-: All right, so we weren't originally sure
if we'd include this in the seminar
but it's a question I get a lot.
Like I'm sure a lot of you are sort of familiar
with the idea of set progression across a mesocycle.
And there's, you know,
groups that are big advocates of doing that.
And Eric Helms and I wrote,
so Mike Israetel, Jared Feather,
like I, you know, respect both of them a lot,
but they wrote a a paper about
mesocycle progression for hypertrophy.
And then we wrote like basically a rebuttal paper to it.
But so in the paper they proposed,
you know, weekly set progression
should be prioritized over load progression.
And I think it's important to point out here
like they weren't saying don't add weight.
They were saying like, don't go from like a 10 RM
to an eight RM to a six RM, you know, across a mesocycle.
And on the surface, the rationale seems sound,
but there's some things to consider here.
So the crux of their argument,
we know there's a dose response relationship
between set volume and hypertrophy.
And depending on which paper you read,
that can be very, very pronounced,
up to, I don't know what the Schoenfeld paper was.
I mean, there was an astronomical amount of sets.
It was like 30, 40 sets per body part per week or something.
But in general, you know,
you're going to see this bell curve, this inverted U-curve.
So we know up to a point, you know,
hypertrophy is going to increase and then either plateau or,
you know, if you really overdo it,
start to, you know, go down.
And so we know that that relationship is intact,
but we also know based off of plenty of meta-analytic data
that similar hypertrophy can occur
across a spectrum of loading ranges.
So even though we're not saying six to 30,
you know, a set of six and a set of 30
are the exact same stimulus, they're not,
but in the duration of the studies being examined anyway,
hypertrophy is pretty similar.
And I think the overall theme here
is it's not load dependent.
Like we know we can grow with light loads.
We know we can grow with heavier loads,
assuming set volume's adequate.
So because of that,
if load doesn't really matter and volume does,
why should we focus on load progression?
Shouldn't we just progress volume?
So, and then they had argued
that the reduction in reps and increase in load,
so like kind of a linear theme across the block
would be suboptimal for hypertrophy.
And this wasn't, if I recall,
this wasn't included in their actual paper,
but I think it was on a blog post maybe of theirs
or something,
but the idea of like the minimal effective dose
is going to increase pretty rapidly.
Like you think of that curve that I showed you yesterday,
it's like the argument would be you would benefit
from an addition of sets on a weekly basis, potentially,
because that curve is gonna shift at a pretty rapid rate.
In novices, that could potentially be true.
But in advanced athletes,
we talked about how
that curve shifts relatively slowly, right?
So the idea of like needing to add sets
to stay above your minimal effective dose,
like that really only would be the case
if you're chronically training
at your minimum effective dose.
'Cause if you're somewhere in the middle,
if you don't add sets,
like probably the worst thing that can happen
is you shift a little bit on the left side of that curve.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
So main arguments against,
like in the research,
like this question hasn't been answered, basically.
The research that's showing this dose response,
they're looking at groups
with different volume prescriptions
across like a given time period.
So like an eight week time period, you know,
one group doing, you know, less than five sets,
one group doing 10 sets,
one group doing, you know, 15 or 20.
They're not examining the effects of volume increases
within that timeframe.
So groups aren't, you know,
accruing more volume from week one to week eight.
There is one study that we cited in our paper from Klemp,
but I think they went from like 10 to 32 sets per week
and I think at the halfway point
they had saw like this increase in hypertrophy from like,
I think it was maybe a 12 week study,
from week one to week six, they saw this increase
going from 10 to, like, might have been 20 sets.
But then from week six to week 12, they saw a plateau.
Like they didn't see any additional benefit from that.
So that's some indirect evidence looking at this idea,
but certainly supports the idea
that there's kind of a sweet spot for volume.
And then this is the big thing.
Like I've had people ask me like,
"Okay, so are you against adding sets?"
And that's not the case, either.
I think with anything here,
like we talk about like metabolic stress
and its role in hypertrophy,
we can't say with certainty,
but that doesn't mean that it's not a thing.
Like it's just a hard thing to tease out.
And so until this research is done,
like we can't rule it out.
So absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
is a a good thing to keep in mind.
And then there's just a lack of any evidence
that we're aware of that supported the idea
that increasing load and decreasing reps across a mesocycle
was decreasingly stimulative or more fatiguing.
