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Realistic: Is Your Training Schedule Sustainable

and Practical?
Time Frame
The first thing that needs to be considered when planning training is our
schedule and time frame.
Bodybuilders and powerlifters with a specific competition date need to
have a realistic plan based on the time frame they have before their contest.
If you have 8 weeks until a meet, or 24 weeks until a bodybuilding show, you
have to design your training plan built around this time frame.
Even for the recreational trainee, if your target is to look good on the beach
next summer, you need to start planning now how long you will be
gaining and when you need to start your cut, and how your training should
fit in with these goals.
In short, you need to match up the time frames you are dealing with in real
life, to the training approach you are considering. Though this may sound
obvious, it’s something that people miss. Often this occurs because the
average lifter doesn’t know how to design their own training program. So,
they try to fit an 8-week cookie cutter program into their own 6-week time
frame and run into problems. But, you are different. You bought this book
because you are tired of banging your head against the wall. You want to
actually learn how to set up your training rather than mindlessly follow a
cookie cutter plan. So, make sure you consider a realistic time frame.

Schedule
You also need to think about your schedule on a week-to-week and day-to-
day basis.
If you have decided that the “optimal approach” is training 6 days a week
for two hours a day like your favorite bodybuilder, yet you are a father
who works 50 hours a week, has a hobby, and tends to have family
commitments on the weekends, that may not be realistic.
You have to start with what you can do before you decide what you
should do.

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Remember that “optimal” is not necessarily the same thing as “realistic”.

Always think about fitting your training program to what is sustainable and
realistic in your life first, before assessing anything else.
If you think that a 5 day a week training program would be perfect but you
only have time to train 4 days a week —it’s not an option, let go of it!
Focus on what you can do in the days you have available.
It’s essential to think about what we are realistically able to do in the long
term as well. That which on paper looks the best but makes us fall off the
wagon on a regular basis is going to produce a worse outcome than
something slightly suboptimal that we can adhere to.
Remember, consistency is what makes progress rather than perfection.

Enjoyable: Can You Enjoy Training This Way for a

Long Period of Time?
When you have the “realistic” part in check, the next thing to think about is
this “enjoyable” part.
So why is enjoyment so important? I guarantee you that if you take a
suboptimal plan that you love, you’ll put more effort into it than if you take
an optimal plan that doesn’t get your juices and your passion flowing.
To take a modern example, think of the rise of Crossfit. It’s been successful
for a reason — people are joining Crossfit gyms and making better progress
than they ever have done in years. Why would this be? — Because they’re
enjoying their training more and thus putting in more effort. Perhaps the
camaraderie was the thing they lacked before, not the quality of the
programming.
You always want to think about how you are going to make the guidelines
fit what you will enjoy. We’re not all robots — whether or not we are
motivated has a huge impact on adherence and ultimately the results we
achieve. Seeing progress will make training more enjoyable and easier to
continue with. Setting up your training around not only sound principles
but also personal enjoyment can help you create a positive cycle of
enjoyment driving harder training, producing results, which in turn, drives
even more enjoyment.

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Now, for some people, whatever gets them the fastest progress and closer
to their goals is what they are going to love (a lot of athletes are like that).
However, for everyone else, we have to make sure that we pay just as
much heed to what will produce enjoyment as what will produce progress.
In fact, sometimes focusing all your energy on achieving a goal, rather
than the process of achieving the goal itself can undermine your efforts.
One study found just this to be the case; two groups were compared, one
that focused all their attention specifically on the end-goal related to
performing the selected task, while the other focused on the process of
performing the task itself. The “end-goal” group was instructed to try to
self-motivate by focusing on what they would eventually achieve by doing
the task, while the “process-oriented” group was instructed to focus on the
positive feelings they had while performing the task. An example in fitness
would be focusing on eventually setting a new personal best on your squat
one-rep max, versus focusing on how the act of squatting makes you feel
strong and productive. Surprisingly, at the end of the study, the group that
focused on goal-pursuit, rather

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than the process actually achieved their goals with less consistency [1]! So
the take-home is that you have to learn to enjoy the process. A mindset of
program design based purely on what is the most “optimal” way to reach
your end-goals might set you up for failure.
Think back to the previous section’s example of the family man — if his
training plan is thoroughly enjoyable, but so time intensive that it is putting
a strain on his marriage and his relationship with his children, eventually
this is going to take away from his enjoyment of his training, his stress levels
will rise, sleep will suffer, and this will negatively impact the results — you
have to question if it’s worth it.
How many aging recreational bodybuilders are out there that silently regret
being down at the gym so often because they were convinced they needed
to have a six-day body part split? How much of this refusal to change is
based on their unwillingness to acknowledge this?
The point I want to make is that there is a lot of wiggle room in
determining what is best for you, and a huge amount of individual
variation. This is why I’m not just giving you “the” workout plan, because it
doesn’t exist. I’m giving you the principles to build your training around.
Optimal does not equal sustainable — don’t set yourself up for failure.

An Aside: Is There Any Such Thing as “Optimal”?

We don’t really know what optimal is. There is no way to know. As scientists we try to continually
There is nothing wrong with reaching for more and trying your hardest, but don’t fall into the trap

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Flexible: Do You Have Flexibility in Your Program to

Accommodate the Unexpected and Move Forward?
Flexibility is a requirement of the previous two conditions. It allows you to
enjoy your training and allows it to be realistic.
If you are in this game for the long haul there will be times when you
struggle to train as planned. Maybe work gets in the way, or there is a
schedule change due to some family commitment — when these things
happen it’s important to have the flexibility to accommodate the changes
and keep making progress towards your goals without giving up or
program hopping blindly.
Flexibility is, in a large part, a state of mind, and this can be achieved by
equipping yourself with knowledge of the principles in this book. You’ll
learn how to make these adjustments to your training while still keeping
the goal, the goal, in the subsequent sections.

