Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How Much Training Volume You REALLY Need to Build Muscle Over 40 | Ep 417

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How Much Training Volume You REALLY Need to Build Muscle Over 40 | Ep 417 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you are lifting weights but not seeing the muscle growth you expect, the problem might not be your effort.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: It could be your training volume.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: Too little volume and you're leaving gains on the table.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: Too much and you're just accumulating fatigue without the results.
• 0:14
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down the 12 rules of training volume that will help you find your sweet spot, especially if you're over 40 and want to build muscle efficiently without wasting time in the gym or risking burning out.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: Before we dive in, if you want personalized guidance on your training volume, recovery, and nutrition all in one place, check out my Fitness Lab app.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: It's like having a coach in your pocket who knows your schedule, your goals, your equipment, and your body.
• 0:41
  Philip Pape: And right now, through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at witsandweights.com slash app.
• 0:47
  Philip Pape: Now let's get into the 12 rules that will transform how you think about training volume.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: A replay from one of our most popular episodes this year.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: If you're hitting the gym consistently but still not seeing the muscle growth you want, you might be making one critical mistake with your training volume.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: Most lifters either do way too little to stimulate growth, or they pile on so much that they're just spinning their wheels and burning themselves out.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: Today we're gonna break down 12 evidence-based rules of training volume that separate the muscle builders from the muscle stragglers.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: You'll discover why your current approach to sets and reps might be holding you back in the one rule about proximity to failure that will transform every set from here on out.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: And today we're applying that systematic engineering thinking to one of the most misunderstood aspects of muscle building, and that is training volume.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: Volume, the V-word.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: You know, as engineers, as people who like to think through these things, we don't just throw more resources at a problem and hope that it works.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: We optimize, we find the minimum effective dose that produces the maximum results.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: And that is what we need to do with your training volume.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: Whether you're doing too little and wondering why you're not growing, or you're doing too much, wondering why you feel burned out, you're always tired, exhausted.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: Today's episode is gonna give you a framework to dial in your volume for your body, your goals, your lifestyle, and your training.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: Before we get into those 12 rules, I do want to share something pretty exciting that just happened recently.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: And that is that we just launched the new Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: And I'm happy to say it's at a far more accessible price point at just $27 per month.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: It was 87, it's now 27.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: We do have an 87 option for more direct access to our not one but two coaches in there, myself included.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: And this $27 price point now still gives you access to the complete course library, our private community, our training templates, and really so much more in there, monthly QAs, live calls, but without the pressure of weekly check-ins or constant cadences that some of our members were saying was just a little too much.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: This is for those of you who are looking to get support and get an education to know what to do and how to do it, with some kick in the butt along the way, but without it feeling like it's taking over your life.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: Because I know we're busy.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: And here's the best thing for podcast listeners.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: If you join by the end of July using the special link in the show notes, it's the only link that'll get you this.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: You'll get a custom nutrition plan from me, absolutely free.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: I think I just butchered my words.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: That's a custom nutrition plan, which is normally a $47 add-on, but I'm going to throw it in for free and create that for you when you use the special podcast listener link in the show notes.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: And that's the same plan that I create for my private clients, now available to you in the program.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: And I'm giving it to you free as a podcast user for early access to the new WWPU launching in August.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: So you've got to take advantage of that by the end of July.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: Go use a link in the show notes, and we're gonna help you build that physique and create the healthy lifestyle you want.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about training volume.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: But first, I want to give credit to where it is due because today's episode was inspired by an excellent and not surprisingly highly thorough, well-researched article called The New Approach to Training Volume by Greg Knuckles at Stronger by Science.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: Shout out to you, Greg.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Greg is one of the smartest minds in the strength and conditioning world.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna include a link to that article in the show notes because it's completely worth reading.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: And when I work with folks, when I work with clients, yes, I'm a nutrition coach, but training, strength training is a huge part of this.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: And I see the same patterns come up over and again.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: They come to me confused because they've tried this program, that program, high volume, low prog low uh low volume, maybe German volume training, I don't know.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: You know, the minimalist routines, everything.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: And nothing seems to be working for them or working consistently.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: And that's because I think there's some fundamental principles that govern how volume drives muscle growth.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: We talk about intensity a lot, about load, weight on the bar.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: There's definitely a almost dogmatic thinking around intensity versus volume in some circles.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: But I want to give volume the place that it deserves today.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: I want to treat volume like a training variable.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: That's all it is.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: It's a training variable.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: I don't want to treat it like that.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: It is that.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: And it produces a predictable output when you apply it correctly with the inputs, right?
