Comment by oarfish
4 hours ago
> Volume itself is meaningless. The only thing that matters is the intensity of the workout
Not true at all, its well documented that volume is the biggest predictor of progress. there is obviously an intensity floor, and when its not feasible logistically to stack on more volume, intensity is your other knob. But to say volume doesnt matter is an odd claim, maybe i misunderstand.
> you want the maximum intensity with minimum volume to have less wear and tear
Not a helpful way of thinking about exercise induced adaptations. unless you are doing pro athlete amounts of training, would ignore this completely.
Yeah theres the "progressive overload" + volume camp.
It can work.. the problem is that if you do too little you get no result, if you do too much you burn out. So you have to manage both volume and intensity so that you have a progressive overload. This is difficult.
Easier way is to just ignore the volume in the first place, train as hard as you can (so go to failure, or very close), for maximal effort, i.e. increase the intensity then RECOVER then go back to the gym when you're no longer sore.
This is much easier routine to follow and it will produce development assuming other factors (quality of sleep and nutrition) are in check.
So therefore a shortcut summary is to forget about the volume, focus on the intensity and then make volume follow your capacity to recover. Avoid injuries and burnout while precipitating growth.
Using the bench press example again, in a volume program I might do
6 sets of 6 reps for a total of 36 reps. Since I'm doing so much volume it's clear that my first 5 sets will not be challenging because with this amount of sets I HAVE to save my energy for 6 sets. MAYBE the last rep or two in the last set will be what will start challenging me. So I'd say that with this volume workout you get 2 reps out of 36 that are "progressive". That's 5% and 95% of my work is just junk that produces only wear and tear.
In high intensity method I continue with drop sets after I fail. So.. let's say I do my initial set, 8 reps until I fail, I drop weights and do 3 more reps until I fail, I drop the weights and do 2 more reps. And then I'm done and that's the workout. My total reps are 13 but there are at least 5 reps that are in the zone that challenges me. That's 5/13 for 38%.