MORE VOLUME = MORE GROWTH. PERIOD.

you will likely see more hypertrophy if you go with higher volumes high intensity training and low volume approaches can be perfectly fine for people who are limited on time or who train more so with their preferences but as far as the research goes the other way to say that Milo is limited on Willpower I'm kidding hit people you're great hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength and I'm here with my good friend Dr Milo wolf who is an expert on hypertrophy an expert on range of motion and an expert on beard Unfortunately today beards

will not be discussed but training volumes which means how much you do in the gym usually measured in number of sets per session or per week what is the relationship of training volumes to muscle growth how much is enough just to set up the conversation really quick we already know from previous research that especially for beginners and people just coming back to Fitness one to three sets per muscle per week provides robust gains but I think some people forget that robust gains is detectable gains it does not mean the best possible gains and then so

muscle growth continues to be higher and higher the more volume you do and in some studies that continuation has led to something like 50 or so sets per muscle per week split over three workouts that has resulted in at least short-term gains that are the highest so it's a huge spectrum of lots of things cause gains depending on the situation that some extreme volumes can be useful and that's the jump off point where Dr mil wolf tells me how much of what I said is wrong and corrects everything pretty much everything you said was right

I'm sorry to tell you before we go into the findings of this most recent metanalysis that included 35 studies or so for hypertrophy so that's meaty for strength it was 66 that's really me so it's a lot of studies regardless before we go into that the general conceptual understanding of volume and hypertrophy so far has been an inverted du relationship as you mentioned there is such an amount of volume where you see some hypertrophy but not your best and that might be around one to three sets that would be the store of that inverted U

relationship as you increase volume you will see more growth you kind of climb up that inverted U and you see more growth as you do more volume but theoretically there then comes a plateau we're doing more volume past that doesn't necessarily increase growth anymore it just kind of gives you the same growth because at that point maybe you're struggling to recover yes there's no additional or less growth correct that is when you get into the final end of that in relationship the problem so far is that in many of my years of searching they've actually

never really robustly and reliably found even the top of the U they've definitely found where it starts to get close but is still going it's like climbing the next mini Peak on the way to Everest you're like this has to be the peak and you look up and you're like fuck there's still more shit up there so obviously if you do 200 sets for your biceps every week you're going to lose muscle you're going to get rabdo necrosis and all this other shit don't try that at home people have done that a few times so

we know that limit is some something insane we don't quite know how high that limit goes and this metaanalysis looked at lower moderate and higher volume training studies on aggregate I assume and what are it what are some of the take- homes that you got from this meta that you think are insightful well basically exactly what you said more volume leads to more growth and we have studies looking at pretty high volumes so I recently looked at the research myself as well and we have around eight studies looking at high volumes and excess of 20

sets per week per muscle like that's what it categorizes extremely high volumes for most people and when you look at all of these studies a few dozen studies as I mentioned you see that going up in volume from say 10 sets to 30 or even 40 sets leads to more growth I was previously on the channel to discuss the infamous 52 set quad study and that is one of many studies that I've looked at higher training volumes past 20 sets and when you aggregate all of those what you find is that there is a dose

response relationship between volume and hypertrophy can you see hypertrophy even with low volume approaches like high intensity training yes will you see your best hypertrophy it's pretty unlikely right you will likely see more hypertrophy if you go with higher volumes high intensity training and low volume approaches can be perfectly fine for people who are limited on time or who train more so with their preferences but as far as the research goes the other way to say that Milo is limited on Willpower I'm kidding hit people you're great but regardless there is a diminishing returns effect

generally the trend you see and I won't speak to specifics too much when discussing the study because it's a pre-print currently it'll probably be out by the time the stud is the video is out but roughly doubling your volume so say going from 10 sets per week per muscle to 20 sets per week per muscle roughly gives you 50% more relative growth so you're doing 100% more volume for 50% more growth that generalistic of 2x the volume for 50% more growth holds up pretty well between around like 5 and 35 sets Okay so going from