Flexibility When Stress is High

In a broad sense, the body receives many different types of stress
collectively. Training, dieting, sleep deprivation, work, worries etc. — to the
body they are all stressors.
While trainers and coaches would love to believe that the vast majority of the
stresses you experience that affect your progress are all related to the things
they can control (myself included), this just isn’t the case. In fact, there is a
study that shows that people who experience more negative life occurrences in
the course of a training program don’t adapt to it as well [2].
So while you can try to control for all the variables in the various levels in
The Pyramid, it’s important to also acknowledge the impact of the life
stressors that you cannot control.
For example, if you have a lot of pressure at work, have trouble with your
coworkers, a family member passes away, you divorce etc., anything that you
can imagine, remember those stresses have an impact on your training.
That’s why auto-regulating your training (developing structured flexibility
in your approach) can be very useful so that your training stress matches
your ability to manage stress. (We’ll discuss auto-

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regulatory methods in later chapters as well.)

Flexibility to Adjust Based on Energy Levels

So what does this mean to you? How can you implement elements of
flexibility into your training? Well, there’s a study where the participants
were divided into two groups. One group was given three training options
to choose from according to their energy level each day they trained: an
easy, moderate, and a hard session. The other group did the same sessions,
but in a pre-planned order every day they trained, regardless of how they
felt.
The volume was matched so that by the end of the 12-week study both groups
had performed the same volume of training. The group with the flexible
periodization approach still completed all the sessions, but the flexible
group that chose their training on a day-to-day basis based on how they felt,
made greater strength gains than the pre-planned group [3]. Likewise, in a
follow-up study, it was observed that when trained lifters could choose
whether the weekly order of strength, hypertrophy, or power training based
on their perceived readiness, they had better adherence than a group
following a fixed order [4].
So what’s the take-home message? Firstly, we know stress can affect
progress in the gym. Secondly, we know that having a flexible approach to
periodization can be superior to having a rigid one (not unlike dieting). So,
once you have set up your training schedule, sure, follow it as planned when
you are able. But, if you have a day where you feel terrible, weak, and
depleted of energy, do the easiest workout you had planned for the week
instead. Now this isn’t the only way to implement a flexible approach into
your training, and we’ll cover more ways to do so throughout this book,
but hopefully, it helps to shift your mindset to look at the big picture versus
just the sets and reps in front of you on any given day.

Life Doesn’t Stop for Lifting

The importance of realism, being flexible, and discussing adherence is
often lost on people until they are faced with concrete personal experiences
which force them into less-than-optimal situations. It’s important to point
out that most of the time when people are forced

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into a situation when they can’t adhere to the exact plan they’ve
established, the real issue is not the situation itself, but how they react to it.
What I mean is that vacations, injuries, travel, sports you might play
recreationally or competitively, and unexpected work commitments are not
the problem. Rather, the stress, indecision, overreaction and emotional
decisions made in response to these minor hiccups are.
You may have heard the popular military quote, “No plan survives contact
with the enemy.” Obviously, I’m not saying you are a soldier going into
war, but I think there is a parallel when people with families, careers,
schedules, stresses and hobbies undertake a serious training plan. If you were
a young, single, full-time athlete living at a high- performance sports
training facility who was paid to train, and you could cordon yourself off
from outside stressors and your sport was your life, maybe “optimal” and
“realistic” would be much closer together. In my experience as a coach and
trainer, many lifters pretend this is their situation when it’s absolutely not,
overlooking the reality that something could derail them. Then, when these
lifters are faced with the thing that does (inevitably) derail them, they are
wholly unprepared to adapt. Therefore, in the following sections, I’m
going to outline some of the most common situations and questions related
to “life happening” and my perspective on how to best handle each.
“What happens if I miss a workout?”
This is not a situation per se, but rather the most common result of many
things that could disrupt your intended training schedule. While it is the
most common problem, fortunately, it’s also one of the most easily solved.
In general, the solution I recommend to a missed session is just picking up
where you left off next time you go to the gym. Yes, yes, I know you have
a set schedule with a specific workout to do on specific days, but there is
nothing that says you have to do it that way. If you train on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday for example, and you miss a Wednesday workout,
just do Wednesday’s workout on Friday. I know, you’re thinking, “But I’ll
be behind!” and my response would be—so what? Just finish the training
plan a few days later than you initially intended, it makes almost no
difference in the long run, and with certain setups, the alternative choice of
cramming multiple days together (especially in a more intense phase of
training) could be the

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greater of the two evils.

The only time simply picking up where you left off could be a problem, is
when you’re preparing for a competition. You can’t very well ask the meet
director to delay the competition from Saturday to Monday because in
week two of your build up you had to push Wednesday’s session back to
Friday. In this case, you will need to either skip a session or rejig things to
accommodate the missed session in the current or following week—but
which should you do?
Skipping sessions is a good option when the missed session is something that
was an intended low-stress session. Examples are if it was your accessory
day as a powerlifter, a day of grip work, calves and arms as a bodybuilder,
or perhaps a ‘power day’ where you did a handful of singles at ~80% for
technique work. In these cases, a good portion of that session’s goal was
active recovery, while also putting in a bit of useful work. By skipping the
day, you are still achieving the goal of recovery, and you are only missing
out on a small stimulus. That being said, given the stress is so low in sessions
such as this, if you can make a previously unscheduled trip to the gym on
Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday to make up the session, it’s unlikely to
negatively affect the following workout.

