How Much Workout Volume to MAXIMIZE Muscle Growth? (Based on Science)

All right, what's going on, everybody? And welcome to the Built With Science podcast. You're here with your boys, Daniel Plotkin and yours truly, Max Coleman. And today we are going to be talking about volume. We're going to talk about what it is, how we measure it, its interplay with other variables, and of course, some special considerations over a training career with respect to volume. But before we get into any of that, of course, Danny, why don't you go ahead and tell us what volume is in the first place?

So volume is quantified in a lot of different ways, but for the purposes of this conversation, we're just going to consider volume as hard sets. So sets that are taken near or to failure, do you want to go through, like, some ways that volume is quantified and touch upon them for a short amount of time, or do you.

Want to just hop three ways to track volume. Essentially, there's reps, time sets, times, load, obviously. And then you have reps, times, sets, times load, times distance, moved. And then of course, the one that we're going to be talking about on this podcast, obviously, and full disclosure, the one that Danny and I both use, how we track volume for ourselves and for our clients is just number of heart sets. So I don't think we need to delve too much into each individual thing. Did I say. Did I say one wrong?

No, I just. How dare you Forget about effective reps. How dare you.

That is true. I did forget. I did forget about effective reps. I'm sorry. I apologize. So four ways of tracking volume, I suppose. No, but I do want to touch on. So before we even touch on how we go about tracking volume, I know that there's a lot of discrepancies for body parts. So like, for instance, a of meta analysis that we're going to touch on obviously here in a second track volume for like the biceps. Like, they would count rows as a, as a back and a bicep exercise. How do. How do you fall?

So when reading research, definitely go with what they, you know, say how they're counting reps or how they're counting hard sets. So for the purposes of research, they count rows and pull ups and bicep curls all as one. So one set toward the bicep. But when I count my sets for my own training, I'll generally do a mix of things. So I'll usually count like intensity techniques as somewhere above 1, usually 1, 5. And I'll count muscle and intensity techniques.

Just in case anyone doesn't know things like drop Sets, supersets, whatever, myo reps, stuff like that.

And then in terms of muscle regions, so parts of muscle groups, I'll count them slightly differently. So to my knowledge, for any exercise that pertains to the quad, they'll count it as one for the quad, while I don't count, like, the rec fem in the squat, for example, or the hamstring in the squat, and so on. So I'll give zero to those for my own training. While in research, they'll count that as one toward legs and so on. Same thing for the tricep. So with the long head of the tricep, I'll count only certain volume toward the long head and not for the short head, and so on.

And I think I just. Whatever you do. So actually, full disclosure, Danny and I actually track our volume differently. So, Daniel, if I'm, you know, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can out, like, I don't know, like, half a set for your triceps for, like, pressing movements and stuff like that, right? So I don't do that. I just in the back of my head, know how much, how many sets of pressing that I'm doing, and I keep that in mind for triceps. And then you'll note that if you, like, looked at my program on paper, compared to Daniel's program on paper, like, my biceps and tricep volumes would be a lot lower technically, because I don't count those pulling and pressing movements. Ultimately, as long as you're consistent with the way you track your own volume and the volume of your clients, it doesn't matter. The super, you know, specific ways of tracking volume, as long as you stick with what you like. Right. And as long as if it's usually helpful to do kind of what Daniel does, in my opinion, because it makes sure that all your P's and Q's are in order, whereas the way that I do it, I kind of just have to be a little bit more cognizant of the types of, like, back and chest work I'm doing. For instance, with Daniel's thing, he takes into account immediately, but let's say I'm doing way more flies than pressing normally in this mesocycle or whatever. I have to know in the back of my head, okay, I probably need a little bit more direct tricep work, whereas the way that Daniel programs, it's already kind of worked in there. So both totally fine options. I obviously like mine more and Daniel obviously likes his more, but they both. They both get the job done, obviously. Okay, so I think that's pretty good with what volume is. So for the purposes of this podcast, volume and for the purposes of in perpetuity as far as I'm concerned, is just the number of hard sets for any given muscle group. Right. And that is presumably anywhere from, you know, I would assume less than five reps in reserve. Right. Some degree of proximity to failure to count it as a hard set. Right. So like warm up sets, for instance, wouldn't count. Okay, cool. So I think we've got a good idea of, you know, what it is and how both of us track it. Now let's talk about why it's important. Why is volume something that we should care about as, as people who just want to get as jacked as possible?

Yeah. So just to touch upon one thing before we jump into that, I think we, beyond counting certain regions of muscles, we also sort of bake into the pie that some things, maybe there's some exercises may be more hypertrophic than others. So just because something's counted as one hard set doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to produce the same exact amount of hypertrophy as another. It's just a simple way of doing things. We're not claiming that this way is the best and all encompassing. We're saying that this is a really good starting point while we consider other things. So I think that's really important to point out, but in terms of why it's important, it's important because you want to make sure that you're at least to near the sweet spot of what you can do in the gym to maximize hypertrophic outcomes. So how much work can I do to get near the optimal range of muscle mass gained? And that's gonna be slightly different for what your goal is. So if your goal is the most weight on the bar, that's gonna be a different thing and you're gonna be primarily focused on like, all right, how many sets can I do in order to make sure that load is maximized on the bar? While here we're just trying to get quality sets in as more of the metric we lean into in order to get muscle size outcomes as opposed to any other, you know, less morphological outcome.