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: It's not a mysterious art form.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: Yes, there seems to be some level of art, let's say, when it comes to lifting, but it really can be broken down into some principles that you can test and experiment with to see what works.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: So let's start with it.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: Rule number one volume is best measured in hard sets per muscle group.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: So right off the bat, I probably surprised you because you think of volume as total sets, period.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: But I think the most important concept here is how we measure volume.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: Most people think of it in terms of tonnage, sets times reps times load, or just pure sets, right?
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: But what really drives muscle growth, hypertrophy, is the number of hard sets performed per muscle group per week.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: And we know this, it's well established in the literature.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about training to failure, we're talking about training in some proximity to failure, regardless of whether you're doing five reps or 15 or 20 reps, whether you're using 135 pounds or 405 pounds.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: And this matters because tonnage, tonnage is not really super helpful because it can be inflated by submaximal work that doesn't actually produce the tension that you want for growth.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: But hard sets are objective, they actually standardize for effort.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: They standardize for effort.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: So when we talk about training hard and being close to failure within a few repshire of failure and getting that muscle tension, that is what drives the adaptation we're looking for.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: And you simply have to have enough of it per week, period.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: That's rule number one.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Very important rule.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: Rule number two proximity to failure then determines a set's effectiveness.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: So this is going to build on rule one.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: A set's growth stimulus depends on how close you get to failure.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: The final reps before failure are often referred to as effective reps.
• 7:34
  Philip Pape: And whether you believe that the reps before them are junk volume or not, all the reps are necessary to get to that point.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: And those reps toward the end create the most mechanical tension and motor unit recruitment, which is why they tend to be the ones giving you the most stimulus and thus quote unquote effective, not to minimize the other reps.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: But more and more research supports this idea.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: And we know this because of supersets, because of myOREPs, because of failure type training, et cetera.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: And the mechanism is that as you approach failure, your body is forced to recruit more high threshold motor units.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: And these are primarily fast twitch muscle fibers, and those have the greatest growth potential.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: And so the guideline here is pretty simple.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: Just train most of your sets to within one to two reps shy of failure.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna say for big compound lifts, it might be even three or four.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: If you're using an RPE scale, that's eight to ten.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: If you're using RIR, that's zero to two reps left in the tank.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: Again, bigger lifts can maybe get an extra rep shy from failure.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: But most of you are probably not even training in that regime anyway, even if you think you are.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: I'm just gonna be honest.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: And also, this doesn't mean that every single set has to be a grinder.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: Sometimes you have to grind, it happens, but it shouldn't be that way for the vast majority of your volume.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: It should just be highly challenging.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: So that's rule number two is proximity to failure, is what determines how effective a set is.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: Rule number three is that more volume equals more growth, but only to a point.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: There's a dose response relationship between volume and muscle growth.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: And like any good engineer will tell you, returns diminish past a certain point.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: Diminishing returns.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: It's a law of the universe for most things.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: If you do six sets per week for a muscle group, it's gonna be better than three, but 20 isn't necessarily much better than 15.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: It might be a tiny bit better, but not much.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: And then at some point, 20 or 25 or 30 sets might be worse for you because of the overall fatigue for the week and the lack of recovery.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: The research shows us that hypertrophy plateaus or regresses when volumes get too high, right?
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: 25 to 30 plus sets per week for a single muscle group is to put a number on it.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: And then you're creating, again, more fatigue than you can recover from.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: So the practical takeaway is push volume gradually, see how you respond, monetary recovery.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: You might be a hyperresponder, a lower responder.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: You might need more or less, right?
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: On average, women need more volume than men.
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: You're gonna need more volume when you're well fed and well nourished than when you're in a fat loss phase, right?
