Help with training volume guidelines

[Jankauskas]

So I had been following Mike Israetels training volume guidelines, and I found myself hitting a state of overtraining.

Obviously I was doing too much, I found it difficult to understand how to measure the work that smaller muscle groups get from training the bigger muscle groups, and how to factor that into my training regime.

What are the guidelines that you go by

 

[mr_meanor]

Seth Feroce has a decent YouTube video on this subject

 

[Jankauskas]

Seth Feroce has a decent YouTube video on this subject

I missed the part where he talked about guidelines for training volume

 

[mr_meanor]

I missed the part where he talked about guidelines for training volume

Training volume... overtraining ....

Volume is static to the individual and goals. Volume would he as hard as you fucking can without overtraining or goal specific. Only you can research and answer this question for yourself.

 

[Xlgx]

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[Xlgx]

 

[LeoTC]

It's all about individual work capacity. The more you do over a longer period, the better you'll adapt over time.

Just dial overall volume back 10-15% and then crank it back up in two three months. Keep overreaching and stepping back and eventually you'll find your sweet spot.

 

[Eman]

So I had been following Mike Israetels training volume guidelines, and I found myself hitting a state of overtraining.

Obviously I was doing too much, I found it difficult to understand how to measure the work that smaller muscle groups get from training the bigger muscle groups, and how to factor that into my training regime.

What are the guidelines that you go by

I think typically if you stick to a happy medium between min recoverable volume and max recoverable volume you'll be fine.

For instance, if you do squats and other lifts that require you to significantly brace your core... You'd be fine to stick to the lower end of the recoverable volume for abs. If you do a lot of pulling movements, biceps can be on the lower end also. If you don't do a ton of pushing movements, push towards the upper end of recoverable volume for triceps.

With that said, part of the idea is that you start low and move up the RV scale and then deload. That's pretty much what the RP system is based on... Although I always found working off of 1rm max for bicep curls to be a little unusual.

 

[Jankauskas]

I think typically if you stick to a happy medium between min recoverable volume and max recoverable volume you'll be fine.

For instance, if you do squats and other lifts that require you to significantly brace your core... You'd be fine to stick to the lower end of the recoverable volume for abs. If you do a lot of pulling movements, biceps can be on the lower end also. If you don't do a ton of pushing movements, push towards the upper end of recoverable volume for triceps.

With that said, part of the idea is that you start low and move up the RV scale and then deload. That's pretty much what the RP system is based on... Although I always found working off of 1rm max for bicep curls to be a little unusual.

What you are saying (and the logic behind the system) makes sense, I actually don’t even train abs, as it makes virtually no difference.

However the problem is when it comes down to lagging body parts, or body parts that you want to prioritize.

I wanted to bring up arms, shoulders and traps so, for example, I did 20 sets of biceps and 16 for triceps, as stated In the Mav chart.

However, that ended up being too much total volume for the week, paired with the extra shoulder and trap work that I added to my split, I feel a lot of volume became junk volume.

I don’t know if maybe I misinterpreted it, but you just can’t work at MAV for all muscle groups at the same time.

I considerably dropped leg volume and also abs as I said before to make up for space for the weakness I wanted to bring up, but it wasn’t enough.

 

[CJames]

Your body will adapt to the new volume, do many reps as you can with moderate weight. Overtraining is bullshit.

 

[Jankauskas]

Your body will adapt to the new volume, do many reps as you can with moderate weight. Overtraining is bullshit.

Start training 6 hours a day and check back in a couple weeks

 

[Eman]

However, that ended up being too much total volume for the week, paired with the extra shoulder and trap work that I added to my split, I feel a lot of volume became junk volume

How do you know it was too much?

The RV scale takes some of what you're talking about into account. Just like you said with abs, the minimum effective volume of ab work is zero. The max is, I think, 20. As far as I know, abs are the only muscle group that have zero min RV.. that's because they are used so frequently in other lifts.

For lagging body parts, I like Meadows' approach. 3-4 weeks of high frequency, spread the volume out.

 

[Jankauskas]

How do you know it was too much?

The RV scale takes some of what you're talking about into account. Just like you said with abs, the minimum effective volume of ab work is zero. The max is, I think, 20. As far as I know, abs are the only muscle group that have zero min RV.. that's because they are used so frequently in other lifts.

For lagging body parts, I like Meadows' approach. 3-4 weeks of high frequency, spread the volume out.

It was too much because I started dragging ass in and outside of the gym.

What I could do is MV for the muscles that I don’t feel need a lot of attention and do the max MAV for those that I want to bring up.