So it's just literally, it's just a really good measurement for the amount of dose of the drug that we're getting, so to speak. The drug being resistance training, obviously in this particular case, which is, I mean, kind of self explanatory, why it's important, you know, you you people often ask what's more important, intensity or volume. And it's like asking what's more important, salt or tablespoons. Because a tablespoon is just a measurement of how much salt you're using. And generally speaking, volume is just a measurement of how much and how much intensity you're exposing your muscle to. I. This is kind of a rudimentary way of thinking about it. You had said optimal there for a second, trying to find the optimal volumes for inducing some sort of hypertrophic outcomes. But before we even get to what is the, like, optimal volumes, there are different ranges of volumes that work, right? I mean, obvious, most people here probably know about Dr. Israel's minimum effective volume, maximum adaptive volume. But if you don't, you want to go ahead and touch on what those different landmarks are and kind of what they represent.

So this is sort of like a theoretical framework which tells you, all right, what's the lowest amount of volume that I can do in order to maintain the amount of muscle mass I have? So that's maintenance volume. What is the minimum effective volume? So the lowest amount of sets that I can do where I'll get some gains, but not necessarily maximal gains, and then maximum adaptive volume, which is the amount of sets that you'll do in order to get the most gains in muscle mass. So those are just the three landmarks that are not necessarily stagnant numbers. And you probably will never know what that number is for you at any one moment. But it's a theoretical construct that allows you to say, okay, am I in the ballpark of these things? If you're doing way too little sets, but. Or if you're doing a very small amount of sets but you're still making gains, you can probably say you're closer to minimum effective volume. And if you're doing a whole lot of sets and making great gains, then you could say, yeah, potentially I could do a little bit more, but I'm near the maximum adaptive volume. And so on.

And so I understand, like, obviously outside of life reasons, there are reasons that people want to be training at minimum effective volume, right? So not everyone is like Danny and I, when people have friends and things to do outside of this, whereas most, we spend most of our time thinking about lifting and lifting itself, so we have time to train at those maximum adaptable volumes. We'll probably refer to those as MAVs and MEVs for minimum effective volume throughout this podcast. So just a heads up there. So you talked about chasing optimal volumes, and you also talked about volumes like lower Volumes that you can still see, you know, substantial results for. You want to throw some numbers out for like, what, you know, what's the, like, minimum amount of volume you can do and still make progress.

So it'll probably depend on the population a little bit in terms of how well trained you are, how old you are, and so on. But I think a decent rule of thumb is if you have no training under your belt, literally just looking at weights will, will make you bigger. You can do, you know, technically probably one set in the gym a couple of times a week or even one time a week, and you'll make gains if you're more well trained. I think a number that's closer to minimum effective volume is like around four or five, even three. So anywhere from three through six, I consider to be very good range for minimum effective volume. And then for maximum adaptive volume, anywhere from 12 through 18 to 20, I would say for most people would be a very good range, where somewhere within that range will likely be the sweet spot for you at any given moment.

And I want to point out that these numbers are obviously based on averages. Right. So when Daniel's saying these numbers with these kind of wide ranges, it's because there are certain individuals whose minimum effective volumes are one set even well into their training career. Right. And there's other individuals who they trained for one month and now they need 20 sets a week for their biceps if they really want to see substantial growth. Right. But there are, there is data on this. There are. There, there, there are data on this, this topic. So I know that there's two meta analyses looking at what are these kind of quote unquote, optimal volumes. You want to touch on some of those meta analyses for us and kind of break those down a little bit.

Yeah. So the only. I mean, there's some differences between the metas, but one is just a lot more recent than the other. So what year was the Dr. Brad Schoenfeld's meta analysis?

Was that 20s. 16 or 17, something like that. And I think the, the baz is 2022 or something. Some. Something like that.

Maybe the 2017 meta was more. The only thing it really underlined was that more than 10 sets was probably a good idea. A lot of the studies were simply comparing pretty low set numbers. So we sort of got an inkling that, all right, there's a dose response relationship here, meaning if you do more, you'll get more gains up until a certain point. But we didn't know where that point was with the previous meta while the newer META analysis, the Bas Belle meta analysis sort of gives us some sort of inkling that maybe, maybe, and this is a big maybe we'll get some more gains at those upper ranges. But there's clearly a drop off, meaning that even if you are eking out a little bit more gains closer to that 20 set number, there is a drop off in how much you're getting on a per set basis. So there's a drop off in efficiency. And then above 20 we don't really know. But it seems like because there's a drop off, if you're going to spend some time above 20, you just know that you're probably not being more efficient and may actually be at a point where you're making less gains or doing more work for no extra gains, which.