5 per week to 10 sets per week it's twice the volume but it'll give you about 50% more relative growth if you were gaining 5% of muscle in a year you would be gaining seven and a half% of muscle in a year going from five sets to 10 sets yeah 50% better gains is a lot it is relative but it's relative but 50% relative is still a lot because if your absolute gains are great 50% relative gains a lot of absolute gain if your absolute gains are very small that you're super struggling to gain a

pound a year then 50% relative gains are like huge because you just wouldn't it's so much more detectable now than it would have been so now you need every little claw scratch you can get so that makes sense let me take you through a list of caveats now and common critiques people have about this stuff real quick hit me 30 to 50 does the relationship hold that's exactly the first C I was going to mention okay we have less research in at the very tall bend as I mentioned we have around eight studies now looking

at high volumes in excess of 20 sets per muscle but most of our research is still in the sort of neighborhood of 10 to 30 sets above 30 sets we have a few studies don't get me wrong we have the Bato study we have the an study and a few others but we don't have quite as much research so while if you're looking at the inverted U all we've really found from the research is go up and slowly diminishing returns we haven't found that plateau and we certainly haven't found the drop off and that's going

all the way up to 30 to 40 sets that is the first caveat we don't have a ton of research at 30 to 40 sets per week so while my best guess as a sports scientist is still that if you wanted to grow one muscle maximally you should be doing High volumes higher than you have higher than you have been in all likelihood there's a few caveat here one the way that volume was counted they counted volume three different ways one they counted volume directly meaning that all of your bicep training would be curls only

yes direct isolation lap pull Downs that you did earlier count for nothing they just count for back so they counted volume directly if they counted it indirectly where all sets counted the same so a set of rows would count as one set for the biceps as well which also probably isn't most accurate but then they also counted volume fractionally where they made certain assumptions about how different movements targeted different muscles so they would count a set of bicep curls for example as one set for the biceps but they would count a set of rows as

half a set for the biceps awesome I've done that before and they checked which of these models best fit the actual data which of these models essentially minimized residuals the fractional model was the best fit hey the best predicted hypertrophy so if you want to purely have a list of assumptions that best predicts hypertrophy counting indirect volume like compound training for your biceps compound training for your triceps as maybe like half a set yes is a reasonable assumption and it's the most truthful assumption yeah that is how they chose to then analyze the data set

because that's what best research that's great so when I'm talking about volume here I'm talking about fractional sets yeah meaning that for example for 30 fractional bicep sets a week which seems to be really effective for hypy based on Research we might be talking about doing 20 sets of direct bicep block per week and 20 sets of direct back workor per week because those 20 sets of direct back workor would count as 10 sets for your biceps yes half a set for your biceps each so that's actually very realistic it is this probably one of

the most realistic met analyses because a direct and indirect both suffer from really big ER errors of analysis and so this is kind of like man in your program like if you count all your pushing movements as half tricep full chest you count um your pulling movements Sy some bicep Etc then it's really going to tell you when you add it up in your program well how many sets am I doing compared to these studies and then you get a real world feel correct and so the volume recommendations I'm making might sound pretty high but

in reality if you increase your volume a little bit you can very easily get to 30 maybe even 40 sets for your biceps or triceps or and importantly there are assumptions baked in here right like does a set of rows really count as half set to biceps why 75 Etc and we'll get to more realistic assumptions over time in exercise science for example now we have some studies comparing the dumbbell curl to the dumbbell Row for bicep growth we have a study comparing the underhand P overhand pull down to the dominal curl for bicep growth

and these studies can start informing our understanding of how different movements count for different muscles because they can directly measure the growth and then say actually it was 2/3 or actually it was one/ thir actually it was half for example this pull downs we have found similar bicep growth from pull Downs as bicep curls so if you wanted to use this research to inform how you count volume if you want to get really Nitty Gritty you could say one set of P Downs counts as roughly one set for biceps as well but we're slowly getting

to that stage but having made this list of assumptions a fractional fit is a more realistic way of counting volume it predicts hypertrophy better that's one caveat the second caveat is people will say what about train lifters many of these studies take place in untrain lifters right so sure High volumes might work better there but I think that train lifters need less volume because you get better pushing yourself Etc they actually performed a subgroup analysis looking at only studies in trained lifters versus only studies in untrained lifters what are we counting as trained I think

in this case it was over six months of training experience so it's at least some training experience very very different than what most people say is trained but nonetheless not new beginners correct if you would expect that as you become more trained you need less volume you would still see that effect play out to an extent in this comparison of completely untrained to train unless that effect started at a much higher of course but you would need a real sort of like a real strong rationale as to why that would be the case most effects

