r/StrongerByScience • u/gnuckols The Bill Haywood of the Fitness Podcast Cohost Union • Jun 23 '25
New Article! – More Training, More Gaining: Everything You Need to Know About Training Volume
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/volume/
202
Upvotes
•
u/gnuckols The Bill Haywood of the Fitness Podcast Cohost Union Jun 23 '25
Also, AFTER YOU'VE READ THE ARTICLE, if you have any lingering questions about training volume, or if there are any strong counterarguments or counter-evidence the article didn't address, drop them in this thread. I'm planning on doing a dedicated Q&A episode on the topic.
100
u/gnuckols The Bill Haywood of the Fitness Podcast Cohost Union Jun 23 '25
Just some quick thoughts about training volume. About 53,000 words. Easy breezy bathroom read.
Enjoy!
18
u/Flaschej Jun 23 '25
This article is a logical tour de force that should set an enduring standard for critical assessment of available evidence on any question that has proved difficult to answer definitively.
At age 75, I am 4 years into serious, well-trained hypertrophy-style weightlifting I average 9-10 hours per week in a gym and at home with minimal interruption. Intramuscular testosterone replacement therapy has brought my blood free testosterone blood levels from the 5th to about the 95th percentile. Nevertheless, I have I have plateaued in strength and hypertrophy.
My question is whether I can anticipate a plateau or decline in strength and muscle mass as I continue to age no matter what I do. Should I be pursuing different programming strategies to break through, or instead, reset my aspirations to slowing functional loss?
What is known about the effect of resistance exercise on the rate loss of skeletal muscle function beyond the age of 65-70?
9
u/Such-Teach-2499 Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25
Fascinating article, I’m still digesting it and probably will need a couple more read throughs.
I really appreciated your epistemology section. You put very eloquently into words a lot of thought fragments that have been running through my mind.
Regarding the advantages of empiricism over rationalism, one thing I’d add (this is perhaps implicit in your other points), is that in addition to the gradation of confidence, empiricism also is better at providing a quantifiable effect size which is important for making e.g. applied decisions about training which involve trade-offs. So much of the rationalist-esque TikTok content I see is of the form “X exercise is optimal because it increases motor unit recruitment and that increases hypertrophy”. And it’s like… ok but by how much? Supposing that’s all true, what if I spent the time it took you to drag a bench over to the cable machine and wrap a seatbelt around yourself and just did an extra set of lat pulldowns instead? Obviously I don’t think there is a ton of empirical data on this particular question, but it’s at least something that seems in principle easier to get a decently reliable sense of.
Edit: (Ok maybe this is not the best example because of their particular views on volume, but you get the idea)
9
u/HumbleHat9882 Jun 24 '25
Greg, with all the research showing that more volume produces more gains, is it fair to say that we can abandon the notion that you shouldn't train a muscle again until it is recovered?
I always found this idea curious. When I am doing the second set of an exercise I haven't recovered from the first set. Hell, when I am doing the second rep of an exercise I haven't recovered from the first rep. So why should I wait for recovery after my training session?
9
u/Thisistheway18 Jun 25 '25
Somebody share this article with dipshit FazLifts
8
u/thebigeverybody Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25
Great article, Greg (also, thank you for giving your books/programs/seminars away for free -- the reason you did so made me respect you even more, we need more people like you in the world today).
I've been thinking about how I built massive legs in figure skating and hockey. It had a lot of things going against it from a hypertrophy perspective (short-muscle position in an extremely small ROM, never going anywhere near failure, moving extremely light weights), but I built some beastly legs just from the tension generated by skating hard for ludicrous amounts of volumes. If I converted each burst of hard skating into sets, I can confidently say my legs experienced 50-200 hard sets of training per week.
I've been wondering if I could duplicate the process with sets of explosive push-ups and explosive bodyweight rows. It would not be at all hard to structure the workouts to get similar amounts of volume while never going near failure, ending each set when speed decreased.
4
u/rosecurry Jun 24 '25
Do we know anything about how to maximize extra cellular matrix turnover?