Is obviously where no one wants to be unless you're just a masochist and love being in the gym in general. And I think that people often, they want these maximum adaptive volumes, like that's what they were, that's where they want to stick, obviously. But there's a very large subset, the majority of the population that just wants to go to the gym and feel a little bit better, look a little bit better, grow their muscles a little bit, just make every day a little bit more enjoyable. And I wanted to emphasize here that we call it minimum effective volume and minimum effective dose, which kind of especially in like bodybuilding and, and, and, and bro circles, you hear minimum effective dose and you think minimum results with like very little, you know, what's the point of going to the gym and doing four or six sets a week if it's only gonna yield me blank amount of muscle? But I wanna talk about how the effect sizes that we see in that Brad Schoenfeld meta analysis, it's not like people doing less than nine sets a week are just not growing. I think the standard, I think the, the pooled effect size was like, and they looked at it through percent change too, and it was like 3, 6. I could be wrong, please don't quote me on the exact number, but I think it was somewhere between 3 and 4% growth. And I think the average study length was probably usually around six weeks, six to eight weeks or something like that with small amounts of volume. So I don't want people thinking that you have to be training with kind of really large inordinate volumes to be making substantial progress. You can make substantial, albeit a little bit less progress at lower volumes, which I think is just a good thing to keep in mind as a Normal person living a normal life. You can't always be training with 20 sets per week for every single muscle group that you want. So I just kind of want to hit that home. And we also kind of touched on averages, right? But getting away from that, which, you know, we see somewhere above 10, maybe somewhere below 20 or around 20. Anything above that, probably you, you, you, you better have a good reason for doing more than 20 sets a week for a given muscle group. With, with those averages out of the way though, let's touch on how we can go about finding those values for ourself. Cause you kind of touched you said this a second ago, where you're never really going to know where those values are exactly. But can you give us some insights into like, hey, May, how is it a good idea if I know that I'm training at, let's say, maintenance volume or minimum effective volume, or how do I know if I'm training in a maximal adapt, like in a maximally adaptive way, for instance. And we can start, we can start with the lower end and then go up if you'd like.

Yeah. So, meaning, how do, how do you know that you're growing at the lower end?

So, like, how do I know if I'm at maintenance volume, for instance? Like, how. Because, like, as we know, we've touched on this in previous podcasts and you've probably heard this a billion times, hypertrophy is hard to track, especially in your later years. So it's. How do we know if we are maintaining the muscle mass that we have?

I think the only way to really, really know is to stick with something for a while and then see if you're actually growing. So, like, I wouldn't recommend this, but let's say you wanted to see that your, your maintenance volume was four sets for a given muscle group, and then you did that for three months and then you didn't see any real visual changes. Maybe even six months is necessary for somebody that's more well trained. Then you'd say, all right, yeah, this is my maintenance volume. I probably wouldn't do that or go out of my way to find that if, if I were you. But it's, that's something that's, you know, on the table for figuring that out. I think another useful metric is performance in the gym. So particularly in lifts that you've had in for a while and maybe that aren't compound lifts that involve less nervous system, you know, you know, optimization of the movement rather than the contractile tissue doing the movement. That's Usually a pretty decent indicator of things going in the right direction. So if your lifts are going up consistently, you can probably pretty sure over time you're, you're putting on some muscle tissue. So I think those probably are the main indicators in both directions. So maintenance volume, you wouldn't expect as much in terms of increases in load on those lifts, while if you're closer to maximum adaptive volume or somewhere in the middle there, you'd expect to see steady increases. One thing that I think is counterintuitive is that you might be able to actually put more load on in the short term with more moderate or even lower volumes because you don't have that, you know, fatigue accumulation. You can focus more, more on specific lifts and so on. So I think of a sort of optimal hypertrophy training is, are my lifts going in the right direction, but not necessarily at the highest speeds. Like, your goal isn't necessarily to put the most weight on the bar. The goal is to be in around the sweet spot of hypertrophy where you're recovering well session to session and putting a bit more load on the bar. So getting more work in while getting steady increases, just being assure, like you.

Can be pretty confident if your performance isn't going down, that you're, you're probably not losing a substantial amount of muscle. And, but you, but you touched on something really important, which is that, like, at lower volumes, you're actually able to express that fitness way better. So you actually might have this, you know, kind of convoluted idea when you switch to low volumes and you start making all this great progress that you're, oh, my goodness, I was always doing way too much volume. I should have been doing way less. I'm growing way more. But like Danny said, like, that's probably not necessarily indicative that you're growing. It's just that you're now not really fatigued and able to express all of that fitness that you accrued prior to getting rid of all that fatigue. Right. So, so making sure that lifts aren't going down and probably slowly and incrementally adding, you know, five to ten pounds to the bar months after months after months. Right. And there's actually data to back just how little you really have to do. So I, I'm unfortunately forgetting the name of the author, but there's this study where they had individuals do like eight weeks of basically, I think it was like sets per week of quad work. And then they, they had those groups, they split them up into like a D training group, a 1/3 the training volume group and a 1/9 the training volume group. So I think there was like one, one group doing. It was like six sets to nine sets or something like that. Only a week for quads. There was one doing three sets only for quads and there was one that was just stopped training entirely. And the individuals that did, I think it was six sets a week. So like, much less obviously than they were originally training with, they continued to grow, they didn't lose muscle. In fact, they continued to grow younger individuals. Keep in mind, because they did this with older individuals and they did see some decrements at lower volumes.

Same thing.