I would say I could give a strong rationale hit me uh you've ACC Creed enough muscle size and strength to now be so big and strong that you can't possibly have enough recovery ability and conditioning to get through the stuff you used to whereas after the first six months of training you have put on some muscle size and strength but not a ton in the grand scheme but you're ability to recover and your conditioning has escalated a ton so you know when it's your first six months you're just better at working out when it's your

first six years you're now doing such heavy lifts that fuck you up so much that are so close to your limits of adaptation they take something from you you don't just get back right away what do you think about that bullshit on the spot or some value I think the alternative stance is stronger it's not that I can say we have evidence to the contrary but I think that in the research you do observe that muscle growth and strength gains slow down as you become more trained and you will gain the prop like the majority

of your muscle size and strength in the first few years of lifting and importantly in this case we're talking about trained lifters not super trained but at least 6 months or 12 months of training experience at least within a Smith analysis that will include some studies like the NS study where people were squatting on average three plates plus to death so relatively strong and realistically would the average participant in that study get much strong with an additional five years of lifting maybe to a decent extent but maybe not quite enough to really change their volume

requirements dramatically at least and I think there's absolutely cases like you just mentioned where people get way more muscular as they keep lifting and keep lifting especially if they have great Gen X like yourself for example right like when you start lifting from what I remember you telling me you didn't gain a ton of muscle at first and then as you kept lifting and improving your training Etc you actually grew appreciably more as you became more trained it was both I gained a lot at first and then the next year and the next year and

the next year there you go there certainly cases like that and some people will get absurdly big and strong but for most people most of their strength gains and size gains will come relatively early into a lifting career so I think the research is leaning in favor of saying volume requirements probably don't change a ton as you become more trained that is I think what the stronger stance is here but I can see how especially for very trained lifters it's a bit of an Uncharted Territory situation for sure I just think most people don't think

of six months trained lifters keep mind that's the bottom threshold though not everyone was training for exactly six months some of them were comfortably training for several years on right right so you you might expect some sort of effect found you expect some effect if there is one right but they didn't really find anything the dose response relationship between volume and hypertrophy remained the same shape the only thing that happened was a downward shift of the curve going from untrained to trained such that trained lifters just saw less hypertrophy yeah which is exactly what we'

expect as you become more trained hypertrophy slows down so that's one common critique of untrained lifters etc etc another critique is well these studies they didn't really train all that hard and there have been studies that weren't conducted to failure but there have also been studies and in fact most studies on volume are conducted to failure most studies in exercise science are conducted to failure self standardizer correct we have a whole discussion around whether or not we think people truly train to failure or not but yet again if you're comparing studies where they explicitly didn't

train to failure to studies where they were at least trying to train to failure on average the studies where they were trying to train to failure would involve participants training harder and closer to failure than the ones where they were not trying to train a failure and across both of these when you performed a subgroup analysis looking at only the studies not to failure and only the studies to failure the shape of the relationship was the same what about the magnitude of the magnitude was similar as well most of the studies are on participants trained

to failure but at the very least just because you're training a bit harder doesn't mean you don't still need higher volumes to maximize hypertrophy and higher doesn't mean 50 sets a week but it still means relatively higher volumes than people for example in the high intensity training crowd are advocating for sure for my take on this if you get really really big and strong and you lift for a long time and you learn how to really produce a lot of relative effort and your lifting and you push your body to its limits and muscle size

and leanness and strength and all this other stuff you end up being able to produce so much systemic fatigue from you're lifting that your overall volume in any given week your systemic total mrv maximum recover volume you can reach it no problem reliably but that's different than the local mrv for any given muscle and so with specialization you know when people said one of those uh I think Brad and James Ker's um replication of the r Elli study where it's 45 sets four quads but that was 15 sets Monday Wednesday Friday and they didn't do