In fact, higher rep ranges, like we've discussed,
just tend to be more fatiguing.
The perceived discomfort tends to be higher, as well, so.
And then there's a potential increase of injury risk,
you know, going from, you know, three sets,
or, I'm sorry, like 10 sets to 20 sets, for example,
across a mesocycle, like doubling your volume.
And I'm not saying that's what they advocate all the time,
but you know, depending on your magnitude of increase,
it could be a pretty large increase in workload
that could become problematic pretty quickly.
And then the other thing to keep in mind,
like there's a diminishing rate of hypertrophy
with additional sets.
So going from like five sets per week to 10 sets,
it results in like a 36% increase, something like that,
from one of Schoenfeld's meta-analyses,
but it's not 100%.
Like it's significantly less.
Like as you add additional sets,
your return on that investment gets smaller and smaller.
So kind of keep that in mind.
Like if there's a potential increase in injury
with less to gain, you know,
then it's something to keep in mind.
But it's also like if you're in the gym
and you are planning four sets but you only get to three,
it doesn't mean you're gonna get, you know,
75% of the progress you would have.
It's probably higher than that.
So it's kind of a good thing to keep in mind
in that regard, too.
All right, so when may an addition of sets be warranted?
So like we discussed earlier,
if work capacity is lower
or you're fighting a lot of fatigue from one set to the next
you go a little bit more submaximal,
add some sets to make up.
And then is performance improving over time?
And this is sort of just looking at a program,
and a lot of people just simply don't do this.
And it's kind of obvious,
but people are looking at what should be optimal on paper,
but they're not really looking at
what their training is actually doing.
So if you're performing well and you're trending up,
even if you're doing lower volume
than maybe you think you should be doing,
like that tells you
you're above that stimulus threshold at least.
Like at the minimum, you could probably keep doing
that amount of volume and still progress.
Like you don't have to add volume,
but,
you know, if it is,
then we know we're operating above that.
So thing to keep in mind, that stimulus threshold,
it's influenced by adaptations,
not what you did the session prior.
Like your muscle doesn't know
how much weight and reps you did, you know, the day before.
So if it's not improving over time,
the first thing you wanna do is audit
kind of your behaviors here.
So sleep, energy balance, that's a big one,
protein intake, stress.
Because if none of those are at a reasonable level,
like adding volume is just gonna make
the situation worse, right,
'cause all of those relate to recovery and, you know,
you should kind of know like no one that feels destroyed
and they're not progressing things,
like, "Maybe I just need to add more volume."
You know? (Brian laughing)
Like, so it's something that, subjectively,
I think most people probably know,
but if recovery's in check
and the other thing on this list that I should have added,
especially considering this seminar,
is like exercise execution and selection.
So I've had people that have come to me.
Like I had an athlete that said like
his pecs were a huge weakness for him.
And he's like, "Yeah, in the past,
"like I've needed like 30 sets of pressing a week
"to get it to move."
And I thought like that seems kind of hard to believe.
And so, you know, he sent video over
and just his execution of the movement just wasn't,
it was just a lot of delt and much less pec,
and his delts showed that.
So, what went from him thinking
like 30 was his minimum effective dose,
all of a sudden, you know, we refined his technique
and he's back at a much more reasonable amount of volume.
So audit exercise selection.
You know, if you're going with more complex movements
like we talked about,
you may find that, you know,
that set volume that was putting you
in a more fatigued state
could now put you right where you want to be.
So, you know, you tend to be able to handle that volume
a little bit better when things are more directed.
All right, so if you're feeling healthy,
know you're already operating, you know,
below optimal set volume for a movement,
like if you historically have performed well
at a given volume,
you know, you're well below that,
then, yeah, you can definitely increase there.
So Cass, we had talked about this some
and this was kind of a question I had put
just for open discussion,
but
how do you know
where you're at in terms of that curve?
Like what ways would you guys use to assess
where you're at there?
'Cause we never know definitively if we're in the middle.
There's not a right or wrong answer here;
it's just like, in your experience,
when have you decided to add volume for somebody?
Cass: Say they're controlling well,
then maybe go easy,
say that they know that hey can work and (indistinct).
-: Yeah.
Cass: And watch them (indistinct)
and display that they can, then I say let's go for it.
-: Yeah.
Cass: Worst case, they don't make it and we adjust.
-: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I think, yeah, if they feel healthy,
I think, is the big thing.