Really, really well done study. Which is why I'm embarrassed that I can't remember the name of the author, but the 1/3 volume group. So literally three sets a week. And keep in mind they were doing 27 sets a week. I believe they maintained their muscle for a very long period of time. I think they started seeing slight detriments towards the end, like slight decreases towards the end. Oh no, sorry. The 1/3 group or the 1/9 group actually stayed above baseline the entire time. So like they are pre testing volumes. They, they went down, the muscle size went down below what it was at the end of the 27 sets per week, but it still remained above what it was before they started training. So there is good evidence to suggest that training, even with very low volumes, if you're a young, healthy individual, you're probably gonna be maintaining a lot of the muscle mass that you've put on previously. You can't do it indefinitely. Obviously that study wasn't perfect, but I just, I want to throw that out there, that you can maintain your muscle with very low volumes. Right, okay. And we talked about minimum effective dose as well. Want to make sure that. Or we talked about that's maintenance dose covered pretty well. So how do we know then about minimum effective volume? I think that's one of the hardest to know if you're actually in the minimum effective range because you're, you're literally taking something that's already hard to track and then making it a slower thing to track, which makes it even more difficult. So do you have any insights on how do we know if we're kind of training close to minimum effective volume?

Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, I think it's impossible to know it's the minimum effective volume. How I think about it is that you could be pretty confident it's not maintenance volume. So whether it's the minimum that you can do to continue to make gains, you Know, I'm not necessarily super interested in because, like, what's the difference between, like, another set added, you know, or two sets per week and so on. But I think that once you get like a pretty decent idea of your maintenance volume, which is, you know, for most people, it's probably around like three or four, you know, sets per week, which is really small amount, maybe, maybe five for some people. Then if you're between that and something around, you know, like 12 or so, it's going to end up in that range. So as long as things are going in the right direction, I don't worry too much about being at the minimum effective volume. I just know that I'm between the range of what would be maintenance volume and maximum adaptive volume. So as long as I'm at the lower range in between those things, I consider that around minimum effective volume. And don't worry too much about, like, hitting an exact, like, oh, I don't want to do any extra work to get any extra gain because I'm trying to prioritize a specific muscle. I don't think, I don't think you need to be that detail oriented and you'll never actually know for sure.

So, yeah, I think that, I think that's a. That lends itself really well to people think about these volumes as thresholds and as discrete. As discrete variables. Right. So, like, let's say that I think of six sets as minimum of maintenance volume for my biceps and eight sets as minimum effective volume. Right. Does that mean it's seven sets I am still just maintaining my muscle, or is it just much slower incremental gains in that size? Right. So I think that's an important thing. Like always. It's a dial, not a switch. That should be the motto of our, of our podcast. But yeah, So I think that as long as you're, you know, above those, like, theoretically very low ranges, anywhere from like three to six sets for, for most muscles, I would say, in the body and, and below, you know, 10 to 12, you're probably around that minimum effective dose. Right, Cool. So now we've talked about that, let's talk about the shit that we actually care about, which is how do we know if we're doing too much? Because we, most people listening to this podcast, you and you and me, for instance, we want to be doing as much as we possibly can to grow as much as we possibly can. But as we know, per our recovery podcast, there is too much eventually. So how do we know if we're in that maximum adaptive range where we're doing as much as we can, but not so much that it's hurting us and not so little that we're not making as gains as quickly as we could be.

Yeah, I think there's a few ways, some a lot worse than others in terms of. You don't want to get there. But I think the first thing to think about is how much quality volume am I getting in for a particular muscle group in one session. So looking at a session in isolation saying, all right, if I do more than X amount of sets, then I know that the quality is going down. I don't feel the same amount of juice from the muscle. My weights in those particular lifts are much lower than what I could typically do. I'm not getting as much out of my. My contractile tissue as I could be. And there's also direct evidence on this with muscle protein, synthetic stuff. Muscle protein to synthetic response in both rodents and humans, showing that probably around that 9 to 10 number per session is where you're getting into, not maximizing and potentially getting no benefit above that number. So I tend to stick to not more than nine per session to get the most out of each session.

And that's per muscle. Just so people are aware. That's nine sets of biceps or nine sets of quads, whatever it may be. Right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So per. Per muscle group, not yet nine sets, and then I'm out of there no matter what. Yeah. Six sets of chest and six. That's it. Done. Or actually.

Yeah, but so nine sets is. That's. That's like the upper limit, though, right? You would say, like, you want to go above nine or. Cause if. Keep in mind, if you're doing three exercises, that's three sets of whatever it may be for different exercise, and rarely do I do or. And I think you. I speak for you here as well. Three exercises for one muscle in a single workout. Usually we're around. Again, correct me if I'm wrong. One or two exercises per muscle group per workout. Right, Exactly.

Yeah.

So where do you. Where would. Yeah, just curious for me personally, like, where do you land for your average session volume? Like, you're probably not doing nine to 10 sets every session.

Right, that's what I'm saying. Nine is the upper range. And it depends on the exercises I'm choosing, which we'll get into. And it also depends on the muscle group, which we'll get into. But I think the average for most of my muscle groups is around six. Six sets per muscle group per session. So if I'M trying to maximize hypertrophy for that particular muscle. Usually I'll modulate frequency instead of modulating session volume. So I'll 666 see what I did there. So yeah, I do, you know, six sets of chest on Monday, six sets on Wednesday and six sets on Friday. If I'm really trying to push that upper end and be at that closer to.

Yeah, that's 18 sets right there. So that's a, that's a heavy week of chest, I would imagine.

Just exactly. Generally cool.