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: So it's gonna be contextual.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: And more, again, is not always better, especially if it means you can't recover between sessions.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: Rule number four, most lifters thrive on 10 to 25 hard sets per muscle per week.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: Now that's a big range.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: And what I usually, if I go on a podcast and somebody asks for, I'll usually say like 10 to 15, because for the average person with the average busy lifestyle, going four days to the gym, it's it's perfectly solid, optimal place to be, or practically optimal place to be, I should say.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: But the sweet spot is really broad, 10 to 25 sets.
• 10:42
  Philip Pape: And where you fall in that range is gonna depend on your training age, on your ability to recover, and again, your individual responsiveness.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: So if you're a beginner, just start with 10 to 15.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: If you're intermediate, you might need 15 to 20.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: If you're advanced, you might need even more than that, but it's gonna depend on the lift and your recovery and all that, right?
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: And if you spread the volume over multiple sessions per muscle group, so you have maybe upper, lower, upper, lower is a classic split, a four-day split, where you're hitting your biceps and your shoulders and your chest and your back a couple times a week, directly and indirectly, you're gonna get probably better growth because of the frequency and then less fatigue because of the rotation and splitting it up compared to trying to cram it all into one brutal session or just a few sessions.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: Rule number five the rep range doesn't really matter for hypertrophy, but your effort does.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: And this might be surprising, right?
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: But I've seen and I've worked like with my coach Andy Baker, he's a genius at this stuff.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: He will throw in there into his programming, especially the bodybuilding style, tons of different rep ranges.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: And it almost doesn't seem to make any rhyme or reason until you go a level deep and you look at some of the other training variables, like the order of the lifts and whether it's a big compound lift or not, et cetera.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: But here's the thing as long as sets are taken with proximity to failure, and again, not total failure, please don't consider this failure training.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: That is not what I'm saying.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: In fact, that could be a terrible idea to take everything to failure.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: We don't want to do that.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: And there are plenty of people walking around jacked, strong, you know, with great muscle development, that always train several reps away from failure and not to failure.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: So please.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: But as long as you do that, muscle growth is going to occur across a wide range of reps.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: And it kind of makes sense based on what we talked about before.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: Whether it's five reps or 30 reps, it's getting that tension, right?
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: Getting that fight motor fight, motor fiber recruitment.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: Research from Schoenfeld, great guy, I like to reference all the time, shows that hypertrophy is pretty much the same whether it's low rep doing three to five reps or high rep doing 25 to 35 when both groups trained close to failure.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: And so a practical way to do this is use lower reps for compound movements, higher reps for isolation work, and it balances fatigue management with things like joint stress and systemic stress, systemic fatigue, central nervous system fatigue.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: So the rep range isn't as important as we think, guys.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: That's my point.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: But the effort's really important.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: Rule number six strength gains are load specific.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, so now if you're this is this is giving you a little bit of a break in the last rule in that if your goal includes building maximal strength, not just muscle size, you have to understand that strength gains are load specific.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: If you want to build maximal strength, you have to lift heavy loads, probably in the one to six rep range.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Referring to my episode strength versus hypertrophy, we talked about roughly 65% of your max and higher gets you into that strength regime, which then by definition gets you into these lower reps.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: And that's going to improve your neurological or neuromuscular adaptation, which is like the coordination between and within your muscles that connects to your nervous system and your brain, and your movement patterns.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: So if you're focused on both hypertrophy and strength, you're you're going to want to have a mix of the two.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: And that's why I like methods like top set back off, where you start with a heavy set in, say, four to six, and then you drop the weight 10%, maybe, and then you go, you know, eight to 10.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: And that's where you then accumulate volume.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: Um, I ran, I've run several programs that were set-based, that were volume-based, that did a great job of going sub-maximal to accumulate the volume, and then going heavy to push up the numbers and the strength peak, right?
