More is more - Just how far from failure "volitional failure" really is?
strengtheory.com/more-is-more/
strengtheory.comPosted Oct 27, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC
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strengtheory.comI don't think the 8 set to failure 2x per week protocol would be sustainable for an average trainee.
Learning research shows that task variation has a huge impact on skill acquisition rate. Rather than just doing more squats, you are probably better off adding split squats, front squats, squats against bands, good mornings, leg press or some deficit trap bar deadlifts to the mix (depending on weak points).
While I agree that often times doing more can be the answer to restarting stuck progression, people are liable to over-simplify the message of the article to "more = better". I think the minimum effective dose perspective is much better for a lifter's overall well-being and sustained progress than the max "recoverable" volume approach.
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I disagree, I think anyone can build up a work capacity capable of handling that kind of volume.
I also disagree with you on the idea of variation. Specificity has always been much better for my progression than lots of variation.
Lastly I disagree with you about minimalistic approaches being superior. I strongly believe that doing more work, if you are able, is better, and that the minimalist ideals that many people seem to have taken a liking to lately is really holding a lot of new lifters back.
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I disagree, I think anyone can build up a work capacity capable of handling that kind of volume.
Remember that strength increases tend to outpace work capacity increases. Additionally, high intensity training does damage to the body irrespective of work capacity. The people who do a ton of work (pro bodybuilders) have recovery aids, and even then, the bulk of their work is in higher rep ranges that are more forgiving.
I also disagree with you on the idea of variation. Specificity has always been much better for my progression than lots of variation.
The learning research is very clear on variation being significantly better than specificity on average. You might make better progress with extreme specificity, but the bulk of people studied are not like you.
Lastly I disagree with you about minimalistic approaches being superior. I strongly believe that doing more work, if you are able, is better, and that the minimalist ideals that many people seem to have taken a liking to lately is really holding a lot of new lifters back.
I've been in the lifting game a long time. In my experience, getting strong isn't the hard part, the challenge is avoiding injury while progressing. Injuries can easily erase a year of progress in the blink of an eye. Maximum recoverable volume is a mistake because your results from doing additional volume suffer from diminishing returns, but your risk for injury actually increases faster as you do more work. As a result, the risk/reward ratio for work beyond the minimum effective dose explodes very quickly. The only case where I would advise people to push their volume is for a very short period immediately before a big, important meet.
Also, note that it is the minimum effective dose. Thus, I'm assuming people are doing enough to maintain a reasonable rate of progression. If you were plateau'd due to insufficient work, you wouldn't call it an effective dose, would you?
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Hmmm, very interesting.
So when you do the minimum required to progress, how do you know if it is TOO little, or enough? I feel like that would be a fine line that could be very hard to judge for most people
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My perspective is if I'm progressing at the rate where I'm pretty confident that I'm going to set a PR going into the gym, but there is just a tiny bit of anxiety about it, I'm in the sweet spot. I don't stress too much about the magnitude of the PR, continual progress will get you to a very high level pretty quickly regardless (5 pounds a week is 260 pounds a year, after all). If I stop making PRs, I assess the situation and try to determine whether the result is a specific weak point, lack of sufficient stimulus for adaptation, technique issue, etc, and address. I can usually tell within 2-3 weeks if my fix is working, if not I try something else until things start progressing again.
This formula has gotten me to deadlifting 600lbs for reps. On the other hand, being greedy and trying to push my bench as fast as possible got me nerve damage.
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They had a pretty sensible guideline in place to stop the sets - as soon as rest time at lockout exceeded a few seconds, done. That takes care of autoregulation really quickly.
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I know there probably isn't a universal answer, but what would you say the minimum effecctive dose is, taking squats as an example if you like?