So how do you know if, like, how do you know what session? Because like, it's different for us. Like for instance, me, like, I don't. I. Eight sets. Eight sets is like the most that I want to do for, for any muscle group. Because after that I'm just like, like, let's say I do seven sets of lateral raises. That eighth set of lateral raise that I'm gonna do. Like, psychologically I just know I'm not gonna push that close to failure. I don't have, I don't have that dog in me, that grit, that chip on my shoulder that's gonna let me go eight sets to all out failure or even really close to failure. So like, how do you know, like, is that a good way of knowing how your upper session limit is like just subjective feelings towards like being able to get those quality sets in or are like where you feel the exercise in the muscles versus the joints or anything like that? Do you use that as a proxy?

Yeah. So I think what I was mentioning before is exactly in line with what you were saying in terms of just like not feeling the same amount of juice, not feeling the same amount of motivation, not feeling like you're getting the best. I think people start they crap on the pump a little bit in terms of like, it's not a useful proxy at all, but I feel like there is definitely a difference as the session goes on in terms of how much you feel your muscles being engorged.

Augmented.

Augmented. So I think I like to use those proxies as a per session way of knowing whether I'm at that upper limit. While also keeping in mind that, all right, we have direct evidence on this and even the evidence of those higher volumes when we see that drop off is usually when they're doing more than eight to nine sets per session. So usually the two go hand in hand. So as long as you're, you know, in a range that makes sense on a per session basis, I think that's a good idea. And then also thinking About. All right. How is my program structured with the sessions I have coming up? Do I want to absolutely smash myself in this session and not be recovered for my, you know, session the. The next, you know, in the next couple of days? So depending on how it's structured, it may lend itself to actually leaving a bit in a tank when I feel like I'm good but not necessarily smashed. Is. Is gonna be a more useful idea for when I know that in a couple of days I have it coming up. While if I know that, let's say today's Monday and then Friday is the next time I'm hitting that muscle group, I may push it a little bit more as the Mazda cycle goes on. Another thing to consider, which for a lot of people, this is a consideration that matters, is certain muscles lend themselves to certain joints being cranky. So, for example, I almost never do more than three to four sets of bicep per session. If I do closer to six, my elbows are not my friend at all. So I'll actually do. I want to say in my current program, I have bicep in I. I have six days a week this training cycle, and five of those days are bicep, just three sets, so 15 sets of bicep, and I just have it depending on where it falls in in the session. So 15 sets total, but three sets per day just so that I can tolerate that per session volume. Where I've done this so many times, where, like, I try to do six, and, yeah, above six is just an absolute nightmare. But even at six, it catches up to me where my joints are just not being my friend at all. It doesn't help that I do jiu jitsu. So, you know, take that with a.

This bodybuilding is killing my elbows. Meanwhile, I'm in an arm bar for four minutes each Wednesday. Yeah, so I want to point out that, like. So, Danny, for you, clearly, high frequencies are really beneficial for, like, your joints and your elbows and stuff. For me, my joints are shit. And I don't do jiu jitsu. It literally just bodybuilding alone or bodybuilding training alone messes my joints up. But for me, high frequencies typically mess my shoulders and elbows up a little bit more than if I kind of smash it. Let those structures kind of, like, heal for a really good period of time and then smash it again. Now, not once a week, but, like, anywhere from two to three times a week, not five like in Danny's case, obviously. Which kind of leads me into the fact that there seems to be a huge interplay between frequency and volume in general. So we oftentimes think about, you know, volume as these stagnant weekly figures. Right. But it seems like based on what you're talking about, that per session volume or the number of sessions that you train, an extra or a muscle group may be even more important than just the total amount of volume that you're doing. Is that safe to assume?

Yeah, for sure.

Cool. So would that mean that, like, let's say you train biceps twice a week and I, I train biceps three times a week, would my per session volume go down in response to that? Or am I just able to tack on more and more and more? If like, so let's say I have three days a week for biceps, does that mean that I'm ultimately able to do more volume in total than if I only train biceps twice a week? Does that make sense?

Yeah. So you're saying, does the volume threshold increase when you increase frequency? Yeah.

So like, does max maximum of adaptive volume go up from, let's say like 18 to 22 for biceps? Because I changed it from two, two days a week to three days a week or something like that. Yeah.

And that's exactly how I think about frequency. I use it as a tool to get the most out of each session. And if I want to get more volume, I tend to not add it to a session if it's already near that, you know, 7ish set number, I'll increase frequency in order to get more quality volume there. So a lot of the time people are like, oh, does frequency matter? And frequency matters to the extent that you need that extra day to get more quality volume.

Cool, cool. And then other. So I, we, we've been bouncing around all over the place. That's largely my fault, I do apologize. But with respect to knowing if you're doing too much and like other subjective factors, so we can't always rely on performance. Kind of like we were saying, with minimum effective volume or maintenance volume, even like your, your performance might go up even though you might be even losing muscle potentially. Right. Or not growing? Um, but how can we be sure that, like we talked about how nine sets, probably the most for each session, but then tying that into the week, how do we know if, like, if let's say I'm doing really well at nine sets per session for biceps, could. What's keeping me from pushing that to 11 or 10 or 11 sets per session? Like, what things can I rely on to know that if I'm doing too much or just the right amount, like any subjective Factors like anything like that at all.

