Strength or Volume to Increase Muscle Mass?

Increasing muscle is known as hypertrophy. Many clients I see still believe that ‘getting bigger’ is about getting stronger and lifting the heaviest weight possible. Whilst this is partly true, on its own it is slightly misleading, (they are mistaking hypertrophy training for strength training) and it only represents one third of the equation.

Getting bigger is more the effect of lifting increasing amounts of volume over a given period of time rather than just lifting a really heavy weight for a few reps.. Volume actually out ranks strength when getting bigger but the stronger you are the more volume you are likely to be able to work through so strength can be viewed as a building block of getting bigger.

What is Volume?

Volume is classified as your total reps x total sets x load per each lift

(reps x sets x load for short).

When calculating volume you can look at:

• The volume of a particular muscle per session

• The volume of a particular muscle per week

• The volume of any particular session per week.

• The total volume of all sessions combined per week

How Do We Increase Volume?

Within a single session, there are 3 ways:

1) Increase reps

2) Increase sets

3) Increase load

Note: There is a 4th way to increase volume and that is to increase frequency, (add an extra session per week) but I am alleviating this method as most clients are time squeezed already so asking them to find an extra evening to train seldom goes down well…I know, I’ve seen the way they stare at me when I suggest it!)

In reality at some stage you will need to cycle through all three of the above methods over the course of a year. Here’s why:

Increase Reps

If all you did was increase reps, you would end up doing sets of 30 reps. Try doing 3 sets of 30 reps for squats and see how you feel both physically and mentally by set 3! Added, your session would take an ever increasing amount of time which isn’t practical for most. Lastly, whilst studies have shown some men still increased muscle mass at 30 reps, some of the participants threw up by rep 30!

Increase Sets

Doing an extra set will definitely increase your total volume but there is something called Maximum Recoverable Volume which is the maximum amount of volume you can lift and still be fresh for your next session. If all you did was increase the number of sets you complete, you would eventually find yourself over-training and feeling exhausted by the latter part of the week. If you can squat 50kg and do 10 reps per set, one set is work 500kg of volume. Therefore adding just one set of squats increases your total volume by a huge amount. Overtraining can lead to injury which leads to enforced rest and recovery which leads to a massive drop in training volume…the opposite of what you are wanting.

Increase Load

There is a finite amount of strength you will ever gain. If there wasn’t, we would all end up being able to lift cars. You will eventually hit a strength plateau and have to focus on other variables to increase volume.

Putting it All Together

Above I have given you the drawback of each method of increasing volume. So what is the answer? The answer is you do all three at different stages.

The other pre-requisite of hypertrophy is lifting more than about 65% of your 1 rep max.

If you have never done a 1 rep max effort and don’t like the idea of stressing your body that intensely, there are online calculators that will take your best 3, 5, 7 or 10 rep max and approximate what your 1 rep max would be. Just be aware that the higher the reps you use, the less accurate the calculator will be.

Therefore, you will need to increase your strength at some stage in order to lift more volume. But you can’t continually increase strength so when you hit that plateau you could turn your attention to adding a rep or two using the same weight. These extra reps will further increase volume.

If you are new to training, adding a set on every couple of weeks is a very effective way of increasing volume and even those who are experienced lifters can benefit from this by increasing one set per week for 4 weeks before having a de-load week to recover from the peak week’s maximal load. This help to prevent injury. This style of training is known as periodisation and below is an example of a 6 week periodised plan using increased volumes:

Week 1 – 3 sets of 8 reps

Week 2 – 3 sets of 9 reps

Week 3 – 3 sets of 10 reps

Week 4 – 4 sets of 8 reps

Week 5 – 5 sets of 8 reps

Week 6 – 6 sets of 8 reps

Week 7 – Recovery week

#stress #fitness #workout