a whole lot else systemically for someone not super strong that's possible to do even for someone super strong systemically that's still possible to do and if you were a person let's say who was very big very strong and you had a very large muscular body big legs huge back but your chest and arms could use some work if you dial back the chest or sorry dial back the legs and back to maintenance volumes which you know the conversation starts at around a third of your typical volume I mean very low volumes will keep your legs

and back what I think a meta analysis like this is telling us and it's not the first to tell us but it's really good information is that look you can pump up the volume on your chest and arms as long as systemically you're still sleeping well you're not thinking of uh no longer coming to the gym ever again your strength is still climbing you're excited about training you're making strength gains feel free to over time add a few sets here and there to your arms and chest and as long as you're systemically feeling good you're

going to feel really really good local results why am I making such a big point out of this because I have a secret I know why people say low volumes work better for stronger people or bigger people because bigger and stronger people cannot do as much systemic number of sets because the absolute effort is so higher the relative effort is so much higher they just get really fucked up but a lot of them understandably don't ever feel like they could dial anything back so you tell someone do you think you could do 30 sets of

quads in a week and recover they go fuck no are you kidding me they're not answering your question they're answering your question with an inbuilt assumption that they're making and the inbuilt assumption is that in the context of my current program there's no way I can add 15 sets of quads and still survive week upon week upon week but what if you took your back training and your hamstring training down to six sets a week according to your research and you and PS presented you you wouldn't lose any e size for sure if you did

that all of a sudden extra 15 sets of quads is possible but most people just think in my current program and current setup assuming I'm training full body and hard is it possible for me to do 30 sets on everything no hell no I most people wouldn't be able to survive that just cuz they can't I've watched people try it it doesn't work you get to about 200 total work sets per week that are hard for your whole body you're you're not going to hang around for much longer it's not even going to be a

muscle growth thing it's going to be a fatigue thing you stop sleeping your motivation for training Goes to Hell your joints start feeling all fucked up it's unsustainable and so I think a lot of people take this whole like you're telling me 40 sets works could they just globally apply it to like my whole program everything 40 sets no no no no no no no no no because that's not how these studies were conducted mil how many of these studies in the man analysis just offand percent were conducted on five to six day a week

everything gets hit two to four times a week we're training chest triceps shoulder side delts hamstrings glutes quads C the whole thing with multiple exercises multiple sets five or six days a week probably zero zero zero right you have young people in their Prime who I would make a general assertion and this is not meant to from a position of hate they don't they're not so serious about their training usually why do I say that almost no one who's Ultra serious about their training volunteers to be a part of a training study they're going to

take your training and they're going to tell you what to do instead almost all serious people the hardcore guys in the College gym they're not you're not going to tell them what to do they're doing their own shit so people that aren't overly serious about training they're into it they like it but they're not psychotic about it they're young they can recover well they're training smaller fractions of their body usually and with just two or three days a week fuck man you can cook those motherfuckers 40 sets a week that shit works great and at

the local muscular level it probably would work great too if you had some kind of super recovery pill for Jack giant people you could just give them every day I suppose steroids is one of those it doesn't doesn't do as good of a job as people think if you could have an infinite recovery pill yeah you really could do 40 sets of biceps and quads and hams and everything all fucking week long and recover and adapt but people miss that whole context of these are just a few programs uh days per week these are folks

that train hard but probably not hard like most people train when they're really on a on a mission they train really hard because they got someone yelling at them but you can get through a program like that whereas by yourself you would never do that to yourself in a million years and all those factors brought together you can start to see okay so in I olated situations very high volumes per muscle work really well can you survive that in a systemic scale you're going to have to dial some muscles back dial other muscles up see

how things go and adjust from there what do you think about that I think you're mostly on money I've got several thoughts on that the first is that I've experimented in the past with around 200 sets a week and it is tough and practically as a coach that is where I would mostly draw the line I think for most lifters around 200 sets a week and 's going to be some variance around this some people can benefit from more some people from less 200 sets of overall training volume incling warmups are not including warm not