On that note, even if you were to do multiple hard sessions back to back,
while probably not ideal, it’s actually not as bad as you might think. There are
now three studies I’m aware of where programs differentiated only by
whether they were performed on consecutive days within a week (i.e. three
days in a row), or with days off between sessions, resulted in similar strength
and hypertrophy adaptations among groups [5–7].
Thus, if you have to occasionally do something like train Monday,
Thursday, Friday or Monday, Friday, Saturday, it’s unlikely to be a big
deal. When this does happen, however, simply be prepared to not be 100%
when you come in for the second session. Drop your loads appropriately so
that the intended effort is where it should be, rather than rigidly sticking to
the load you had listed in your excel sheet or that you had planned in your
head (more on this later). This will allow you to actually get through the
volume, without risking setting yourself back from really overdoing it.

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Sport, Outdoor, and Fitness Activities Outside of Lifting

It’s not uncommon for a lifter to love hiking, to be a group exercise
instructor, to play in a recreational sports league, or to take martial arts
classes in addition to training. Unfortunately for folks in this situation, most
powerlifting and bodybuilding programs are written with the assumption that
pretty much all you do physical activity-wise is the lifting itself.
While in a strict sense avoiding outside activity could be argued to be
optimal for strength or hypertrophy, I would argue that being a happy,
well-rounded person might be even more optimal if you look at it globally
(which you always should).
Consider the known positive effects of being outdoors, making meaningful
human connections, belonging to a community, and the subsequent stress
relief and joy that comes from these activities [8– 10]. If well managed, I
would guess the positive effects of participating in these activities would
outweigh the negatives quite easily. The only time you get into trouble is
when you take your sport, fitness or outdoor activities just as seriously as
lifting, and don’t consider moderating either, and treat each like it occurs in
a vacuum. Team sport athletes who have to do aerobic, anaerobic,
plyometric, sport-specific and strength training all in the same week, heavily
rely on periodization strategies to manage these overlapping stresses. Thus,
it’s probably a good idea for you to make some concessions as well if you
are going to be seriously involved in both lifting and another physically
demanding activity.
Later in this book, I’ll discuss how to manage the simultaneous goals of
competing in both strength and physique sports, but for those attempting to
combine lifting with another sport, it’s important to note that I think one
has to take priority. For example, these days almost all athletes do some
lifting to enhance their sport performance; however, they are doing just
that—lifting to enhance their sport performance. Meaning, their
mindset is always that lifting comes as an addendum to sport, and it is
intended to serve sport performance. Thus, avoiding high-risk exercises,
staying away from failure, finding the minimal volume and intensity
necessary to improve sport performance, and avoiding soreness are all of
paramount importance. A high-level dedicated soccer player shouldn’t try
to find the optimal bodybuilding or powerlifting program to do in concert
with their sport as it would

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violate this principle. Likewise, a dedicated competitive powerlifter or

bodybuilder who plays soccer recreationally shouldn’t find the optimal
aerobic, anaerobic, and sport-specific conditioning program to do in
concert with their competitive lifting pursuits.
So, let’s say you’re on board with keeping your non-lifting activities to a
reasonable volume and level of effort; you might still wonder how to
balance your activity with lifting. Fortunately, we have some good data on
what’s called the ‘interference effect’, which is essentially the potential
negative effect of cardiorespiratory training on strength training
adaptations. Unfortunately, the interference effect is a real thing, which makes
sense considering we have a spectrum of energy systems to perform muscular
work. Meaning, getting physiologically efficient at sustaining low levels of
force for a long period (i.e. the adaptations to endurance training) can run
counter to getting physiologically efficient at outputting high levels of
force for a short period (i.e. the adaptations to strength training).
But before you freak out, let’s put it into context. The interference effect
doesn’t make you lose gains, or even stop making gains, rather the
collective research shows it just slows your rate of gains down. However,
you can greatly mitigate the interference effects with just a bit of
planning and foresight. In general, the literature comes to pretty common-
sense conclusions; if you do hard cardio (or activity) immediately before
training, it’s probably going to hinder your ability to train and
subsequently adapt.
If you do your cardio immediately after lifting, the interference effect is
less. If you can place your lifting at least six hours prior to cardio, that’s even
better, and probably the best choice is to separate lifting and cardio by a
full day if possible [11].

Injury
Unfortunately, serious resistance training can result in injury. Fortunately, the
risk is not that high and I would argue the health benefits of a life that includes
lifting far outweigh the negative effects of the injuries you might sustain
along the way. But what are the risks? In the table below, you can see the data
we have on injuries per 1000 hours among strength athletes. In fact, fewer
injuries occur during bodybuilding training compared to

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most non-contact team sports and endurance training, while powerlifting,

weightlifting and CrossFit (you heard me right, you hater) all have similar
rates of injuries to these sports and endurance training.

STRENGTH SPORT INJURY RATES AS REPORTED BY KEOGH

AND WINWOOD [12] AND AASA ET AL. [13]

Bodybuilding 0.24–1 injuries/1000 hours [12]

1.0–5.8 injuries/1000 hours [12]

Powerlifting
1.0–4.4 injuries/1000 hours [13]

Weightlifting 2.4–3.3 injuries/1000 hours [12, 13]

CrossFit 3.1 injuries/1000 hours [12]

Strongman 4.5–6.1 injuries/1000 hours [12]

Highland Games 7.5 injuries/1000 hours [12]

As a comparison to the strength sport injury rates shown in the table,

consider that some studies report an injury rate of 8.5 to 11.1 injuries/1000
hours in basketball [14]! The reality is that an injury is almost guaranteed
to happen at some point in your lifting lifespan if you take it seriously;
however, comparatively the risks are lower than they are in most
mainstream sports. More importantly, when you think about the alternative
you realize this is not something to worry about (remember, being
sedentary exposes you to injury as well, and other health complications for
that matter). The question is, what do you do about it when it happens? Well
for one, I am not a physical therapist or medical doctor. (If I was on a plane
and an attendant asked: “Is there a doctor onboard?” I would raise my hand
and yell, “Yes! What do you want to know about protein or RPE?”) If you
get a significant injury, seek out a physical therapist or sports injury
doctor, preferably one who has specific experience working with athletes
(ideally, lifters). I am shocked when I see people posting comments on my
Instagram asking