Yeah, I tend not to as long as I'm in the sweet spot. And I've experimented with each of the volume range. So my recommendation generally speaking, is that people experiment with reasonable volumes and then see which ones work best for them per muscle group. So the way I recommend experimentation is that keep some muscles closer to minimum effective volume while bringing others up to maximum adaptive volume and then oscillate between them, cycle to cycle and then see session to session performance within session performance, progress in general and so on, while you do those different volumes for each muscle group and then decide how you want to go about doing things, moving forward with that level of experimentation while knowing that you're probably not leaving the whole lot on the table, cuz you're around the sweet spot for most of the muscle groups. And I think that oscillation is also just good for the psychology of training where you can focus on some things and then defocus on other things, if that's a word. So I tend to worry less about making sure that this specific muscle group is always at the optimal volume for myself. As long as all the joint things and everything like that we were talking about are in check, I like to sort of oscillate between them and that sort of covers my basis instead of like really, really worrying about like, oh, like this number is the best for this particular muscle group for myself and so on.

Yeah, so it's, it sounds like like with almost everything else in this world, it's like a, it's a shit ton of trial and error basically of finding out which volumes feel really good for you and, and, and which, which, which are too high and what's too low. And you'll notice for yourself that like different muscles respond differently. Not only do different people respond differently, but people's muscles respond differently than their other muscles. So like for instance, this BAZ the, the 2022 meta analysis, looking at it, it basically broke down into quads, triceps and biceps. And they basically found no difference between more than 20 sets and less than 20 sets for biceps, but substantially more growth in the quads and triceps for over 20 sets versus under 20 sets. Right. For me, if I do more than 20 sets for my triceps a week, my elbows will fall off of my body. So like that's kind of what I was, was getting at is that these are incredibly individualized values and these meta analyses do give us a really, really good place to start. But basically what Danny was just saying is that look, as cool as these blueprints that these studies give us are, you're really gonna have to spend a good, a good year figuring out what, what volumes work well for not only you, but each of your individual muscles as well. So with that, that kind of leads well into how these change over the course of a training career. When I'm five years into training versus one year into training, should. Do I need more volume? Do I need less volume? Cause I'm stronger. Where do you land on, on, on that spectrum?

Yeah, I don't think this is super, super well characterized, but just based on what you see in the real world, I'd be extremely surprised if volumes didn't go slightly down in tolerance with more advanced individuals. I think you could just get more out of the muscle per set. Whether that's because you can push closer to failure or that's because you can actually get more out of your muscle instead of like a coordination issue, um, whether that's because you're doing just a massive amount of load that's harder on your nervous system and so on. We, we haven't really teased that out to a really granular extent, but it seems very clear that you should at least consider going down a little bit as your training career goes on. If you were pushing that maximum adaptive volume all throughout your training career, if you were never worried about that and you were never experimenting with those higher ranges, I definitely wouldn't worry. But if you get to the point where, all right, you're pretty well trained and you feel like your numbers aren't going up as much as they, as much as you would hope, and you're not feeling that great in the gym, you're feeling trashed over time. Consider going down as your training career goes on, because you could probably get more out of each set.

Nice. Yeah. And, and you, just to be clear, like, you will hear other opinions depending on who you ask. There are people that will say, like, yeah, as you, as you get older, you're gonna need to do more to stimulate those muscles to grow. So there are individuals in certain camps that believe that training volume increases over the training career. And like Daniel said, like, we don't have super definitive evidence in either direction of, of what, of what that is. So unfortunately, the answer for over the training career is exactly the same as finding those initial values, which is it's just gonna take a bunch of trial and error. But the good news is that you get really good at that. You get really good at understanding as, as you get older and as your Training age gets older, you get good at understanding how exercises are supposed to feel, where you're supposed to feel muscle soreness, where those pumps are supposed to be, and, and, and not, you know, in your bicep rather than your rotator cuff and what have you. Yeah, so, so values are incredibly dynamic as far as volumes are concerned, even over, not only in the acute sense, but especially over the, the training career in general. So unfortunately, we can't give you a. Yeah, just do 10 sets now and then in 20 years, you'll be doing 20 sets for this muscle group. Right. It's just gonna be something that you have to play with the, the entirety of your training career, essentially. Okay, so touched on a lot of stuff here. I kind of want to go into some special considerations, kind of more miscellaneous conversations around, around volume and that I couldn't fit into a nice little outline here. So things like, for instance, do I, should I be doing different volumes when I'm cutting or bulking? Is it, do I, do I change those values depending on what nutrition cycle I'm in?

Yeah, I think this sort of lends itself well to what I was going to piggyback off of, for, for more well trained in that the window that you have for the minimum effective volume to maximum adaptive volume probably gets smaller as your training career goes on. Not probably. That's actually just simply a fact because you can just look at a weight and get bigger when your training career just started. But you have to do more to maintain and a little bit more to gain. So at that bottom threshold, it's very clear that you have to do a bit more as your training goes on. What's more unclear, as you pointed out, is whether that, how much that upper threshold changes and what that, what occurs to that upper threshold. So I think along those same lines with dieting, you're. We don't know what happens to that upper threshold in terms of tolerance and whether we can get more out of the muscle in the case of dieting. So like, while we're dieting, should we actually do more sets or does that threshold actually go down? Or we can't tolerate as much, so we'll probably benefit from doing a little bit less. We don't have a clear answer there. There was only one study that looked at this and they did relatively moderate volumes and found no differences between groups.

So you can, while dieting too, just to be clear. And that study they're using, they're losing like a kilogram a month or something like that. It's like incredibly Slow rates of life loss. So that study doesn't give us very great insights, as you were saying.