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: And that's this philosophy.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: All right, so just a quick break here.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: We're talking about programming a lot.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: We're talking about strategically thinking about how you lift.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: We're talking about principles.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: This is what we teach inside physique university.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: And that's why I think it's so important.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: We get into the nitty-gritty of each of these separately in chunks that are easy to digest and think about.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: And the new tier I just talked about at 27 a month is going to give you access to not only the training templates that apply these principles, but the whole course library that breaks down the science behind these decisions.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: And of course, access to me and our other coach and the community.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: And remember that podcast listeners get a custom nutrition plan free if you join by the end of July.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Please take advantage of this.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: It'd be silly not to at the new low price and getting that for free.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: Use the link in the show notes.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: People pay a lot more for this stuff, and you're getting it as part of a community because I want it to be accessible and affordable.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: So check that out.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: Wits and weights physique university, 27 a month, free nutrition plan.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: If you use the link in the show notes, all right, let's get to rule number seven, which is to periodize volume over time for long-term gains.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: So you want to periodize your volume.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: Ah, well, we've heard of periodization before.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: We talk about that in the nutrition context.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: But when it comes to muscle building, it's not going to be a line.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: It's not going to be a straight line.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: You're not going to just grow linearly and, you know, pack on two pounds of muscle a week, a month forever.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: Well, a week would be nice, a month forever.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: And then training shouldn't be linear either.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: Once you get past the novice linear progression, which even itself isn't always perfectly quote unquote linear, right?
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Because the load doesn't necessarily go up the same from session to session.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: Your tolerance for volume is going to improve with time.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: The more you practice the movement patterns, the more tolerance you're going to have.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: So your body's going to change into a different beast than it was in how you handle volume and how it benefits you.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: And so cycling between higher and lower volume blocks is going to enhance your adaptation and prevent your burnout.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: I do this myself.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: I go between an undulating, periodized, set-based program where I'm packing on lots and lots of submaximal volume, and then I'll switch over to a very minimalist kind of strength program and everything in between, you know, hypertrophy blocks, et cetera.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: So this would be like if you did six weeks at a pretty high volume, you know, 18, 20 sets a week.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: And then you switch to what did I say, six weeks or eight weeks at much lower reps, much lower volume, but you're going heavy.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: And then you're pushing the numbers.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: And this is going to alternate between the strain you put on your joints, the fatigue you feel physically, mentally, allows your body to adapt properly.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: I was going to say supercompensate, but that word is very loaded today.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: So I'm not going to use that word.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: But you can adapt and hit weak spots, improve movement patterns, improve hypertrophy, improve strength, improve all of it.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: Rule number eight: your recovery capacity is going to determine your volume ceiling.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: This is super important.
• 17:21
  Philip Pape: This is where the engineering piece comes in you've got to figure this out through testing and measuring.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: Volume is only productive if you can recover from it.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: And your ceiling depends on your resource stack, your metabolic stack.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: What is that?
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: That's sleep, that's nutrition, that's carbs, that's your stress level.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: Yes, even your age, yes, even your training history, your injury history, et cetera.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: All of that stuff stacked on top of each other is your recovery capacity, even your genetics, even your gender.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: Because again, I said before, on average, women tend to recover better than men and need more volume.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: In this context, not everything, because women do other, tend to do other things like too much cardio, et cetera.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna get into that.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: I want you to watch for the warning signs of what we call overreaching.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, none of you have to worry about overtraining.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: It's just not gonna happen.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: But overreaching, this is where you have soreness that's persistent, it doesn't go away.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: This is the poor sleep.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: You'll you never feel like you can get enough.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: This is where you don't feel motivated, right?
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: So mentally you're not there.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: Your regression, your performance regresses, okay?
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: And if you see any of these signs, your volume has exceeded your recovery capacity.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: And of course, it's gonna get exacerbated when you are depriving yourself of calories.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: And maybe you're doing it on purpose in a fat loss phase, or maybe you're doing it because you're not quite confident yet in how to eat and how much to eat, or you don't know what your metabolism is, and so you're under-eating without realizing it.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Even if you're not losing weight, you still could be under-eating.
• 18:49
  Philip Pape: So, what you want to do here is pick a baseline that's reasonable and then increase your volume gradually and assess your recovery.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: Measure your biofeedback, measure your energy, your recovery.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: You could just use a one to 10 scale and say, what am I this week?
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: Am I a three?
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: Am I a seven?
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: Am I a six?
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: And correlate it with the other things you're doing and your whole metabolic, your stress stack, your sleep, your nutrition, your stress, your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: You can use RPE tracking if you want.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: You can use other biohacking metrics or biometrics like HRV, you know, if you have an aura ring.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: You could just use subjective scores like we talked about with the biofeedback.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: Really up to you.
