The ultimate reason why high volume training is the best for you…

The best method of building muscle and strength is through high volume training.

It’s not only me that said it but: 

• Arnold 7x Mr. Olympia
• Lee Haney 8x Mr. Olympia
• Reg Park
• Marvin Eder (the guy who did 1000 dips in only 17 minutes)
• All Mr. Olympias today 
• All strength coaches around the world

Yeah,everyone that is a strength coach would ask you to do 5 sets of compound exercises, and later follow up with a bunch of volume of accessory exercises.

And that means, everyone today agrees that high volume training is the best for strength and muscle gains, 

For you who don’t know,

Everybody defined high volume training as doing 20+ sets per body part a week. 

For you who don’t know what a muscle group is…

Muscle group is your back, chest, shoulders, arms, and quads, and hamstrings.

So, the biceps is not a muscle group, it’s just a muscle, the arm is.

But, let’s go back to the topic… 

Do you ever wonder why those guys who achieve peak potential of their physique believe in high volume training?

To answer this question, I might go back to myself when I just started training.

You know as the guy who just started and don’t know anything about fitness, I just doom scroll the hell out of my youtube and tiktok page about how to get jacked.

And so one video popped out, and it was Mike Mentzer with his charismatic saying that you only need 1 set to failure.

And it kinda make sense, Mike said that muscle growth happens when your muscle has broken down and then you let it recover. 

And one set to failure is all you need, everything from that is just overtraining.

To be honest, it kinda makes sense.

Until…

I see silver era bodybuilders who has huge lats, 18 inch arms by being natty and strong.

And I see their program… 

They were doing 20 – 30 sets per body part and get the best result.

And this just got me thinking… How, isn’t 1 set is the best for muscle growth?

So i do a ton of research by watching some powerlifting coaches yapping, and finally I know why…

I just realize…

Training to failure and volume is needed to make stimulus.

If you don’t know what stimulus is…

Stimulus are something that you need to respond to. So for example; when you’re hungry, you respond by eating. When you are punched in the face by someone else, you respond by being mad at them.

It’s the same thing in building muscle. 

After stimulus is made through training hard and training more, your muscle respond by recovering and growing bigger.

So, what Mike Mentzer said is that you only 1 set to failure to make that stimulus and that’s it, you don’t have to do another set.

But it got me confused… why not do 2 set ot 3, 4 or even 20+ sets?

Because at the end of the days, more sets = more stimulus.

And if you can recover that amount of stimulus, then it will become muscle.

Powerlifters and bodybuilders have a saying

“Do the most amount of volume that you can recover.”

But, here’s the thing…

I rarely suggest you start with high volume.

Because your physique needs to adapt to higher amounts of stimulus.

And the same as muscle, we need to progress with.

As I said it million of times, don’t start with 20 sets a week, start low!.

Start with 2 – 4 sets per muscle group is enough, then each month increase your volume by 1 or 2 sets.

By that way, you let your body adapt to higher amount of stimulus, which will make your gains bigger.