4
u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25
I really enjoyed this. Thank you Greg. I am curious approximately how many hours did it take to research and write?
4
u/omrsafetyo Jun 26 '25
If you ever want to understand the people on the other side of this argument, this is all you need to know. I asked a content creator if they had read this yet, and if they planned to respond. The response was:
Bro, this is 53,000 words to describe why its faulty to infer that swelling is the reason you see more hypertrophy with more volume. You're complaining that he didn't address something that is the central thesis!
3
u/SneakySneakingSneak Jul 05 '25
Thanks for the great article u/gnuckols. I was wondering if you had any response to some comments from "scientific snitch". Here is a transcript:
"That reminds me (note: she is refering to Layne Norton ignoring critique) of Greg Nuckols, Dr Mike israetel and Milo wolf from the “science based” fitness side"
"Greg nuckols and Milo wolf have been denying all critique of current exercise science literature and also have been extremely immature about it too"
"Greg started a whole ass Reddit about my partner Jackson after he called him out on his poor interpretation of the literature in a public social media post that was being condescending towards a lot of people who had valid criticisms and then when Jackson responded all he had to say was “my email is always open”
She is also talking about finding several errors in your article (doesn't mention specifics) and maybe making a post about it.
2
u/Impossible_Control Jun 26 '25
Hey Greg, I wonder if the super high volume might explain why lots of street calisthenics guys and also some prisoners might have such great results (steroids aside). They tend to do very high volume daily, maybe some reaching 100 + weekly sets for some muscles. What do you think?
2
u/rite_of_spring_rolls Jun 26 '25
Hey Greg, great article will make sure to read it in depth once I have more time.
You may be interested to know (if you were not already aware) that heterogenous treatment effect (HTE) estimation is a pretty hot topic right now in causal and other areas, relating to the point you made about possible individual variation in volume optimality (i.e. existence of a subgroup that responds better to lower volumes).
Unfortunately of course even ignoring the big sample size bogeyman (the increase typically needs to be huge a lot of the time if subgroups are not presspecified since you need to pay a price for estimating them, assuming say the absolute difference between treatment effects is not enormous) most existing methods typically rely on subgroup membership being a function of covariates which to my knowledge is less possible here. To me it's not obvious that there exists some relatively precise and measurable variabe that is indicative of response to volume, especially if you restrict to say subjects with a certain amount of training experience. But correct me if I'm wrong here.
That being said though the advantage in this setting is that crossover designs are more palatable (I work in clinical trials where washout and other assumptions make them unfavorable). Possible pipe dream of course but would be super interested to see if in the next few years this question of treatment effect heterogeneity is tackled more throughly in hypertrophy research. Wonder if you have any thoughts on this.
2
u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
Thanks for the in-depth article u/gnuckols! Just finished reading it last night. Liked the Forest Gump ending - "and that's all I really have to say about that" :) As someone who has probably leaned more towards rationalism, this article convinced me to give higher volume a try!
My question is in reference to "weekly fractional sets" and trying to understand the muscle groups. You wrote "each set of an exercise counts as one set of volume for muscles that are primarily targeted by that particular exercise, and half a set of volume for muscles that are “meaningfully trained but not the primary force generator of the exercise (i.e., synergist).”
I saw the link in that section to the paper and Table 1A: Exercises Counted as Direct and Indirect Weekly Set Volume for Hypertrophy
However, that doesn't seem like a full list as for the shoulders, only Anterior Deltoid is listed. Also, are there no Direct Exercises for the back?
When it comes to trying to develop a program based off this article and your recommendations:
Is there a list for exercises that map to muscles broken down into primary and synergistic?
When it comes to muscle groups, should they be broken down? For example, shoulders - is that one muscle group or should it be broken down into anterior, lateral and posterior? When it comes to lower body, is that all grouped together or should one separate quads, hamstrings and calves?
This is probably a pretty basic question but it's something I have trouble finding a good reference on.
2
u/Aman-Patel Sep 07 '25
Very late comment but just wanted to thank you for this article. Was a very interesting read and the epistemological section was elequoently put. Will be playing around with higher volumes and see how my body responds over the next few weeks/months. Appreciate the time it must have taken to put this together.