Exactly. Yeah. So I think, just based on the physiology, I tend not to worry too much about pushing volumes during cutting phases because I don't think you're gonna grow that much. So I think as long as you're within that sweet spot and keep things relatively consistent to what you're typically doing while being just a little bit more cautious, I think you'll end up in a really good position where you'll probably get some recomp and not be, you know, super worried about over training and making sure that you hold onto every single ounce of tissue. I don't think that that's a reasonable thing to do. But on the other end. So for bulking, I do think that if you're. If you were ever worried about doing a little too little, then that's the time where you can experiment with pushing things and seeing how much you can not necessarily tolerate, but how much you can push yourself while recovering well and track your progress that way.

Cool. So be conservative on cuts. And if you're ever. If there's ever a time to be liberal with volumes, it's probably a good idea to do that while bulking, essentially, is what I'm getting.

Yeah.

Cool. Cool. I think that's a. I think that's a really good rule of thumb for. For. For training in general. Yeah. The guys over at 3DMJ, if you don't follow them already follow them after you follow us. And they talk about supply and demand, basically, where when you're bulking, there's all this supply, so you're able to increase that demand a little bit. Now, again, this is theoretical, right? So not positive about this, but when you're dieting, that supply is obviously diminished pretty substantially, especially when you get to leaner and leaner levels of body fat, which means that the demand has to go down a little bit as well. You can't. You can't ask your biceps to do 20 sets a week and your chest 20 sets a week, and your quads 20 sets a week. When you are eating 1800 calories a day and your maintenance calories are 2, 700. Right. So, yeah, I think that. I think that was really well explained there, Danny. But what about other. So outside of, like, dieting, what about just other training variables in general? So, like, volumes play with, like, proximity to failure. Like, do I need to be doing more sets if I'm training further away from failure, or can I get away with, you know, The Mike Mener crew, which, as we recently learned, a lot of our followers really like Mike Menser. Can I get away with as long as I'm training really, really hard using lower volumes?

Yeah. So it seems pretty clear that if you are going to train at lower volumes, that pushing your sets closer to failure is a good idea. So if you're in that, you know, 6 to even 10 to 12 range, I'd say pushing more of your sets closer to failure is probably a good idea because your recovery capacity is not going to be, you know, stifled too much. So you can get more out of each set without worrying about subsequent sets and subsequent sessions going down in quality. I think what's a lot less clear is whether that relationship holds for that 12 to 20 range. I'd be very surprised if it did. So I don't think that you need to worry about going as close to failure at the higher set numbers per week. That's. That remains to be seen. I know there's some work coming out soon to try to get at this question. Exactly. I don't think we have really good answers for that now, but I would be surprised if, if that were the case. So I think a good recommendation here is that if you're at those lower set numbers and if you're pressed for time, pushing those sets closer to failure is probably a really good idea. If you are going to those higher set numbers around 12 to 20, somewhere in that range. Having some sets that are a little bit further away from failure, three reps in reserve, two reps in the reserve, and so on, is probably a good idea for maximizing overall session and overall weekly quality of volume where you're not just, you know, running yourself into the ground and reducing the quality per set. And there's actually a recent study, I think it literally came out like, oh, wanna say, two days ago, that looked at the velocity of the bar with closer to failure sets and further from failure sets. So zero reps in reserve. So concentric failure versus leaving one in the tank, two in the tank. And I think they did three in the tank and they found that the velocity of the bar was higher within session. And then the recovery between sessions was better for leaving a few reps in the tank compared to getting closer to failure. Which makes sense, right, Con. Conceptually. So, yeah, I think that's a, a good recommendation. Higher sets make sure that not all your sets are just running yourself into the ground. With the lower amount of sets, you have more leeway to push yourself hard. And it's probably A good idea to push yourself really hard on a per set basis.

Cool. And just I'm glad you threw numbers out because it seems like we maybe not disagree, but maybe I'm just a little bit more conservative where I would say that if you're close to 20 sets, leaving two to four reps in the tank is probably a good idea. And if you're, if you're training with like low volumes, all the studies that look at super low volumes, they're pushing these people hard. They're not, they're not just training these kids to failure. It's, it's research assistants yelling at kids to failure, which is a whole other conversation about failure. Differences between actual concentrated muscle failure. So if you're lower volumes, let's say below 8, 10 to 2 reps in reserve, probably for almost all of your sets. If you're 15 to 20, probably anywhere from two to four reps in reserve, is that a safe, those safe numbers to throw out? You think Again, conjecture, but at least within the ballpark, for more of your.

Sets, I would say, yeah, in terms of like 2 to 4, for more of your sets, I think like, perhaps like later in the session pushing harder, all that kind of stuff is a decent idea. But yeah, in terms of like, your average sets are going to be slightly further away from failure and so on in the opposite direction. Yep.

Cool. And for our, our savvy listeners out there, you'll kind of take note that like, all of these things play into one another. Like, people often talk about volume and just throw out numbers for volume and stuff like that. But like, if you train four days a week, the amount of volume you can do is different than if you train six days a week. If you train really, really hard, the amount of volume you can do is different than if you're someone who likes to stay a little bit further away from failure. And so all of these things are to consider. Are, are, are to be considered when you're thinking about how much volume is right for you. So there's, there's a clear and, and obvious interaction between all different training variables. And that's kind of like the main takeaway from, from, for I was. That's what I want the main takeaway from this to be, is that volumes are not just one thing. They're, they're, they are, they are the result of a bunch of other different variables. And using. You can use volumes in very different ways to achieve very different outcomes. Right? Yeah.

