Are You REALLY Doing Enough Volume? (Science Explained)

if you're only doing 10 to 20 sets a week per muscle group are you missing out a muscle growth let's review what the evidence [Music] says welcome back Dr myol today with st by science bringing you the latest high volume research for a long time now there's been a debate about whether or not higher volumes are better or worse for building muscle than lower volumes the one hand of this debate you had low volume Advocates often stemming from the school of thought of Arthur Jones or Mike mener who often performed as few as just a

single heart set once every 4 to seven days for a single muscle group and as one example people will commonly cite Casey Vier apparently gained 60 lbs of muscle in Just 4 weeks using a low volume approach on the other side of the argument you have the higher volume Advocates often stemming from Vince geronda like for example Arnold Schwarzenegger if you look at the programs they formed they often did as many as 30 to 50 sets in a single training session and they were often training different muscle groups with up to 30 to 60 sets

across the week and that is all well and good but how does this relate to you as the average lifter is there one approach that is clearly better according to the research let's break down the two most recent metth analyses on this topic first we have a meta analysis by shenfeld and colleagues from 2017 they included studies that were at least 6 weeks in duration and that equated for other variables that might otherwise confound the muscle growth results they also had some other inclusion criteria in total they found 15 studies that met these inclusion criteria

they analyze the results across these 15 studies in a variety of ways for example seeing volume is a continuous variable how does muscle growth change as you add each additional set but also seeing it in terms of lower versus higher volumes for example performing fewer than 10 sets compared to performing more than 10 sets instead of going in depth on each analysis type we have a whole podcast episode on that you can check out in the description let me give you the overall takeaways broadly speaking higher volumes of at least 10 or more sets are

superior to lower volumes importantly though at the time we didn't have many studies looking at very high volumes in excess of 20 sets per week per muscle one of the only studies we had was a study by Redan colleagues which also happens to be the longest study we have on volume clocking in at 6 months in duration because this study was deemed to be influential and that it was meaningfully impacting the estimates for how much more beneficial higher volumes were for hypertrophy compared to lower volumes they also performed a sensitivity analysis where they essentially left

that study out to see whether or not it would change the results all that much even without this study there was still benefit to higher volumes as I mentioned though at the time of this met analysis we didn't have many studies looking at volumes in excess of 20 or more sets a week however a more recent metanalysis by basal and colleagues did actually include studies on this very Topic in this study by basal and colleagu on account of only including studies where participants had to be trained for at least one year they only included seven

studies but they categorized volumes into being either low that is to say below 12 sets medium that is to say between 12 and 20 sets a week per muscle or high that is to say over 20 sets a week per muscle they only looked at three muscle groups specifically the triceps the biceps and the quads in the triceps they found a significant benefit in favor of high volumes in excess of 20 sets compared to more moderate volumes in the range of 12 to 20 sets in terms of effect size this was deemed statistically a moderate

effect size when it came to the biceps and quadriceps however while the difference still leaned in favor of doing 20 or more sets a week per muscle the differences weren't significant now you might be asking why are we seeing a benefit through the triceps but not so much for the biceps or the quads there are two potential explanations one is there simply Aren't Enough studies to really consistently be able to detect effects we're only talking about 3 to Six studies depending on the analysis and that is a relatively small pool of studies to even be

able to detect an effect even if there is one the second explanation is that the triceps are generally more of a synergist than they are an Agonist in many compound pressing movements for example a study by brandalan colleagues comparing the school Crusher to the bench press exercise generally found worse hypertophy in the triceps compared to the school Crusher and so with much of the volume in these volume studies coming from compound pressing exercises that may not be ideal for tricep development it may be that the triceps simply require more overall volume when much of your

volume comes from suboptimal compound pressing exercises importantly although not published at the time of this video in the next year or so there will be a metanalysis coming out by the guys over a data driven strength so keep an eye out for this soon to be published metanalysis the takeaways from these two metanalyses are as follows there is a benefit to higher volumes for muscle growth but but it seems as though much past 12 to 20 sets at least for some muscles there may be a drop off is there anything we can glean from looking

at individual studies because we now have eight studies comparing volumes in excess of 20 sets per week per muscle to more moderate volumes of fewer than 20 sets a week per muscle generally these eight studies can be broken down into two categories the first category comprising four studies are studies that find some benefit to going over 20 sets a week per muscle group the second category comprising four studies as well are studies that don't really find any large differences in favor of either the lower volume approach of less than 20 sets or the higher volume