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: In physique university, we have what's called a biofeedback and physique tracker, and it has a bunch of these laid out for you with a drop-down for scores, and it's lined up with your measurements.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: So you can kind of track week after week how these are trending against all the other things, and then voila, you understand your recovery capacity.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: All right, rule number nine out of 12 junk volume sabotages progress.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Now, I was hesitant to even use this word or this phrase, but I'm gonna define.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Define it.
• 20:00
  Philip Pape: And I think in this definition, it is a real thing.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: And that is sets that are too easy, sets that are too far from failure, or sets that are poorly executed, that all they're doing to you is they're adding fatigue without giving you the benefit of the adaptation.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: Notice that I said sets.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: I didn't say reps because I don't believe there's junk reps.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: I think even if you're doing 20 reps, the first 10 reps aren't junk.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: There's a benefit to those.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: Whole different topic for another day.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about sets.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: If you do a set that is just too easy, and I'm talking far submaximal or nowhere close to failure, and unless that was your intent for some other reason, other training variable like speed work, for example, it's not going to give you a benefit, right?
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: If a set is poorly executed, even if it feels hard, it's not going to give you benefit because you're probably compensating or you're going to twinge or tweak something, you're going to injure yourself, you're not going to get the direct benefit you're going for, right?
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: And that's a problem too.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: And that could even come from loading up too heavy, like beyond what you could actually handle right now and ego lifting.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Every set should have a purpose, right?
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Get rid of those filler sets that aren't doing it for you.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: If you're doing, if your program calls for four sets and three of those sets are junk, you're probably better off with two really hard sets or a hard top set and a hard back off set.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: In fact, I like it for that reason for many people.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: It saves time and it gives you the mental fortitude to push toward failure because you know it's only two sets and it's two different weights.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: It's a great strategy, guys, if you want to try it.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: And remember the warm-up sets, that is just for preparation and warming up.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: That doesn't that's not for accumulating the volume.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: The volume comes to the working sets.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: All right, rule number 10 is that compound lifts demand fewer sets and isolation work.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: This should go by definition by definition, but let me explain what I mean.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: Compound movements that use multiple joints recruit multiple muscle groups, they generate higher systemic fatigue.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: They require thus fewer sets per muscle group to be effective, period.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Three sets of barbell squats are gonna sufficiently stimulate quads, glutes, hamstrings, but you're probably gonna need maybe four, five, six sets of bicep curls or leg extensions to create the same growth stimulus because the isolation movements create lower systemic fatigue and of course are just hitting those muscle groups.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: So don't go crazy with your sets for your big lifts, is all I'm saying, especially something like a deadlift.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: You know, sometimes one set could be enough, one or two sets.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: It depends on, depends on your goals, depends on the rep range, et cetera.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: Rule number 11, I want you to track progress, not just volume, because volume is just it's a variable and it's a tool.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: And honestly, I don't even track it per se.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: I guess the way I would put it is that a program should be written inherently to add sets or add volume if that's the point, but then it's written in for you.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: You're not like winging it and saying, oh, maybe I'm gonna add another set today and I'm gonna progress in sets.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: It's not like that.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: I think reps are a little more on the fly, load is a little more on the fly.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Although, again, you still want to be intentional about thinking, what did I do last time?
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: What's my capability now?
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: How am I feeling in my warm-up?
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: You know, what should I be able to uh express today?
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: But volume is more fixed into the program, if that makes sense.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: If anybody disagrees, let me know.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: I've never understood anyone who, not understood, I've never heard of anybody who says, I think I'm just gonna add extra sets today.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: Okay, now I actually take that back a little bit because for isolation work, you might have in your program, you know, do anywhere from four to six sets of these bicep curls.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: And then it's kind of a choice, right?
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: But even then, I would recommend picking one and sticking with it as you progress for the next block, right?
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Like if it's four to six in your program, go it, pick one, like five, and do five every time.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: This is in contrast to a set progression-based program that says, okay, we're gonna go three sets and four sets and five sets, then we're gonna reset at a higher load and go three sets and four sets and five sets.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: That's different.