including warm so 200 hard wacking set I think for most people 100 is about the most they'll be able to do but 200 is kind of like in tense 200 is intense for sure I think that train lifters when you get to the sort of exotic level you're describing I could see that being consideration there's a reason why I'm saying the Exotic level people look up to Advanced bodybuilders who they think know everything and these guys know a lot but a lot of what they know is specific to their case and so they'll tell you

as the biggest guy in the gym don't do any more than eight sets for your quads per week and it's true for that guy in the context of his whole body program but is it true for you most people are not exotically large so they'll be able to squeeze in more volume yeah I agree and I think that people can get to higher fractional volumes when they realize though so in a regular 5day routine for example if you're doing 20 to 30 sets per session which for many people is going to be somewhat feasible get

you in that 100 to 150 weekly sets ballpark that can mean 20 to 30 fractional sets for many muscle groups not all but many muscle groups and that can be quite effective in fact we do have some studies for example the Bato study looking at relatively High volumes of around 200 sets per week for the whole body so there are studies where they look at relatively High volumes but for the most part you are correct in saying that we often look at single muscle groups and so we're essentially or just a few just a few

like maybe two three four tops so essentially we're conducting specialization phase studies yes which is great because it means that we have a very very strong rationale for saying that on a single muscle group level higher volumes will produce more growth but it doesn't tell us whether or not that is feasible to apply on whole scale level in the context of a full body program very simple reason for that that is an incredibly difficult site run we would need a lot of funding to even attempt that because that would entail getting participants into the lab

for five or six days a week each for often 2 hours per session each a lot of man hours that's a lot of man house and also you'd have to recruit double the sample size because at least half those people quit and they'll be well well trained so we're expecting smaller effects if anything so it'll be even hor te differences yeah that's why we haven't done it yeah and also well- trained people like I said earlier don't typically like give themselves up for research purposes in this case we might be able to because it's the

study on heart training you know like we're expecting to push them hard for two hours every day people would maybe sign up for that but then it's still a question of getting enough manpower yeah to supervise the participants make sure they're training hard have it in the lab for 12 hours each per week big enough sample size let's say 50 people holy shit that is an insane amount of lab you need a few labs for that you need to like you know cash out so that's why we don't have that but on a specialization phase

basis I can definitely make a case for higher volumes and I think generally if you can tolerate it on a systemic level higher volumes will likely be better next caveat people will claim that you only need High volumes if you're not resting for sufficient amounts of time between sets and in fact certain influencers make this claim all the time yeah this new volume study found better growth only because they were resting for a minute between let's just be clear on that before you have a much more iridite uh discussion they're making that up yes they

just made that up they're making that up in the sense that they looked at some of the rest time literature and said that if you're resting in insufficient amount of time doing more sets helps correct but that doesn't say anything about if your resting an insufficient time is four sets better than eight or is 16 sets even better than eight and for any given long rest of time is 16 sets better than eight even if you take the break it's one of those things where you pretend to have Insight on something but really it's just

something that sounds like it and you don't have Insight on at all but I'm just it's just something you say when you don't like the results of a study typically for sure but we actually looked at this directly so off the top of my head I can think of studies that had longer rest times that still found a benefit to higher volumes for instance if you look at the 52 set study we discussed previously on average in the highest volume group the one doing 52 sets for the last two weeks of the intervention and you

look at the rec session duration they're actually taking three and a half four minutes of rest between sets that's so they were taking long rest periods and they still saw benefit of high volumes sure when we looked at the whole area of research around 30 studies as I mentioned we compared studies where they took around manover to studies where took around 3 minutes of rest the relationship still held up the relationship between volume and more muscle growth is robust to many different variables it seems whether you're a bit more trained or a bit less trained

whether you're taking slightly long rest times slightly short rest times whether you're trained to failure or training sub maximally more is more yes and if you can recover from it you will likely of course that is always a caveat but in these studies at least on single muscle group levels 30 40 sets per week seems to be recoverable systemically it's a different story potential we just don't know that yet practically we can both say there is such a thing as too much but where is that we don't quite know sure sure and it's very individual