If they're healthy and they feel good
and they're progressing,
I sometimes, and you know,
he and I may have differing opinions on this,
if someone's healthy and progressing well
for their training status,
I tend to be more reluctant to add volume in those cases
because it's hard to know,
like, it's kind of a gamble either way.
Like you don't know definitively if it's gonna help.
It could make things worse.
And so if you are, and you're like,
"Okay, maybe we're a little bit on the left side there,"
be conservative with those increases.
Like don't increase their volume by 50%
or anything like that.
Do you have anything else there?
-: I mean, some personal anecdotes that I've used.
I mean, the first thing is
you're using your recovery as your barometer
of if it's even an option, right?
So that just has to be a given.
So, yeah, if you are feeling healthy.
So you can look at with your training,
like I guess the simplest way that I would put this is
if my recovery seems really good,
I try and do one set that I didn't want to do.
-: Okay.
-: That's kind of like my way of kind of measuring that
and like, I'm like, all right,
I figured that like within the training session,
if I did one set that I didn't wanna do, right,
that means that like probably the next set
is where I would've seen that significant drop off-
-: Yeah.
-: In performance and return.
But you kind of have to gauge what that fatigue is,
because if that fatigue carries outside of the session,
then you probably overdid it.
But if you do that one set that you didn't wanna do
just because of the session, the fatigue within the session,
but then you don't see that residual fatigue
negatively impact you out of it
and your recovery seems good,
I think, if I had to guess,
like of something that's just super practical
that might be like kind of where to be.
-: Yeah. -: Right?
'Cause that is what we're trying to do, right?
We're trying to drive stimulus.
And that means like if we're gonna be
at the top of that bell curve,
that means like we have to be pushing that boundary
of when we would be going over, right?
And the only way that we're knowing we're way back,
you know, on the left side,
where it's like we're doing too little
is we're not making progress.
So how do we know we're making progress as fast as we can?
We can look for progress to slow down.
We can look for progress to speed up.
And in the moment we can be like,
all right, well, if I know that the goal is overload, right,
and that's like, well, okay, to overload my system
I probably need to do just a little bit more
than what my body wants to do, right?
That's essentially what we're trying to do
with progressive overload on a micro level,
and on a macro level,
I'm just looking at that from a fatigue standpoint
of like, all right,
progressive overload for like maintaining that in a session
is just doing slightly more
than my body would've been just like,
"Yeah, that's our thing, that's what we do.
"We can go now."
It's like, yeah, and then just a little bit more
so that the next time, that threshold's set-
-: Yeah. -: A little bit higher.
-: Yeah, I think it's important, too,
like if you think of that curve,
like what is causing the right side of that curve
to even exist?
Like why does it go down and not go infinitely up?
It's because of our ability to adapt to the stimulus,
like our recovery.
So using proxies for recovery, you know, within a session
and, you know,
paying attention to performance in subsequent sessions
is gonna provide quite a bit of information there.
-: Yep.
And I think performance drops are valuable.
So, I won't tend to progress like into multiple performance,
or I won't tend to do sets into multiple performance drops.
-: Right. -: Right?
I kind of think like for the most part,
it's like once you start losing reps
or start losing load, right,
usually like the next set,
it's like you lose it exponentially more.
-: Yeah.
-: And then it only goes down from that.
So that could be a sign that you're moving a little bit,
you're about to tip over to the right, right?
And I would say anecdotally,
when I usually do that one set that I don't want to do,
it's usually still very close to the performance
or a very, very subtle drop, right?
It's that next set,
the one you really don't wanna do,
that's usually the one
where you see like that big performance drop.
-: Yeah.
-: So, I think when people break that rule
and they just see like random performance drops
all over the place,
I think in that case, it's not so much a volume issue.
It's a work capacity or a conditioning issue
that could be managed by just getting in better shape
or managing their rest intervals.
It's not so much that it was the number of sets.
It was more so that the rest intervals
or you're just simply way too outta shape
for the type of training that you're trying to do.
-: Cool.
Does anybody have any questions?
Nothing?
-: Going once.
Parking lot, like,
you guys familiar with the parking lot scenario?
This means that the question that you're gonna ask
when we get off the stage and we're walking to our cars,
ask them now.
Yes, no?
Everybody good?
Okay, cool.
Thank you, Brian.
-: Yep.
All right.
(audience applauding)