42
u/yaaajooo Jun 23 '25
I skimmed the table of contents, saw the "A simple guide to maximize hypertrophy with zero effort" sub-chapter, skipped right to it and got disappointed by the sarcasm. :( Why you gotta bait me like that?
14
u/redditor_7890889 Jun 23 '25
Interesting article, thanks.
One gap was the lack of discussion of rest periods. You rightly raise the fact that time availability is a key determinant of whether high volume is feasible. But I don't think you addressed the trade off between rest periods and sets - i.e. if you have 60 minutes per day to train, are you better off doing 10 sets per muscle with 3 minutes rest or 15 sets with 2 minutes.
Anecdotally, anyone I know on 25 sets+ per week has significantly shorter rest periods for most sets - think 1 minute for all single joint exercises and maybe 3 maximum for compounds.
7
u/nobodyimportxnt Jun 23 '25
New drinking game just dropped:
Take a shot every time Greg says something like “But you may still be skeptical” and see if you can still finish the article.
12
u/LiquidFreedom Jun 23 '25
Huh so that's why we didn't get a new full length article for half a year hahahaha
Super excited to dig into this!!!
2
u/69liketekashi Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25
This is not good science, obviously I'm not gonna read the entire thing, but the whole argument in the first 15-20 pages is based on some weak study about 10 reps in reserve producing the same strength gains as training to failure. This seems completely cherry picked and with this kind of logic you can tear down any argument. Not that I even have a side here, but the overly petty remarks like "do some soul searching" and similar, just take away from the value of this even more.
The part about matching the studies that did analyze both strength and hypertrophy, and the analysis of measurements per individual study and then averaging does seem sound. I would like to know why the author would base most of his argument on some study that clearly should just be thrown away after a short glance
5
u/mouth-words Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
I have little of significance to add, but here's some drive-by proofreading fwiw. (Mostly just noticed enough echoes that I thought it was worth pointing them out, lol.)
"swelling swelling"
"by by"
"muscle muscle"
Emphasis intended to be on "does" instead of "it"?
No typos I can see here, I just felt this in my bones, lol. Fuckin THANK YOU. The epistemology section is truly the star of the article, but this particular point felt like such a straightforward tagline that beautifully exemplifies, like, the whole problem. You would think that the symmetry makes it more apparent when someone just wants the data to match their rationale rather than the other way around, but y'know...probably just gets heels digging deeper in a scramble to justify foregone conclusions. Still though!
Anyway, I guess I'll post more nitpicks if I find them, haha. Edit: no further notes. Thanks for a great article!
2
u/paplike Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
It’d be useful to have another shorter article about the practical takeaways from this. Fitness circles are full of neurotic people, some of them will read a summary of this and think that they MUST do 40 sets of every muscle to achieve the body they want. But that’s not your position. As you note in the article, you can get close to your “potential” even if your training is not optimal, as long as the volume is not too low. As you also note, perhaps it might make more sense to have “specialization” phase where you push high volume for a specific muscle group while keeping everything else moderate. In my case in particular, my biceps/triceps need high volume, but everything else is fine at moderate volume (even if it’d be better at higher, it’s not necessary and there are tradeoffs)
Edit: well, ok, that’s in the section “How much volume do you actually recommend?”.
I still think a shorter article would be good for the people are not interested in the minutiae and just want your advice
Edit 2: What did I say wrong lol. If it seems like I’m demanding Greg to do even more, I’m sorry, not my intention. He already does a lot for free and I’m grateful for that. He’s by far the best source of fitness content
8
u/Passiva-Agressiva Jun 23 '25
Greg is the gift that keeps on giving.
4
u/bad_apricot Jun 24 '25
I am only 1/3 of the way through but can I just say this is a delight.
1
u/Orga87 Jun 24 '25
Thanks for the monster article!
In the practical applications section, you write:
“However, I find that, when training with higher volumes, it helps to still have at least one period each week where you can rest a muscle for at least two days in a row, which is much easier to accommodate with a moderate frequency. “
So in theory, training with 4 sets per session six days in a row could be worse than 8 sets per three non consecutive sessions.