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what they should do about an injury...that’s absolutely not treating your injury
seriously; I’m not a specialist and even if I was, social media is not the
appropriate venue for diagnosis or treatment.
With that said, not all injuries are serious, and aches, pains, strains,
niggles, irritations and general stiffness are at times, part and parcel of the
serious lifter’s experience. When these gremlins pop up, it’s important that
you don’t make poor decisions that lead to something minor becoming
something major that requires serious medical intervention. Don’t just train
through pain. On the other hand, don’t let fear make you irrationally
conservative. I’ve seen people with a lower back strain, staying out of the
gym completely for weeks, or people with an upper-body issue not training
legs, etc. At 3DMJ we’ve prepped athletes who you’d never know had a
lower-back injury in the middle of ‘prep’ (a caloric deficit) mind you, who
had to stick to hip thrusts, leg extensions, and leg curls for lower body
training, and replace much of their upper body free weight training with
machines...who won shows!
So, where is this middle ground? First, if it hurts don’t do it. Alter the
range of motion, reduce the load, or replace the movement with something
comparable that is pain-free. In the case of some (mainly single joint)
movements, blood flow restriction (BFR) can be used to allow you to
reduce the load a great deal (as low as 20% 1RM) while still getting a solid
hypertrophy stimulus (more on this later if you don’t know what BFR is).
Finally, if you can’t easily work around it or if the pain isn’t gone in a
matter of weeks, I would see a specialist.

Summary
To sum it up, remember the acronym REF—realistic, enjoyable and flexible.
It takes self-awareness and restraint to be able to appropriately implement
these philosophies into program design, so be sure to “REF yourself”
throughout the process. We are not robots, “optimal” is a concept that doesn’t
always fit into our realities and the stresses we experience in life are largely
out of our hands. Therefore, you need to be sure that the program you
develop is specific to your individual life circumstances, considers your
individual preferences, and is flexible enough to account for any curve balls
life throws your way.

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References
1. Fishbach, A. and J. Choi, When thinking about goals undermines goal
pursuit. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2012. 118(2):
p. 99-107.
2. Bartholomew, J.B., et al., Strength gains after resistance training: the effect
of stressful, negative life events. J Strength Cond Res, 2008. 22(4): p. 1215-
21.
3. McNamara, J.M. and D.J. Stearne, Flexible Nonlinear Periodization in a
Beginner College Weight Training Class. Journal of Strength & Conditioning
Research, 2010. 24(1): p. 17-22.
4. Colquhoun, R.J., et al., Comparison of powerlifting performance in trained
men using traditional and flexible daily undulating periodization. J Strength
Cond Res, 2017. 31(2):283–91.
5. Hunter, G.R., Changes in body composition, body build and performance
associated with different weight training frequencies in males and
females. Strength Cond J, 1985. 7(1): p. 26–8.
6. Carvalho, A.D., and Rodrigues, S.J., Nonconsecutive versus consecutive-
day resistance training in recreationally trained subjects. J Sports Med Phys
Fitness, 2018. 58(3): p. 233–40.
7. Yang, Y., et al., Effects of Consecutive versus Nonconsecutive Days of
Resistance Training on Strength, Body Composition and Red Blood Cells.
Front Physiol, 2018. 18(9): p. 725.
8. Richards, J., et al., Don’t worry, be happy: cross-sectional associations
between physical activity and happiness in 15 European countries. BMC
Public Health, 2015. 15(1): p. 53.
9. Yorks, D.M., Frothingham, C.A., and Schuenke, M.D., Effects of Group Fitness
Classes on Stress and Quality of Life of Medical Students. J Am Osteopath
Assoc, 2017. 117(11): e17–25.
10. Tillmann, S., et al., Mental health benefits of interactions with nature in
children and teenagers: a systematic review. J Epidemiol Community
Health, 2018. 72(10): p 958–66.
11. Robineau, J., et al., Specific training effects of concurrent aerobic and
strength exercises depend on recovery duration. J Strength Cond Res,
2016. 30(3): p. 672–83.
12. Keogh, J.W. and P.W. Winwood, The Epidemiology of Injuries Across the
Weight-Training Sports. Sports Med, 2017. 47(3): p. 479–501.
13. Aasa, U., et al., Injuries among weightlifters and powerlifters: a systematic

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review. Br J Sports Med, 2017. 51(4): p. 211–19.

14. Cumps, E., Verhagen, E., Meeusen, R., Prospective epidemiological study of
basketball injuries during one competitive season: ankle sprains and
overuse knee injuries. J Sports Sci Med, 2007. 6(2): p. 204.

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 2 VOLUME,
LEVEL 2 : VOLUME, INTENSITY,
LEVE

INTENSITY,
FREQUENCY
 THE MUSCLE & STRENGTH PYRAMID:

Volume, intensity and frequency are what actually form the foundation of
programs. These three variables are interrelated and inseparable from each
other. Each affects the other and can do so in different contexts.