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I would have to make a guess as to a reasonable conservative rate of progress for the person I was coaching based on their morphology, current level of strength, technique, etc. From there I would start someone on a low volume program tailored to their specific needs. For someone with average technique and build, maybe squat twice a week, one day a single set high rep set to failure with rest pause, ala 20 rep squats, with the other day being 4-5 sets of triples pyramiding up, starting from 70-75% and ending up at 80-85% depending on how stable their technique was under load. I'd probably use a combination of progress on the high rep squats, along with a ~5 RM PR attempt every 2-4 weeks (depending on experience level) to gauge progress. Depending on how the PR attempt set looked and the lifter's general feelings of fatigue I would determine if more volume was called for, weak points needed to be addressed, etc.
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Would you recommend a similar strategy for the other two major (i.e. bench and deadlift) lifts? That is one day of a single set of high rep to failure and a second pyramiding up over 4-5 sets to 80-85% 1 RM?
Based on other things you have written/linked to, on the pyramiding days you would want to wait 10 minutes in between working sets and incorporate 1-2 very different accessory exercises into the wait period in order to reset skill acquisition rate. Is that correct?
Thanks for elucidating this strategy and forwarding the conception of building strength as that of acquiring a learned skill.
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Yeah, I think one day where you groove technique, and one day where you get practice struggling to move the weight is a good baseline, in terms of minimum effective dose.
You've got it. I would say if you want to get the most bang for your buck, the 10 minute guideline would be a good one. If you're pressed for time, I would at least try to get 5 minutes between sets. Doing assistance exercises for a different movement in the downtime is a good way to keep things moving.
I hope you see great results!
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Here's the study. I know this has been posted before, however I have a question. How could the total number of reps in the 8 set group average 7 if each set at 80% was taken to volitional failure? Shouldn't you observe a huge drop in reps after a few sets? Could it be that the bigger gains seen with more sets have to do with people not being able to really push a set to its limit?
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If you assume the 1 set group was pushing pretty darn close to true failure, then it was about 2-3 RIR for the first set for the 8 set group. I'd assume the 8th set was still pretty darn close to true failure, though.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/88w9kcikevt75xx/Screenshot%202016-10-27%2015.23.11.jpg?dl=0
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Thanks! I suppose my question is, okay 1 set might be too little, but could it be that 3 sets, maybe 4, could be enough for maximum hypertrophy if the lifters had pushed closer to true failure on each set?
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This only looked at strength, not hypertrophy.
And to answer your question: maybe.
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Cheers. I see. I suppose more sets is better for strength, especially in the short run, and if the lifters were not used to doing so many sets?
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I know this has been posted before
I'm not sure it has been, as I can't find any duplicates while searching
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It has been. It was on his other site when it was posted before. It's cool though. Good article, regardless.
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Thank you for clearing that up. It looked familiar, but I figured I'd just caught it as a subscriber or something previously
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I thought it had been...maybe not.
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Read the abstract, but didn't pay for the full text. Did the study talk about rest intervals? I can't imagine doing 8 working sets if they're heavy enough that I need to rest 10 minutes between sets -- that's probably an hour and a half just for squats. But if they're light enough that I only need to rest 1 minute between sets, no problem.
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It was held constant at 3 minute rest intervals, and weight was 80% of their tested 1RM. Keeping this constant was possibly important for increasing work capacity, as rest interval is one of the training variables you can adjust to try to increase work capacity.
Also, on any pubmed page you'll see the doi; use this number to search for any paper on scihub. Yes, this is circumventing the law, but AFAIK it's not actually illegal to read these materials, only to host them. I also think there's a pretty strong moral/ethical justification for the availability of scientific research that was paid for with public funds. FWIW, even with institutional access, I used scihub extensively while writing my dissertation, and I'm far from alone.
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Thanks; 3 minute intervals are reasonable.
I agree that publicly funded research needs to be available to the public, but I'd prefer to break the science theft cartel through legal means.
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There's one thing about this study that really bothers me: the trend was in place already at T0. The high-volume group started out as the strongest group, and the low-volume the weakest.
Yes, these differences weren't statistically significant, but then again neither were many of the other differences. It's the trend that's interesting (and I agree it looks that way), but seeing that 'trend' in place from the outset is a little suspect.