approach of more than 20 sets now I'm not going to break down each individual study we had a whole podcast on that in the description in two parts you can check out but let me give you some Trends from these eight studies generally studies that Ed longer rest times of say 2 or 3 minutes or more less consistently found a benefit to higher volumes and this aligns with the research on rest times for muscle growth that shows that generally the longer you rest for between sets the effectiveness of those sets will increase so if you're

taking longer interet rest time intervals you may not benefit from quite as high of a volume and you may potentially see your best hypertrophy below 20 sets with that being said there are still studies finding a benefit to going above 20 sets even with longer rest time intervals most notable is a study by NIS and colleagues in this study they essentially compared 22 sets of quad training a week to 32 sets of quad training a week to 37 sets of quad training a week now doing some quick math based on how long each set should

take and how long the participants in the higher volume groups took we can assume that they roughly took 3 and 1/2 to 4 minutes of rest between sets and yet in spite of this the muscle growth results were generally most favorable in the higher volume groups all the way up to 37 average weekly sets with that being said this study is a bit of an outline most other studies that have found the benefit to higher volumes generally have interet rest intervals of about 1 to 2 minutes so before we go into some frequently asked questions

around volume let me give you the takeway on volume for muscle growth generally 10 to 20 sets per week per muscle will be a good starting point for most muscle groups however if you want to see your best muscle growth or you generally take slightly shorter rest time intervals there's a very good chance that you'll see your best muscle growth for a given muscle by going above 20 sets a week per muscle ultimately how much volume you do for a given muscle will depend on a few things like how much time you have to train

how important the muscle group is and how long the rest periods you take are now let me touch on a few questions that I know will pop up first does this mean that specialization phases are a good option for muscle growth in all likelihood yes and I think that you can probably specialize with higher volumes on up to two to maybe four muscle groups at once however you will likely need to compensate by reducing volume on other muscle groups for example if I wanted to specialize on say my chest and arms that would be three

muscle groups I would potentially take these all the way up to 25 to 35 sets per week per muscle equally though I would want to reduce the volume on say my back and shoulders to a roughly equivalent number of muscle groups and perhaps take these from an average of 15 sets per week per muscle closer to 7 or eight essentially just make sure that you're managing overall training load to compensate for the fact that training certain muscle groups with higher volumes second frequently Asked question is does this mean we should be cycling volumes for example

starting at a lower volume of say 10 sets and then gradually building up to a higher volume of say 20 to 30 sets the truth is in my opinion is that we just don't know yet there's some preliminary evidence on the idea of cycling volumes but I don't think we're currently at a stage where I can recommend cycling volumes as being better for muscle growth than just keeping volumes in their happy place if you'd like to do some more reading on the this topic there is a review paper on this General topic by Hammerton colleagues

that I'll link in the description and finally how can you make high volumes more feasible let's face it high volumes say doing more than 20 sets a week per muscle on multiple muscle groups at once can take a lot of time and yet you may still want to do it if you want to maximize your muscle growth here are a few General tips to make your training more time efficient and get in more training volume first consider using antagonistic paired suets or essentially super setting any true movements that don't have any real muscular overlap for

example you could safely superet something like a dumbbell bench press with a dumbbell row and you likely wouldn't see any performance drop off in either exercise on account of these two movements using different muscle groups the same can be said for example of super setting a dumbbell lateral raise with a calf raise because there is no muscular overlap you will likely see a similar performance in both exercises so using antagonistic pair suers sets or super setting any two exercises with minimal overlap and using drop sets when that's not an option can be great tools to

make high volume training more practical the final tip is to consider the usage of either drop sets indeed a recent met analysis by Coleman and colleagues found similar muscle growth whether using drop sets or traditional sets with traditional rest intervals but the drop set groups generally took substantially less time to train or potentially even a technique like my reps which while it hasn't been studied as much may follow a similar principle to drop sets exercises that really get you out of breath or really ftig ued overall after a set may not be the best candidates

for super sets for example suers setting the squat with any other exercise may not be the best idea that is the video I Tred to break down all of the research on really high training volumes for you if you want more information on this topic check out the two podcast episodes that we've had about this exact topic breaking down all of the relevant studies across two long form podcast episodes you'll find a lot more relevant information in those podcasts if you're looking for coaching consider Strong by science's coaching team if you'd like to learn more

about the service go to Strong by science.com coaching we have a great team of coaches that are qualified to help you reach your goals if you like the video please comment like subscribe letting us know if there are any other topics you want to see us break down the science about in the meantime have a fantastic day and we'll see you next [Music] time