� If you train at a very high intensity of effort, near to failure, it takes

longer for muscle damage to subside (exercise-induced muscle damage
is the normal, easily repaired disruption to the fiber as a result of high
tension or high volumes; in excess it interferes with performance and
adaptation) and performance to recover back to baseline, potentially
impacting the frequency you can train with.
� Likewise, lifting heavy (a high intensity of load) makes each
individual repetition more stressful, requires longer rest periods, and
can make a session take longer, limiting the volume you can (and
probably should) perform.
� As a final example, doing 16 sets of the same movement in a single day
would require you to either decrease volume (do less reps per set) or
intensity (drop the load) due to cumulative fatigue as sets went on, to a
greater extent than compared to doing 8 sets on two different days in
the week.

Since these three variables are interdependent, they are all in the same
layer of The Pyramid. The optimal combination of each will vary
depending on your training age, goals, preferences, schedule and current
stage within your athletic career.
This is a long section and covers the majority of the most important
concepts in this book, so make sure to read through it carefully. Given the
length and detail of this section, let’s start with an overview of the
recommended ranges where most novice and intermediate lifters should
start for volume, intensity and frequency, and then go through all of the
rationale for how we ended up here:

VOLUME, INTENSITY, 4
 THE MUSCLE & STRENGTH PYRAMID:

Volume • Intensity • Frequency

Summary of Starting Recommendations

olume:10–20 sets per muscle group/movement pattern per week

tensity:Strength: ⅔–¾ of volume in the 1–6 rep range, remaining volume in the 6–15 rep range at a 5–10
ypertrophy: ⅔–¾ of volume in the 6–12 rep
nge, remaining volume in the 1–6 and 12–20 rep range at a 5–10 RPE
equency: 2+ times per muscle group/movement pattern per week

VOLUME
Volume is the total amount of work performed, and to a point, shares a
non-linear relationship with adaptation (more on this to come). It can be
counted as ‘volume load’ (sets x reps x load), the total number of
repetitions (sets x reps), or simply as the number of sets. Each counting
method has its strengths and weaknesses. High-rep sets make volume load
skyrocket.

Volume Load vs. Number of Sets

1RM 6RM 12RM 30RM

Heavy Moderate Light

ConsiderVolume
3x25x100 Load— the3same,
sets Sets
of 25 reps with
Setsathe100 lb or
same, kg load,
Volume Load which is
differ. differs.
50% of a 1 rep max (1RM) in this imaginary example — versus 3x10x140
Example: Example:
(70% of71RM). Thex former
sets x 3 reps 100 lbs =produces
2100 lbs a volume
3 setsload
x 10 of
reps7500 and
x 70 lbs the latter
= 2100 lbs
3 sets x 10 reps x 70 lbs = 2100 lbs 3 sets x 30 reps x 40 lbs = 3600 lbs

VOLUME, INTENSITY, 4
 THE MUSCLE & STRENGTH PYRAMID:

4200, 78% more volume is produced with the high rep set. But is that
representative of anything? Would you get 78% more hypertrophy or
strength or experience that much more fatigue? No. We have data showing that
sets of 8–12RM produce just as much hypertrophy on a set-to-set basis as
sets of 25–35RM [1], and despite producing drastically less volume load, 3 sets
of 2–4RM increases strength more than 3 sets of 8–12RM [2].
This issue is even more magnified when you just use total repetitions,
consider the same example and you’re comparing 75 to 30 repetitions, a more
than two-fold difference! For this reason, we’ll be quantifying volume as
the number of sets performed in a given intensity range (both effort and
load) and I’ll explain why this is the best available option later in this
chapter.

The Relationship Between Strength and Hypertrophy

We’ll cover the following two points in more detail in the Intensity section,
but for now, here’s what is important:

1. Strength is a Product of Skill Acquisition, Neurological

Adaptation, and Hypertrophy
How strong we are is a function of multiple factors—muscle mass (and
other morphological factors), neurological adaptations, and how familiar
we are with an exercise [3]. This means that volume is very important
because it is not just the amount of work that we do, but also the amount of
practice we get.
Strength is specific to a movement [4] and a rep range [1], so the more time
you get moving loads with a specific exercise and a specific rep range, the
stronger you will get on that specific exercise, in that specific rep range, with
that specific load.

2. Volume is Important for Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy, on the other hand, is primarily related to the total work
performed and is less specific to the intensity range [5] or the movement
performed [6]. We can make our muscles grow using various exercises and
various repetition ranges and loads.

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Counting Volume for Strength and Hypertrophy

As I mentioned in the first section of this chapter, counting sets is probably the
easiest and most effective way to quantify volume and has the added bonus of
making volume adjustments and program writing simpler.
Over the years, meta-analyses (a statistical analysis of all the relevant
research on a topic, “a study of studies”) have established that as the
number of sets increase, both strength [7] and hypertrophy [8] adaptations
are enhanced as well (up to a point, more on this shortly). Also, to skip
ahead a bit to the intensity section of this chapter, the rep- range used in a
given set can be quite broad for the goal of hypertrophy.
Authors of a 2018 systematic review [9] pointed out that in the ~6–20 rep
range, when sets are adequately hard (near enough to failure), it seems that
number of sets is a strong predictor of hypertrophy and that if all else was
equal, 3x6–8 would probably produce similar hypertrophy to 3x15–20.
Briefly, if you do a low-load high-rep set, each individual rep provides less
tension, but you can do more reps and as fatigue builds, more muscle
fibers are forced to come to the party. Thus, the net stimulus ends up being
similar to a high-load lower-rep set where each rep stimulates most, if not all
fibers, but doesn’t last as long—the only caveat is that too few reps in a set
(less than ~6) doesn’t allow enough time/repetitions to get a full stimulus.
For strength, it’s similar. While it is true that there is a relationship with
the number of sets and strength development, unlike hypertrophy [8], the
magnitude of this relationship is weaker. Specifically, the differences between
the effects of 1–4, 5–9, and 10–12 sets per week on strength, are only
statistically clear when comparing 1–4 vs. 5–12 sets, and while present, only
statistically qualify as being “small” differences [7].
Hypertrophy is just one of many components of strength and as I
mentioned in the previous section, strength is highly specific to the rep range
you train with. This is important because strength is measured via a 1RM in
research. Meaning, if all else were equal and you compared a matched
number of sets of moderately heavy training in the 3–5 rep range to very
heavy sets in the 1–3 rep range, you might end up getting a similar strength
response. Why? Because the 3–5 rep training (probably 80–85% 1RM) is less
specific than the 1–3 rep training (probably 90–

