High Vs Low Volume

It's the weekend, and I have some free time, with that said, let's get started, folks. The topic of today's post will be focusing on High Volume, Low Volume, and Your exercise selection. Before we get into all of that, let's first try to understand high, low volume and the difference between them. 

What Volume essentially is the number of sets, number of reps, and how much weight you're using. I understand that this is necessary information, but in the fitness, community information can sometimes be very lacking especially for the new lifters. So, it's good to learn the basic. Now that you understand what a volume is let's talk about the highs and the lows. High Volume is doing multiple sets in a session, but the question is how many sets would be considered high volume? Personally, I consider fifteen to twenty sets to be high volume for a single body part. Even though I think fifteen to twenty sets per body part is high, somebody else might feel that's too low of a volume for them, this brings us to the next method. Low Volume! Low volume is doing the multiple sets in a session, once again the question is how many sets would be considered low volume. Low volume for me would be five to ten sets per body part. I do find myself regurgitating things, but that's because I want them to stick to you like glue. Now that I've got the easy part out of the way, I'm going to make things complicated. 3..2..1..GO! 

I'm writing this out because I want people to understand the different ways to go on about volume and those different methods to drive hypertrophy so you can become bigger and stronger. The first method I'm going to explain is using low volume, high intensity, and exercises selection. The reason why I mentioned exercises selection is sometimes people do five to ten different exercises for each exercise and they do four to five sets per exercises. That's high volume, and 90% of the time people who do this miss out optimizing their gains, because it gets to the point where that kind of volume is unstainable.  Don't worry there is a way to maximize this, but I will get to that when I talk about high volume.  

The way to approach a Low Volume, low intensity is to keep your sets per exercises to 1-2 sets.  Make sure your total volume for that week per body part is about 8 to 12 sets per body, The next step is to maintain your reps at around 8-10 for hypertrophy when lifting heavier. By heavier I mean about 75-80% of your one rep max. Lastly, keep your exercise selection simple, by simple I mean 1-3 body part per sessions if you're hitting everything 2x a week. Here is an example of what it would look like if doing low volume and high intensity.  

 Barbell Bench 2x8-10 @75-80% or heavy enough that you can hit the set with 8-10 clean reps 

Dumbell Incline 2x-8-10 @75-80% or heavy enough that you can hit the set with 8-10 clean reps 

Machine Flies 2x8-10 @75-80% or heavy enough that you can hit the set with 8-10 clean reps 

The volume is low, so it feels like you're not doing much, the best way to fix this feeling of not doing enough is to add 1-3 warm-up sets. adding 1-3 warm up sets on the first exercise should keep you warmed up. After that everything else will be 2 heavy working sets and by the end of your chest movements your chest will be pumped. Now on to the next one. High Volume! 

High Volumes are tricky, and people abused the hell out of them because they just don't know what a good range for them would be, so they do a lot more than needed, which in the end will stall their progress because of too much volume, and not enough time to recover. High Volumes are very useful if you're training a single body part once a week. Training a single body part once a week helps you recover from the high volume vs. you doing high volume and training a body part twice a week. Imagine training chest twice a week with 15-20 sets each session... Yeah, I can't, but a lot of people do it. I usually don't see people who are beginners doing them, but I do know a lot of professional bodybuilders that do it, and the reason why they can do that, and get away with it, is a story for another day.  The key to having a successful high-volume routine is to manage your recovery. Going to use the example above again, but will increase the sets 

Barbell Bench 4-5x10-15 65-75% Focus on good form, and heavy enough that you can hit it for 10-15reps 

Dumbbell Incline 4-5x8-10 65-75% Focus on good form, and heavy enough that you can hit it for 10-15reps 

Machine Flies 4-5x8-10 65-75% Focus on good form, and heavy enough that you can hit it for 10-15reps 

My Final thoughts on volume are that it depends... Some people respond better with low volume, and there are people who respond better with high volume. The best thing you can do is use this as a simple guideline and try to figure out where you belong. Are you a high-volume responder or are you a low volume responder? If you're one or the other use the one that your body responds to. Certain people have body part that responds to high volume better than low, and body part that respond to low better than low. That is up to you to decide and use your understanding of your body to figure out where you belong. Stay tuned for the next post. I will be focusing on exercises selection. 

High Vs Low Frequency Training

HIGH VS LOW FREQUENCY
High frequency:
Training is a great way to put on size. The reason why is because it allows you to be in the gym more often, split up your total volume, and if program right it should give your body sufficient time to recover so you can train again.
Examples of high-Frequency training
push, pull, legs, off, upper, lower off
push,pull,legs,off Push,pull,legs
upper, lower, off upper, lower
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Low Frequency:
Low Frequency is also a great way to build muscle, but rather than hitting body parts more than twice a week, you’re only hitting them once a week. Hitting each body part once a week allows for more volume per body parts, better recovery, as you’ll have seven days or so before you can hit that body part again.
Example of Low Frequency Training
Chest,Back,Shoulders,Bicep and Triceps, Legs
basically hitting body parts 1x per week and waiting 5-7 days to hit it again.
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IT DEPENDS...
For beginners, all the way to advance lifter high frequency will do just fine. As a beginner practice is a must, so the more you train per week, the more practice you’ll get, and your body will adapt to the training stimuli over time at a faster rate. For Advance and geared up users Training more than once a week is great as you can recover faster from supplementation or just overall experiences in lifting. I highly recommend training more than 1x a week if you’re someone on gear, but you’ll notice that no matter how many times a week your training, when you’re running hormones, training routine doesn’t matter as you’ll just adapt to it.
Low Frequency, in my opinion, is horrible for beginners, it’s taxing on your body to do over 9000 sets in a single session, and spend hours at the gym. It can be good as well because of the rest periods that you’ll have since you might be hitting your body-part 1x a week, you’ll have a full week to recover. For Geared up users... let’s be honest when you’re on hormones literally every training routine will work..till it doesn’t, but this routine specifically will work wonders as you can train harder, longer, lift heavier than the general population. On top of that, you’ll have a full week to recover from your intense training.
DOES IT ALL REALLY MATTER. IT DEPENDS.
It depends because the human body isn’t just set on a single training method, it doesn’t matter if you train high to low frequency at the end of the day your body will adapt to the stress, as long as you’re packing the calories and meeting the nutritional requirements to grow. The last thing to take note of is as long as you hit your total volume per week for all body parts training high or low frequency doesn’t matter, all that matters is what you’re going to do hit that total volume to allow for your body to grow.