Is a champion the one who does the most?

Unfortunately, generally not.

Why?

1) A genetic predisposition to do the same amount of work, if not less, for the same or even

greater gain.

2) More does not always mean better.

Champions do what they must.

“Volume”, is a term grossly used to describe the amount of training you’re doing. This is typically

measured in the number of sets per week, or volume load (sets x reps x weight). When it comes

to resistance training, intensity, relative intensity, and volume are the key variables in designing

an effective training program.

How much training should you do? That’s a very tricky question. Of course anything is better

than nothing, but to get a specific answer we must look at factors including health status,

training age, and genetics, among others.

For the most part, when it comes to building muscle we can actually say that more is actually

better… to a point.

Dosing training workload and efficacy presents an inverted U-shaped curve, where we see an

increase in the number of sets per week provide an increase in the desired fitness adaptation…

to a point. In resistance training there exists certain dynamic volume thresholds, including:

● Maintenance volume, the amount of work required to maintain current fitness levels and

avoid atrophy.

● Minimum effective volume, the least amount of work required to cause the desired

fitness adaptation.

● Maximum adaptive volume, the most amount of work you can do with proportional

fitness adaptations.

● Maximum recoverable volume, the most amount of work you can do whilst returning to

previous performance levels in a specified timeframe.

We can posit that ideal training exists somewhere between minimum effective and maximum

adaptive volume, the specific number of sets/ volume load varying person to person, and over

the course of an individual’s training career.

So what is “junk volume”?

Junk volume can be thought of as training volume that does not add to your adaptive potential.

For argument’s sake, I put it into two categories:

1) Doing too much

For the overwhelming majority of trainees, training past your maximum recoverable volume is a

total waste of time and energy.

Building muscle requires appropriate training and fueling for a long period of time, many years.

Training in a way that exceeds your current adaptive potential is a short sighted attempt to see

progress fast. In reality you are likely limiting your block duration, and medium to long term

adaptive potential due to an accumulation of fatigue and the accompanying drop in motivation.

As I alluded to earlier, volume thresholds are dynamic (they shift based on your current

readiness, which is heavily influenced by factors inside and outside of our control like food,

sleep, and stress), so finding your exact MAV is very difficult, if not impossible. What I

recommend is to standardise the quality of your sets and reps, and start a training block with a

manageable amount of sets per muscle group, whilst monitoring your performance and

recovery. All going well you can add volume and intensity dropwise, and reap the ensuing

rewards!

*Quick caveat*

How do you know you’re progressing? Muscle building is so slow, you’re unlikely to see visible

results in the first few weeks/ months. Since high tech imaging techniques are quite expensive

and difficult to access, we can look at several imperfect proxies for muscle growth. This includes

the amount of weight we’re using, the number of sets we can perform, our recoverability, body

weight increase, and how we look. Accompanied by appropriate nutrition, if all of these metrics

are improving, we should be building muscle.

2) Low quality work

The second kind of junk volume I always see is poor quality training.

In strength training, the goal is to move as much weight as possible within whatever arbitrary

standard you place on the movement. If you compete in a strength sport, your movement

guidelines are determined by the competition/ federation. Quality of movement depends on the

constraint. When you’re looking to build muscle however, the quality of movement depends on

the degree of tension that the target muscle is subjected to. Because of this, we have to be a

little bit more stringent with how the exercise is performed.

Junk volume can present itself in very poor quality sets that do not subject the target muscle to

a significant degree of mechanical tension. This may be because of poor range of motion

(ROM), low relative intensity, and/ or poor technique. Now it’s rare to perform an exercise so

poorly that it does not contribute to muscle growth in any way, but performing low quality sets

can seriously hinder your long term progress and cause you to unnecessarily increase your

training stress to accommodate for the poor stimulus. Advanced trainees in particular will need

to minimise the amount of poor quality sets performed, as gains become harder and harder to

come by.

Similar to my previous recommendation, the aim is to standardise your reps with appropriate

tempo, technique, weight, relative intensity, and range of motion. Movement selection is also a

key consideration: start off with a movement you enjoy, and that follows the function of the

target muscle. From here, you will likely find that a much smaller number of sets provides you

with an equal or greater stimulus. Once the quality of your sets is standardised, you can start to

figure out how much is right for you.