dependent to correct someone will be at 100 sets and be dying someone will be at 150 and be cruising correct the final two findings from this metanalysis I found interesting now that I've got all of the caveats out of the way I can think of one maintenance volumes seemingly you can maintain muscle like muscle mass with around two or three fractional weekly sets per week now keep in mind that is in relatively untrained populations in the context of these studies Etc but around two to three hard weekly sets seems to be sufficient in these studies

to maintain muscle mass you don't need to do a ton in say a de week or when you're traveling or if you have a maintenance phase or what have you to maintain muscle mass and when it comes to an appreciable amount of muscle growth that occurs just above that as you've spoken about countless times maintenance volumes are theoretically right beneath the minimum effect volume and that is what was found in this metos as well where around four sets a week for hypertrophy seems to be where you sort of seeing hypertrophy that is detectable or above

sort of measurement air related that's really insightful Milo so for people at home again these are averages these are based on participants they're not you but unless it took place to part in the study you know then congratulations this is well then then then you have to do a subject level analysis even then um the sniff test of what is really enough volume per muscle to kind of be like yeah I'm doing a decent effort at growing is maybe around four sets per week you would be okay kind of signing off on that so or

fractional sets by the way uh sure so that could be two sets of back for example and like two or three sets of direct bicep training totally totally so if you are a person who is trying to get bigger triceps and you have my Lifting for too long you train pretty hard nothing crazy your diet's right your sleep is good you're like dude I want to get bigger triceps but I currently my workout is I do like three sets of push Downs after some chest shit and then three sets of Skull Crushers at the beginning

of my other workout per week what do you think I'd be like yeah six sets if you train hard like you'll probably see some gains and if you want more gains try seven try eight try moving up there but they're like I don't have time for that like you should expect some gains at six sets whereas if they were like I my total fractional tricep stimulus is two sets per week I'd be like you're probably going to delay your rate of loss by weeks and months or slow it down greatly just would not expect growth

from that would you would you say that's an okay take from that I think it's pretty accurate to close it off I think there's a few more things I would add one currently when you look at the model at around 10 sets you seem to be getting around 40% of your maximum hypertrophy that is a rough estimate per muscle per week correct fractional weekly sets so five leg press on Monday five squat sets on Thursday correct obviously assuming you're not doing any lunges or anything else that contribute for sure that's my whole program correct there

you go that would get you around based on these studies 40% of Maximum hypertrophy for a muscle it is a diminishing return situation so you can absolutely see growth with as few as four sets you can absolutely use a high-intensity training routine and see growth but if you want to complicate it a bit more than that and I know people are always complaining about excise scientists complaining complicating those people are just stupid please continue but please if you want to complicate it doing more will give you more growth it's not very complicated it's not that

complicated but it's pretty complicated for some people yeah um so yeah those are all the caveats I need to give about that whole relationship but those were the broad findings from this metalysis I love it I'll give you one more wacky take and you let me know if you can science it to death or if you're like you shall pass in this case what I do is I tell people look how many times they say I want bigger trips how many times a week you train your triceps doesn't matter what they say let's say they

say two times a week what I tell them to do is go start training triceps at a relatively low volume six sets total so three and three and then I ask them how is your recovery between sets and we we can talk about delayed on set soreness and all that stuff we don't even have to say when you come back to train your triceps again after your last workout do they feel strong and are you able to perform it at or slightly above your iCal level you get a couple different answers with that if the

answer is like o yeah some days but some days I'm still a little kind of I would say continue volume where you are because recovery might be a concern if you're like dude no way I'm still sore and completely broken and like actually weaker than that second workout of the week I'd be like this is the first workout you should take your volume down but for most people especially over longer lengths of time weeks and weeks and weeks they'll get to a point where they think the question is like a joke they're like I don't