Given how close this protocol is to regular training, I wonder if it would be possible to do this on a volunteer basis? There are a host of problems with doing this (namely adherence and self-reporting issues), but with enough participants, you wouldn't have to rely on such huge effect sizes.
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Came here to say this! I don't have access to the paper so can't comment on the significance (or effect sizes...), but when you start off with baseline differences between experimental groups it pretty much throws everything that comes after it into question.
The suggestion in the article that 'small sample size masks differences between groups' cuts both ways!
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What were the previous programs of these lifters? I don't know how much an average lifter squats after 5-8 years, but 155KG seems quite low to me. Especially when they can increase it by 16-31KG in 10 weeks.
What were the diets of the subjects? That will obviously play a big role in the results.
Been stuck at 110kg squat for a couple years now. :-( 166kg is my long term goal.
What is your diet and program like?
531BBB (only 3 sets of BBB and no weight increases when cutting) MonTuesThurFri
150g protein, the rest just whatever fits calorie target. Lots of Greek yogurt. Some protein bars (usually Kirkland ones that are like Quest). Chicken breast or ground turkey meal with veggies for dinner. Frequent jerky for work (Krave or Perky Jerky). Energy drinks and coffee for morning/day. Shredded chicken breast snack. Fat free low cal cheesecake desert (130Cal, 13g pro).
Whenever I bulk I just get fat and don't increase lifts much. Then lose it all on cut.
Do you have accessories with that template? Because you should.
Maybe try another program. The gzcl method is recommended often, or the 2suns 531 {5 or 6 day version).
And with how big of a surplus do you bulk? I cannot imagine that someone only gains fat, unless the surplus is way too big.
Squat twice per week, gradually increase your volume and make sure you are in a caloric surplus. I am not sure you are in a caloric surplus and 531BBB is not a great program for strength unless you tweak it severely (like add more sets to extra day and do the boring but big on another day so you squat twice per week).
I'm not attacking here, I'm just asking--do you see/know a LOT of 350lb+ squatters at your gym, or in general? I definitely see people squat ~275-350 with some regularity, but as a person who has always lifted in commercial and college gyms and YMCAs, I could probably count on two hands the number of 400+ squatters I've seen "in the wild" in the last ten years.
I just think that unless you're a powerlifter committed to increasing your weight, a LOT of people start to converge on a weight around there in the long term, unless they are really dedicated to breaking that plateau (as opposed to just being a strong guy, or staying fit for sports, of looking huge, or whatever).
You have a good point there. I've seen 3 people squatting more than 3 plates in my gym in the past ~6 months.
But what i am wondering is, if these guys lifted for 5+ years, they would probably have decent leg muscles. A relatively low squat and decent leg muscles. How big of an influence is the increased squat frequency? Like getting the form right? And the CNS adaptation? Personally i find it odd to take non-powerlifters for such research.
Would be hard to get competitive powerlifters for a study like this. Besides their relative rarity, they likely won't be down for having their programming hijacked for 12wks
I see, that makes sense. And because they squat twice a week, I guess it's possible on average that they were increasing frequency (...although you'd think it would be fairly common for experienced trainees squatting over three plates to squat more than once per week).
But Nuckols' article doesn't necessarily make it sound like the gains were from hypertrophy of the muscles to me. Certainly CNS and form adaptions are probably at play, and people are seeing greater benefits due to increased total practice under heavy loads.
But does that seem like it wouldn't apply to powerlifters just as much as general strength trainees? I think that BOTH number of sets near failure (for hypertrophy) and amount of mindful practice with heavy ass weight (for form/technique, CNS, etc) both seem incredibly relevant for virtually any lifter, and to offer some returns up to a pretty hefty dose.
More practically...there just aren't that many powerlifters, and there are even fewer willing to hand over their programming to some researcher whose primary goal is definitely not just to get the trainee as stronk as possible. Seems to me like this is a decent analogue, even for those who's interest is on the platform.
Key word is "average."
Mid 300s squat isn't bad for the 170 lb gym rat that's just trying to get stronger or look better.