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95% 1RM) compared to the strength test: 100% of 1RM. But, the 3–5 rep
training produces almost twice the reps and time spent contracting with
maximal force (since both are really heavy) compared to the 1–3 rep per set
training. Meaning, if sets were equated you’d expect to get a greater
hypertrophy response from doing 3–5 reps per set, which might make up for
the slightly lessened neuromuscular adaptations due to being less specific,
resulting in similar net strength gains just via slightly different mechanisms.
When you get to the progression chapter and sample strength programs, you’ll
see how you can try to target the various physiological mechanisms which
maximize strength through blocks of training with slightly different, but
complementary volume, intensity, and frequency setups.
To sum things up, a valid, practical and effective way to track volume for
both hypertrophy and strength is to count the number of sets performed in
a given “intensity zone” or rep range, as the number of sets loosely
represents the stimulus, up to a point.

Strength, Hypertrophy and Volume —

A Dose-Response Relationship Up to a Point
Looking at studies with matched intensities and frequencies, it’s apparent that
strength [10] and hypertrophy [11] have a dose-response relationship with
volume. Meaning, as you do more volume, you gain more strength and
hypertrophy.
However, this is by no means a linear relationship. Indeed, the initial sets you
perform give you “more bang for your buck” and as you pile on more sets,
your return on investment diminishes further and further. Eventually, you get
to a point where as you add sets no additional progress is made, then if you
continue to add sets, progress comes slower than if you were doing fewer sets.
Eventually, if you keep adding sets, you can overdo it so much that you
actually plateau, making no progress or even regressing.

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VOLUME AND PROGRESS

Volume level where

Volume level that has a progress plateaus despite
dose-response relationship volume increases
with progress
PROGRES

Volume level where rate

of progress declines
with volume increases

VOLUME

Effective Training
Over-reaching if fatigue is managed, non functional over-reaching if is not
Non functional over-reaching leading to over training if unmanaged

Demonstrating this “U-shaped” relationship between volume and progress,

there are studies where greater gains in strength [12] and hypertrophy [13]
are observed in moderate volume groups compared to both lower and
higher volume groups.
Furthermore, illustrating the far right of this U-shaped relationship (where
you really don’t want to be), there are studies where very high volume
groups actually made no progress compared to baseline [14] or even regressed
[15], while a lower volume group made more progress. What this
demonstrates is that increasing volume too much can lead to a fatigued state
where there is an imbalance of fitness and fatigue. We call this ‘non-
functional overreaching’ If left unchecked or if the volume is pushed further,
eventually a state of ‘overtraining’ can occur (more on these terms to
come).
Essentially, this means reaching a state where each additional increase of
volume actually has a negative effect as it eats into recuperative abilities
[16]. So yes, we could add sets almost endlessly by taking long rest intervals,
quitting our jobs and reducing the weight as needed to keep doing more
reps, but that is neither time-efficient nor advisable.

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Volume, as a general rule, will need to increase over a training career;

however, it should only increase when and as needed to progress.

The Fitness-Fatigue Model

To help you understand the relationship between volume and progress, and
why more is not always better, let’s discuss what is known as the Fitness-
Fatigue Model.
As the name would suggest, this is a two-factor model looking at both
fitness and fatigue. Both are generated from training; fatigue masks fitness and
therefore affects performance [17]. Let’s quickly define those terms:

� Fitness is the physical capability that we have achieved as a result of

training. As we continue to effectively train, it improves gradually over
time.
� Fatigue is also a result of training. It is generated in proportion to
the workload and the intensity of the workload performed. It is also
generated based on how fatigue resistant you are. Fatigue resistance, or
workload capacity, increases over time as you adapt to greater and
greater training stresses. However, fatigue resistance (your ability to
recover) can also be hindered or helped by external factors such as
sleep, nutrition, life stress, menstrual cycle phase, and other
environmental factors.
� Performance is Fitness minus Fatigue. Now, other external factors
also affect performance, like when the gym is too hot, using equipment
that you are unfamiliar with, or when you are mentally affected by
other stresses or distractions not related to training. Therefore, you
cannot completely isolate your performance to the balance of fitness
and fatigue, but their relationship is one of the largest components
determining performance.

Acutely, when you train hard and get tired it is intuitively obvious that you
cannot lift as heavy or as many times as when you are fresh. Think about if
you squat your one rep max, drop the weight by 20% and bang out a set of
five, sprint around a 400-meter track, and then come back to the squat rack
—your one rep max is going to be considerably less in this “fatigued” state.
However, if you give yourself time to recover you

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could do it again.
The Fitness-Fatigue Model helps to capture this effect on a session to session
basis, over the course of a typical training week, and over the course of a
training cycle. It is exceptionally useful in helping to explain not only the
importance of breaks between training sessions but why we need to include
some periodization in our training plans and why volume should not just be
added endlessly on a whim.

EFFECT OF A SINGLE SESSION ON FITNESS AND PERFORMANCE

Fitness Fatigue Performance

TIME
Before Training Post Training After Recovery
Time

In the graph, you can see that before training, there is a small level of
residual fatigue from previous training sessions. Post training, fitness
increases due to the training effect, but fatigue increases also, masking the
positive effect on performance. After some recovery time, fatigue drops to
baseline and the increase to performance is apparent (shown by the increase
in the size of the yellow performance bar overall).

