you do
five sets of curls, you don't want to do
eight sets of curls. That just feels
like junk volume. Don't. But instead of
doing curls twice a week, do curls three
times a week. Now you've gone from doing
10 sets of curls total per week to 15
sets of curls total per week by just
adding a session for biceps.
Big deal. Doesn't seem as hard. You're
recovering just fine. You can still go
hard and heavy, but you've literally
multiplied the volume by an additional
third. That's huge. That is going to
cause notable gains if you're not
already gaining well with low volumes.
Another one is my rep match sets. Do a
set of 15 to 20 reps very close to
failure in a muscle that you need to
bring up and then add a few sets after
that, but make them myorep sets where
you stop the total work that you're
doing when you hit that top end number
from your first set. Let's say you got
18 reps on hamstring curls in the first
set. In the second set, you rested a
normal amount of time, but you got
tired. You were only able to do 14 reps.
Wait for five or 10 seconds. Don't even
go anywhere. Stay in that leg curl and
then hit up another set of four to get
to 18 total. On your next set, you make
it to 12 and then four and then two and
your next set after that 10 and then
whatever and then whatever. So that each
time you're hitting 18, 18, 18, 18, but
you are getting close to failure
numerous times and the volume is nuts.
Even though it's not a ton of sets
because you having so many approaches to
failure within a single set, you don't
have to do eight sets. Four sets might
be the equivalent volume of like seven
or eight sets. It sucks, but you don't
waste a lot of time doing it. One of the
worst things about high volume training
is the time that it takes in the gym.
But if you do my reps and you condense
your rest intervals to 5 to 10 seconds
in some occasions, you're going to have
an awesome time. And the last
recommendation I have for you guys is
traditional supersets, agonist
supersets.
You do tricep push downs. How many sets
of tricep push downs with a cable are
you really interested in doing? I'm not
interested in that many. What you can do
There's a set of tricep push downs.
Walk right over to either a deficit
push-up situation or if you're a real
pimp and really strong, a dip situation.
And with 5 to 10 seconds rest, ideally
little, you go right from cable push
downs to either push-ups or dips. And
you do another set of five to 10, real
close to failure. That's a super set.
The amount of volume and stimulus that's
pouring into your triceps is massive.
And because you don't rest long, it
doesn't take a ton of time. You rest
about a minute or two, come back to the
push down situation, hit it again. So,
every single set is really two sets. One
is isolation, the other is more compound
where that limiting factor is still your
triceps. Give that a shot. You can even
do it with dumbbell press, push downs,
lay down on a bench, flatter and climb
dumbbell press, your tricep is limiting
factor. It will cook that ass. Guys, if
you like deep dives and nerdy science,
our member section just got more
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below, your life will get measurably
better. All right, back to the video.
Try these three techniques. Try them
only on a few of the muscles that to you
seem like they recover real goddamn
fast, but just don't seem to be growing
as well. And I almost guarantee you're
going to see better results than if you
did lower volumes. for the rest of you,
your body, keep the lower volumes, no
problem because that's systemic fatigue.
You don't want getting too high.
So, yes, it is true that sometimes
simple minimalism works really well,
but when it doesn't work well, don't be
afraid to roll up your sleeves a little
bit and pound it in with just more sets.
It's not as fun all the time, but have
you considered how fun your life would
be if you had giant forearms, biceps,
triceps, and delts? You could just be
you could be whatever. You know, Scott,
what would you want to be when you were
a little kid growing up?
>> Just someone my father deemed worthy of
love and respect.
>> Oh, that got real. Um,
well, your dad probably would have loved
you and respected you more. definitely
respect slashfeed you more if you had
giant arms right saying
>> y now if you're Scott and you just want
daddy's love and respect you could go
about this on your own and it's totally
fine or you could have a single app that
gives you direct feedback and
automatically increases volume on
precisely the exercises on which you
need more volume to grow it detects us
automatically it is available it is an
awesome app I use it every single time I
train bar none And if you need to be a
bigger king, well, the RP Diet Coach app
can hook you up by telling you what to
eat and when, so you can get jacked and
finally be able to look your father in
the eyes. That got weird. See you guys
next time.