13 Dec Volume and Intensity……
Today’s blog post is by one of our newest Featured Coaches…..James Ward. Here James, discusses the importance of both volume and intensity when it comes to your training, which as we all know goes hand in hand with tracking your nutrition through FlexFood.
Since the days of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Pumping Iron era, training volume (amount of reps and sets) is known to be a key element of hypertrophy.
We know it’s important to have a ‘minimum’ amount that we train a given muscle group, but how much can vary from person to person. Dr Mike Israetel, a PHD in Sport Physiology and practicing bodybuilder, has coined the term MRV (Maximum Recoverable Volume), which refers to the maximum amount you can train a muscle group and still recover from.
To figure out your own MRV, it’s important to understand your training intensity. This refers to the amount of effort you exert through training.
Example; – If your 4th set of 10 reps is the same weight as your first set, it’s safe to say you could be working a little harder….
Training intensity can be measure in a variety of ways but to keep it simple we will look at 2- Progressive overload and metabolic stress.
Progressive overload is a method of progressing your lifts by either increasing the weight used or pushing out more reps at the same weight.
I use progressive overload on loading sets where I select 2-3 main exercises. These are the big compound exercises such as bench press or squats etc. I monitor my progress using a training logbook (more on that in future) and aim to use a weight that allows me to fail on the last rep. It’s extremely important that you maintain your form and focus on the muscle you are trying to work.
Metabolic stress can be known as pump sets. This is where I aim to fatigue the muscle as much as possible. Using 2-3 more isolated exercises with intensifiers such as drop sets, rest pause, cluster sets etc. The aim is to pump as much blood into the muscle as possible by maintaining constant tension throughout and really focusing on the muscle you are using.
You’ll realize quickly that you don’t need to be doing a huge amount of sets per workout to hit muscular failure.
Once you establish your training intensity, you can figure out your training volume, you might find that you can’t do more than 2-3 sets per exercise!
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