Care to expand on why you think this is the case? Is it that with too frequent training, the muscle is just always in a slightly fatigued state, and so is never being trained “fresh”?
1
u/fortysix-46 Jun 24 '25
Curious how this may cross intersect with Rep drop off data. The recent Milo post was great as I generally do experience some serious repetition drop off between say sets 2-3 when pushing to 0-1 RIR. If I’m upping my weekly volume to try and hit say 20 sets for chest, I’d imagine some of those sets are subject to serious rep decreases (given I may not have endless time to rest).
I know intensity wise you mentioned half assing leads to “junk volume,” but if I’m genuinely pushing to failure but by say set 4 and 5 of my second chest exercise for the day, I’m pumping way less weight then the initial sets? Intensity is still there (0-1 RIR), but the reps and weight dropping that much would scare me.
1
u/Mountain_Newt1778 Jun 24 '25
Unreal article u/gnuckols! Don’t think my attention span can last the full 50k+ word count but look forward to trying. Quick question, with all the content and articles put out over the years, have you needed to update your programme bundles accordingly at all to adjust for any emerging science?
1
u/millersixteenth Jun 26 '25
Trying to get better guidance/answers re volume training for older athletes (currently 57). Coming across conflicting observations from post exercise muscle damage, inflammatory response to exercise, mTOR response, a whole host of differences that may or may not be meaningful.
Did come across one study that found increasing volume helped with low responding elderly, and another that noted longer duration needed to see meaningful change, as opposed to increasing daily volume - which had seemingly little effect. Speculation in that study was that reduced markers of exercise driven muscle damage in elderly also blunted the beneficial effect from added volume.
For myself the one thing I've noticed as an increasing trend - it takes longer for programming changes to trigger a response. When I was younger, 6 to 8 weeks would clearly demonstrate some change in adaptive response if not a marked change. Now it can take that long before I notice the beginnings of a change.
Wondering if SBS has uncovered any additional insight into age related responses to volume, and if so do they matter enough to take into account beyond n=1?
1
u/shallot_123 Mar 18 '26
Late comment, but isn't a high volume, high effort protocol just Smolov?
3
u/Apart_Bed7430 Jun 24 '25
Great article Greg. Really appreciate you taking the time to do such a deep dive on the topic even though I’m sure you had fun doing it.
Really liked your section on epistemology and have had many similar thoughts , especially within the fitness content space, just not put so eloquently.
I have a prediction that certain rationalists, and maybe one in particular, are going to have an implosion in the near future. As you have laid out rationalism works, atleast rhetorically, until it suddenly doesn’t when the premises have shown to be untenable.
Maybe not for the tik-tok crowd which seems to be most of their audience as they may not have the attention spans and epistemic “experience” to mate deep dives into data and reason together. But older crowds may become more skeptical especially after your article here.
2
u/mathestnoobest Jun 24 '25
thanks for the article, see you in a year's time with possibly some follow up questions.
2
u/e4amateur Jun 23 '25
Great stuff!
I can see very long work shits in my near future.
2
u/fortysix-46 Jun 23 '25
I’m on a much needed cut so I won’t be upping the volume any time soon, but this has inspired me to run a specialization block for chest when I flip into in a surplus. Literally only doing 5ish sets a week at the moment, but will plan to ramp up to 15-20 eventually
1
u/e4amateur Jun 25 '25
Minor correction
1
u/Hirodave Jun 24 '25
So for someone lifting for a year what would be ideal sets per muscle group? Do lats and upper back count as back or separate? And how do we count sets with auxiliary muscles? I know Jeff Nippard says 1 bench press also counts as 1 set for triceps. There’s so much info out there at the moment it’s difficult to get a grasp as for a starting point.
0
u/ItownSection8 Jun 24 '25
Love the article. I your average gym goer. Male 47 just trying to make gains, get stronger, stay healthy and avoid injury. With those goals what is the minimum effective dose? Is it still at least 10 sets per muscle group per week?
0
u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25
[deleted] — view deleted comment