Meadows approach I also considered, doing an arm block for 4 weeks, then a back block for another 4, etc...

 

[weighted chinup]

When trying to assess your maximum recoverable volume you need to consider systemic fatigue together with localized muscle recovery. If your maximum recoverable volume for Chest is 20 sets per week and you are hitting those 20 sets using 20 RPE 9 sets all from heavy pressing movements, you're going to accumulate way more systemic fatigue than if, for example only half of those sets were RPE 9-10 and you used a good amount of isolation and low-fatiguing movements instead of using exclusively big movements.

It's also hard to prevent the volume from turning into junk when training close to your maximum recoverable volume. The way I avoided this when I trained that way was with 2x a day sessions.

Here's the dirty secret about training on gear vs natural: a drug-free lifter will have to progressively increase their total volume to make progress in the advanced stages, adding volume every year until they are doing quite a bit of work.

You don't necessarily have to do this as an enhanced lifter, at least not to the same degree. It's important to be pragmatic when it comes to muscle building because the process is hard enough - if you don't have to do something to grow, don't. In this case, I really wouldn't recommend an enhanced lifter to be aggressive with progressively increasing volume the same way a drug free lifter would (a truly advanced drug free lifter can easily get to a point where they are doing a disgusting amount of weekly volume, hence why a lot of evidence-based programs take a dual factor approach or use planned deloads).

As someone who wrote a program that used planned deloads and a lot of guys had good results with, I can safely say there are better ways to do things as enhanced lifters, and there is no shame in taking advantage of that.

 

[weighted chinup]

I also believe training close to your maximum recoverable volume for long enough almost certainly requires taking a 2-factor approach to recovery (planned deloads, reduction in volume, changing shit in your meso-cycle to recover/dissipate fatigue or structuring the start of your next block so it does this at the beginning).

My point is, if you can continue to grow without having to complicate training with these variables, then don't implement them. Let the truly advanced level drug-free lifters worry about it, all 6 of them out there .

 

[weighted chinup]

Here is how I handled scaling volume when I used that approach though:

• Training based around 4 week mesocycles
• Each mesocycle changes primary rep-range on compound movements
• Each mesocycle changes lift selection in an intelligent manner to recover from mico-tears and other shit, changing angles etc
• Week 1 starts at minimum effective volume
• Each week increases weekly volume until volume is close to Maximum Recoverable Volume by week 4 but not quite touching it
• Start new mesocycle
• Repeat

You can check out my old training log I was running before my competition plans got exploded due to real life horseshit and getting sick and see what the individual sessions looked like.

My only concern, I was recovering just fine but I was doing 2 a days. If those sessions were smashed into one, might be a lot of junk volume.

It sounds like this approach to handling volume isn't proving to be very enjoyable for you. For that reason, I would recommend a different approach. Volume is just 1 variable and while it's important it's not the sole basis of a good program, so it shouldn't be responsible for sinking an entire program or making your training life shitty.

In the case of lagging muscle groups, people are quick to rush to volume and frequency but before doing that I would absolutely assess lift selection - make sure your lift selection and how you are executing movements is the absolute best it can be for your individual kinematics. Once you are 100% certain you have this aspect nailed down, then you can ramp up the other variables. Most would be surprised that when this first step is done properly, you may not even need to up the volume or frequency.

 

[weighted chinup]

I would suggest scrapping your current method of handling volume. If your goal is to bring up a lagging muscle group, try a different approach. Plan the "base days" for your next 12 weeks of training using your preferred frequency, lift selection, rep ranges, etc, but be dynamic with weekly volume based on how you are handling recovery - scale up and down as needed but give yourself ample time to adapt to the workload - you can do likewise with added frequency as well.

Call it a form of auto-regulation. Have optional added frequency days that you can hit on rest days when recovery is on point, or you can handle it by increasing intensity, or by adjusting the volume. Use your individual recovery and how you are feeling to assess/change.

This is actually a form of periodization called flexible non-linear periodization and it has shown to be superior to a linear approach in some studies. I would just adjust things in the context of a week rather than individual days.

Keep it simple and give yourself more time to focus on the lagging muscle group rather than 4 week mesocycles where the tendency is to overreach. Better ways to do things when AAS are a variable.

Sorry about the rambling/split up posts, my only take away I guess is training should be fun and kept simple for as long as possible.

 

[Jankauskas]

@weighted chinup thanks for your input as always, I’m going to take my time to read everything and then plan my next steps

 

[movingiron88]

Some good shitbright there @weighted chinup I really appreciate you taking the time to answer and using your knowledge to help other members.