Normal Adaptations to Training

With normal adaptations to training, performance increases over time.
However, if we look at the performance changes in a single week’s time
frame, we can see that the performance curve fluctuates despite fitness
increasing due to the effect of fatigue.

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THE FITNESS-FATIGUE MODEL — CHANGES IN PERFORMANCE

OVER A TYPICAL WEEK

Fitness
Performance

Fatigue

With each training session, both fitness and fatigue go up, but then as the
latter dissipates this will prompt a rise in performance. Over a larger time
frame, if progressive overload is continually applied, the performance
curve will continue upward with the fitness line. Well, ideally that is, but
of course, things aren’t always that simple.

Overreaching and Overtraining

As you train you develop both fitness and fatigue; however, to advance in
training age the push to create progressive overload often results in the
accumulation of residual fatigue. When residual fatigue surpasses your
increases in fitness, performance will be negatively affected—you won’t be
able to train as hard or as heavy.
There are two outcomes that can occur at this point, one being an extension
of the other.
The first outcome is that you enter a state of ‘overreaching’. In this case if
you let the fatigue dissipate with planned lower stress days or weeks that
are incorporated into a periodized plan (often called ‘deloads’), performance
comes back, and hopefully returns to a level that you perhaps couldn’t have
achieved if you had not overreached in the first place [18]. Meaning, overload
is required to drive adaptation in experienced lifters, and overload also
produces fatigue, which acutely suppresses performance. This fatigue needs
to be managed, and if the balance between recovery and overload is
appropriate, it should result in an increase in performance. This type of
overreaching would be deemed ‘functional’.

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On the other hand, if performance was not enhanced, but simply returned to
baseline or didn’t result in any better outcome than had you not
overreached in the first place, that would be considered ‘nonfunctional’.
It’s worth pointing out, that there are always normal fluctuations in
training performance, and in fact, training in a “fatigued state” is not
necessarily a bad thing. Depending on training age, the time frame of your
goals, your workload capacity, and the structure of your training, training
in a fatigued state may be a normal or necessary occurrence. However, at
some point, dictated by the periodization strategy being employed,
performance should be seen to eventually improve.
The second outcome is an extreme extension of overreaching, and that is
overtraining. In this case, fatigue has gotten so high that it prevents you
from doing training of a high enough quality to increase or even maintain
fitness, and you start to regress. This rarely occurs with resistance training,
takes a longer period of time to reach this state, and subsequently requires a
longer period than a simple taper or deload to resolve [16].
Personally, I have only seen resistance-trained athletes reach this state in two
populations, competitive bodybuilders during contest preparation and
CrossFit competitors who have to balance resistance training at a high
intensity and volume with other fitness goals. So, don’t worry that you will
reach a state of overtraining all of a sudden; rather, you’ll see signs of it
coming in advance.
With the case of overreaching, the fatigue is manageable with the planned
variations in stress that come from your periodized approach. This may be
a short period where volume and/or intensity is reduced; however, with
overtraining the fatigue has become unmanageable and a considerably
longer recovery period is needed [16]. Functional overreaching is desired
(and can be seen as an inevitable consequence of any program that supplies
adequate overload for trained lifters), but nonfunctional overreaching and
overtraining need to be avoided.
This is an important concept, so I’ll explain it once again with some graphs
just so that it sticks. Before that though, I need to quickly explain the often
misunderstood concepts of ‘deloading’ and ‘tapering.’
Deloading or Tapering means to reduce training volume in order to let

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fatigue go down and express your full potential (fitness) in the form of
performance. Tapering normally refers to when this approach is used prior
to a competition. This is a strategy not only used by strength athletes such as
powerlifters and weightlifters, but also by athletes in sports such as triathlon,
track and field, and endurance events that have a single- day competition.
The process involves timing your best condition for the competition day,
called ‘peaking’, and tapering is an important part of that process. We’ll
come back to the specifics of tapering in Level 3: Progression, but for now,
just think of tapering as a purposeful reduction in volume to let residual
fatigue subside for competition.
Deloading is simply when this process is utilized outside of competition
within a training phase. Fatigue dissipates at a faster rate than fitness,
which is why deloads can be such useful tools. It’s important to note that
every periodization model ever designed, and every logical approach to
training for any sport includes purposeful periods (be they days, weeks or
training blocks), where training stress is purposely low. This is not only to
allow for recovery and fatigue dissipation, but also to prompt better gains
in the subsequent training to come. This is an important concept, because
many overzealous trainees focus only on the recovery aspect, convincing
themselves that they don’t need a deload (you can always convince
yourself you can push through more), forgetting that these periods are not
only in place to dissipate fatigue but also to prepare them for the training to
come and make it more effective.
All good? Excellent, let’s delve into those graphs.

THE FITNESS-FATIGUE MODEL — CHANGES IN PERFORMANCE DUE

TO ‘FUNCTIONAL OVERREACHING’ IN A TRAINING CYCLE

Fitness
Performanc

Fatig

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The left half of the graph represents a level of volume with normal training
adaptations. That is to say that fatigue is maintained within a certain range
(represented by the horizontal red line) and fitness and performance go up
continuously over time.
1. At a certain point, training volume is increased—the trainee is
attempting to push the envelope and increase their rate of progress,
which causes fitness and fatigue to go up sharply. Performance starts
to decrease because the residual fatigue is outpacing the increases in
fitness.
2. The trainee notices the decrease in performance; however, they are
either stubborn and don’t want to decrease volume, or they are aware
that a period of functional overreaching can help push them to new
levels of fitness over the longer term, so they decide to not taper
volume at this time.
3. At the point of the grey dotted line, the trainee guesses that any
further continuation of the current level of training volume will be
harmful to long-term progress. Either grudgingly or strategically,
training volume is tapered to let fatigue dissipate before fitness levels
are affected.
4. Fitness levels are maintained with the reduced volume, residual fatigue
dissipates, performance reaches a new level, PRs are had, and there is
much rejoicing.