understand the question when you hit triceps Monday what do they feel like Thursday they're like dude Tuesday they feel 100% I'm like oh shit add some sets and they're like but I could dude I could probably do 15 sets of triceps two days a week and still recover I'm like well there you go there's your 30 and they're like but that's a lot of sets and I'm like work up to it slow if you can recover which is to say come back and have strong workouts but you're thinking damn I could come back and have

strong workouts with way more volume than I'm doing now well there's your answer for how come volume at a high level produces growth now if you truthfully get insane delay on set muscle soreness in your biceps from two sets on Monday and two sets on Thursday and if you try to come in on Thursday after three sets and you're literally like 80% as strong yeah like your local recovery is two sets per workout four sets per week that does happen very rare possible but if you let your recovery be a guide at least if you

can repeatedly have strong good workouts if you're recovering based on the literature yeah more is probably better and if you're recovering from that try a little more what do you think because I used to get a lot of shit for saying that like well but you'll break people in half exactly how does that work with good technique and everything I think you just get tired and you start to get a little weaker and you're like I need a D Lo week but if anything most people don't train enough I would say like most people could

stand to train harder and see more muscle growth if your performance is solid week to week try adding more see what happens I think more often than not when someone says that that they can only handle two sets on Monday two sets on Thursday otherwise their performance starts tanking their lifestyle is not that good they've been hitting they've been hitting the late night gay club a lot which is fun but tiring but fun but really tiring but like most of the time it is last related um the final thing I'd say is that in lot

of This research time saving strategies like we just discussed with the super sets for example yes uh anything that can allow you to get more volume in and less time if you have meaningful time constraints will likely allow you to see more growth yes it's kind of like this is a terrible analogy but it's kind of like happy hour ends in 30 minutes and the cheap beers are still cheap and you know it's going to take you five beers to feel the way you want to feel it's time to get a few beers so because

it used to be like well I don't have a lot of time to work out and so it's okay and I would watch people Milo with my own eyes say they didn't have time to out and then take 3 minute rest breaks and look at their phone and I'm like oh my fucking God if you don't rest as long you can smush in more hypertrophy is it going to be more fatiguing yes but because you train three days a week workout fatigue is not a problem you experience in your life not in the cumulative way

right so it's a good idea to try to contract your rest periods a little bit assuring that the local stimulus is still really good and really trying to figure out ways to push in more volume because more volume is probably one of the most reliable turn dials we have for more hypertrophy if someone says I want to get my intensity higher will that help me grow the answer is like probably unless you're already really intense and that it could be worse because you're getting too psychotic someone's like should I get stronger definitely strength is a

good measurement of hopy over the long term short term the best way to get stronger is to drop your volume and have a a preparedness increase and that actually makes you less jacked but dialing Up the Volume over time is like that's the thing that really is the button you can push so just knowing that and then thinking how am I going to design my plan is probably good instead of thinking look I'm already at 18 sets of biceps for the week and someone's like well do you think 22 and they're like that'd be too

much man I don't want to overtrain and it's like how do you know how do you know and you can though because you just get weaker every week and your muscles feel all fucked up but if the answer is like no it doesn't feel like that then it's like well you should do more think about nobody wants to hear that shit I don't want to hear more many people think they will overt tray they don't really have an idea as to why they're not exactly looking at the performance objectively they just think if they go

above a certain amount they've heard thrown around yes they'll over Trin yes doesn't walk that way and it's unlikely to happen and also before you overtrain you overreach and before you overreach non-functionally you overreach functional and you'll notice it you'll notice if your whole life feels like it's coming down on you sore everywhere if you're weak you just take a de week and then you're back fresh and good and then you can look back at the volumes you hit in your last week and go that seems to be my local limit for a while let

me go a little lower than that and climb back up to that see if I can break it true overtraining takes weeks or months to occur sure overreaching takes can you can handle overreaching for a few weeks yes all it takes is a de lo so I think people are overly concerned about overtraining syndrome yeah it doesn't sneak up on you no uh and when it does hit you you'll know and you just will not feel about the gym the same way and then it's time to to cool it off that's it awesome dude amazing

super insightful as always where can people find you you can find me on YouTube at Wolf coaching and you can find me on Instagram at Wolf coach see you on YouTube and Instagram and see you guys next time