• 24:08
  Philip Pape: So, yes, you should probably limit adjusting one variable at a time, and that's usually load or reps.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: It could be both.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: It's rarely, I'm going to say, volume, but you will adjust volume over longer blocks of time.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: And you will also be trying to get better at doing hard sets.
• 24:29
  Philip Pape: That can definitely, I'll say, progress.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: And when you move to a new movement, let's say six weeks later, you rotate out of movement.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: It is not uncommon that that first session, you're not quite optimal.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: And so you're gonna become more efficient the next few sessions.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: That makes sense.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: All right, rule number 12, the last rule for today is that volume is individual.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: You have to experiment and adjust.
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: There is no one size fits all number for volume.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: There just isn't.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: I don't care.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: Look at all the research, and it's all over the place.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: Genetics, muscle fiber type, lifestyle, stress, food, all the things we talked about influence your volume tolerance and needs, and your own volume ability will change with your training age, with how you've trained, with your fatigue, et cetera.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: Fat loss, muscle building in terms of your diet.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: So start with the guidelines I give you today and then tweak it and test it.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to figure out what volume works for you and you have a range like we talked about, if there's a four to six, start at four.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Start at four and then do that a couple weeks.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: Then go to five, see how that makes you feel, then potentially go to six, right?
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: And see where it goes.
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: You know, if if I don't know, if you get a better pump, if the soreness is manageable, if your lifts progress, you feel like you're in the sweet spot, great.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: That's where we're trying to get to.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: Now there's a really cool concept in the research called volume landmarks.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: Not sure if you've heard of this.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: And research suggests that there are three of these: your minimum effective volume, your maximum adaptive volume, and your maximum recoverable volume.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: And this is a more advanced thing.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: I'm just going to touch on it real quickly, but this has to do with periodizing your training.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: Your minimum effective volume is the smallest amount that produces growth.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: Your maximum adaptive volume is that sweet spot where you get the best gains, right?
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: So it's not, it's a higher volume than your minimum, and it gives you the most gains, but then your maximum recoverable volume is the upper limit before you start going backward.
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: So the magic here happens when you can identify those landmarks for you.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: So it's really just the range and the sweet spot in the middle, right?
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: What's the lowest, what's the highest, what's the sweet spot in the middle?
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: And then you can push up toward that maximum to get even more gains, but with diminishing returns if you have a high recoverability.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: Conversely, if you have a low recoverability, you might need to get closer to your minimum effective volume, like for example, a fat loss phase.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: It's pretty cool when you can kind of identify that and intuitively feel it out over time.
• 26:49
  Philip Pape: So training volume, I don't think it has to be this mysterious, complicated thing that requires years of trial and error and being a master programmer to figure it out.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: I think your body's gonna tell you what's going on.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: And I think you just can't jump all over the place.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: You have to be systemic and take your time and be patient, stick with one thing for a while, document what's going on, change a variable, try it again, you know, whether it's your frequency or the volume, and just be an engineer about it.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: You have inputs, you have outputs, you have feedback mechanisms, use them systematically, and you're gonna be good.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: You're gonna be good.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: But if you need help, that's what other people are for.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 27:22
  Philip Pape: Having people to lean on to get form checks to talk about programming accelerates your results.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: So definitely join us in the new Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: Again, just 27 per month.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: That's a steal.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: Um, you get access to training templates, the principles, lifting lessons.
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: You get all the stuff on nutrition, our whole course library.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there, guys.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: I don't even want to over overwhelm you, but there are courses on macros, on metabolism, on calories, on menopause, on mindset.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: I'm working on a couple courses on how to use AI and how to set up your nutrition phases.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: There's just more and more coming in with lots of great people in there, super smart, trying to help each other out.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: And don't forget that you as a podcast listener get an exclusive bonus today of a custom nutrition plan absolutely free instead of paying the add-on.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: If you join by the end of July and use the special link in the show notes.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: If you want to stop guessing, if you want to get clarity on all this stuff, join us.
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: We'll help you out.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your weights.
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: Actually, keep using your wits, lifting your weights.
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: And remember that volume without intelligence is fatigue.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: But volume with the 12 rules I talked about today is how you get some serious muscle growth.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.