THE FITNESS-FATIGUE MODEL—CHANGES IN PERFORMANCE

DUE TO ‘NONFUNCTIONAL OVERREACHING,’ LEADING TO
OVERTRAINING IN A TRAINING CYCLE

Fitness
Performanc

Fatig

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1. Up until the first dotted line we have the same scenario as in the
overreaching explanation.
2. However, in this case, the trainee decides to not decrease volume. This
isn’t too uncommon—the trainee sees that their performance has been
decreasing but they put it down to a bad run of training sessions, or
maybe they actually take those posters seriously that say, “Pain is
weakness leaving the body,” decide that the issue is that they haven’t
been doing enough volume, and they make another increase.
3. The increasing fatigue causes a faster drop in performance. It is not
possible to train in a manner that is sufficient to sustain training
adaptations, and fitness goes down.
4. The trainee realizes their mistake and tapers training volume
considerably at the point of the second dotted line. But, it takes a
considerable time before fatigue dissipates, performance comes back,
and training can be resumed to a level that will start to improve
fitness.

In reality, most people will naturally stop before they corner themselves to
such an extent due to the psychological and/or physical discomfort. When
not planned for, and when this occurs due to stubbornness and an
overzealous attitude, typically this just results in ‘nonfunctional
overreaching’. The person returns to a normal level of fitness (assuming they
weren’t injured) in a week or two, but in the end, made no progress. This
“wheel spinning” is very common, while true overtraining is rare in
strength and physique athletes. But nonetheless, it’s important to be aware
that when we train hard and performance doesn’t seem to improve, if we
push ourselves even harder, it can backfire.

Increase Volume as Your Fitness Improves

So, too much volume is counterproductive as it accumulates too much
fatigue. But it is also true that for the most part, strength and hypertrophy
gains increase with more volume.
When you have been training for a while and have made good strength and
mass gains, but have plateaued with your current training, in order

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An Aside: Balance Volume, Life, and Fatigue to Ensure Adherence

and Sustainability
When we increase volume, it can cause more fatigue. However, as we
mentioned in the previous chapter discussing adherence, our bodies are
exposed to many different types of stress that affect performance [19], not
only training.
Given that, to ensure maximum sustainability it may be best to consider an
amount of volume that leaves some reserve in our tank rather than really
pushing the limit every day. Serious athletes may need to take things
closer to the edge to get the best results possible, but also remember that for
a competitive athlete the consequences of reaching a state of overtraining are
larger. There’s no one size fits all answer like “everyone will be happy
with 5 sets regardless” and you will need to take many different factors
into account. As mentioned earlier, use critical thinking, be careful not to
be black and white, but it’s not a bad idea to be conservative and allow a
bit of a buffer when choosing how much training stress to pile on.

to make more progress you may need to increase volume. You will not
necessarily want to add volume each training day, week, or even month,
but increasing volume gradually over your training career as necessary,
may be needed for progression [20].

A good way to think about volume over your career is to do enough

volume to progress and only to increase it when progress has plateaued
(assuming you are recovering normally). This is a much smarter choice than
constantly putting yourself in the hole with fatigue by adding volume
prematurely and having to drop volume back and taper all the time. Also
remember, that if you are lifting heavier loads, even if reps and sets are the
same, that is an indication that progressive overload has occurred and you
are adapting.

Remember, this is long-term stuff. Our coaching service is called “3D

Muscle Journey”, not “3D Muscle Tomorrow”. It’s going to take time, it’s
going to take commitment and it’s going to take adherence. In order to do
that, you must be able to manage your fatigue.

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Volume Recommendations
“Do enough to progress, not as much as possible. Increase when
plateaued if you are recovering well.”

I can’t tell you how often trainees try to justify to themselves doing more,
and more, and more, when in fact they don’t need to. Some of you may
feel like I’m hammering this point home over and over and beating a dead
horse, but indulge me. Invariably, some of you will latch onto the statements
I’ve made at certain points in this text such as “strength and hypertrophy
gains increase with volume” and ignore that I’ve also said you can do too
much and that in fact doing too much can be counterproductive.
To help you avoid this mistake, I want to appeal to your intellect by
pointing out a couple of key studies that should curb your appetite to buy
into the “more is always better” attitude that is so pervasive in the
bodybuilding community.
The first is a study that was done by Gonzalez-Badillo and colleagues in 2005
[12]. This study looked at young, healthy, well-trained competitive male
weightlifters performing three levels of volume on the back squat, snatch,
clean and jerk, and accessory lifts for 10 weeks. One group performed 1923
repetitions over this period, one group performed 2481 repetitions, and the
last group performed 3030 repetitions. All groups progressed in strength;
however, the moderate volume group performing 2481 repetitions progressed
the most.
For those interested in hypertrophy and not strength, consider a study done by
Heaselgrave and colleagues in 2018 [13]. In it, three groups of trained males
performed either 9, 18, or 27 total sets consisting of curls, rows and pulldowns
to try to establish the dose-response relationship between volume and biceps
growth. While significant growth from baseline occurred in all groups, the
moderate volume group performing 18 sets per week in total had meaningfully
greater increases in their biceps muscle thickness than the low or high volume
groups. Again, hypertrophy still occurred in the groups performing a higher or
lower number of sets, but like strength in the Gonzalez-Badillo study, there
was a “sweet spot”.

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