And I think one thing, please. I think one thing that's like, super important to point out and to piggyback off of what you were saying is that I sort of think of it as meet your thresholds, overlay the individual and overlay the individual's practical considerations, and then overlay the individual's actual, like, performance. So what I mean by threshold is that, like, once you're reaching a certain amount of volume and you're covering your basis there, and once you're reaching a certain proximity to failure, and you're covering your basis there. So being four reps in reserve, that's the threshold. Like, don't spend too many sets that are well away from four reps in reserve. Like, you know, six and so on are just not going to give you enough bang for your buck per set. Same with volume. Like, if you're training three sets per week per muscle group, you're not meeting that threshold. So I think once you meet that threshold, then playing around with those variables and finding what works for you makes sense from one, a practical standpoint, but two, and actually what's happening standpoint. So when you think about fitting in, like, people talk about, like, oh, maximum adaptive volume, as if they can take all those muscles to maximum adaptive volume at the same time. There's just not enough time in the week for most people, unless they're training two sessions per day, they're just not gonna fit all. All that quality volume into one session. So you have to make practical. You have to consider all the practical things and then make your program fit those practical considerations, but then also the individual considerations. So I know some individuals where we're talking about modulating intensity, like modulating proximity to failure and modulating volume. I had some clients that if they took their sets, like, to anywhere near 1 ish rir sleep, like, tanked. Like, they literally just, like, their life fell apart, which was, like, super weird to me because, like, I could just push those sets all day, every day. Like, even now, like, I can. I can push really, really hard, and I'm. It's gonna affect my session quality, but it never affects anything outside of my session. But there's an appreciable amount of clients were like, they couldn't focus at work for the rest of the day, they couldn't sleep well and so on. So for that client, it may make more sense to lean in on the volume end where, all right, we're gonna do a little bit more sets, but you're gonna be three or four away from failure. It's absolutely not worth you not sleeping well and not focusing well later. In the day in order to get closer proximity to failure. So having the tools that we can modulate and know that we're still gonna be at that sweet spot is, you know, actually liberating.

Yeah, I, I, I couldn't agree more. And it's the same. We kind of talked about this with one of the studies. I think it was the recovery strategies basically. Like, the, the, the autonomy is nice, like knowing that high volumes with low RIRs work, low volumes with high RRS work. So like, whichever is better for you is probably better for you, and you should be doing that. So like, for instance, Stan efferding, Shout out the Cooler has, he has this, not a quote, but he has this idea when he's programming for individuals. So he, if he has a soccer mom come to him, he's like, I take her life, and I try and make a program that will fit into that life. And like, that's what I do. I don't care about optimality. I don't care about anything. If I have an IB ifbb pro come to me, I give them an optimal program and I tell them to make that. And then, and then you work backwards. Like, okay, that, that won't work for them because of their life. Right. So you stay, it's, it depends on like, what your goals are. Right. And I, I think that's kind of what you are getting at is that like, practical considerations for the like, 99% of people listening. Like, that's what's most important. Don't worry about chasing like, optimal volumes or, or anything like that, Especially if it means, like, you have to sacrifice hanging out with your kids to go, to go do your, your third session for that day. Right. Okay. We've touched on a lot here. And there's a couple more things that's more like miscellaneous things that I, I thought would be kind of fun to touch on. And they kind of play into training variables interacting with one another. So like, for instance, we keep throwing out These numbers, like 9 set, 9 sets per session as a maximal per session volume. You know, like 20 sets per week for, like, maximum. But different muscles respond differently. Right? So for instance, Daniel, would you ever do 20 sets of hamstrings in a week?

Yeah, I've never, I mean, I've done it one time and I'm never gonna revisit it.

Yeah, I, I haven't, I, I won't ever go down that route, so. And like, not only just different muscles, like, for instance, I could do 20 sets of delts each week, but if I was doing 20 sets of delts, and all of my delt work was coming from overhead pressing. That would be really tough on my system. As opposed to like a couple sets coming from pressing. Couple sets coming from these lateral raises. A couple sets coming from these lateral raises. What may be. So there are interactions not only between muscles, but, like, exercises specific. So go back to the hamstrings. Usually, I'm gonna be honest, like, 10 sets is, like, pretty high volume for hamstrings for me, But I will that I can push that higher. Like, I could do 15 sets of hamstrings per week if I wasn't doing any hip hinging. So, like, keep in mind that the more this man. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the more joints involved and the more load that you're able to move entirely with a given exercise, it's likely more taxing on the system and should be treated differently than movements where you can use a lot less load and you're usually moving. Like isolation movements, for instance, where one joint is usually acting. I've never really thought about that till right now. It's kind of off the cuff. So. Danny, unless. If you can think of an exception, please think of one. But just generally speaking, you can't recover from exercises where there's a lot of axial loading or there's a lot of very large muscles involved in that exercise. Right. As opposed to other exercises like a lateral raise where a very small muscle is working and usually very light loads are being moved. Do you agree with that or do you. Please, if you don't, let me know.

Yeah, I think the quality of the session is definitely going to be affected by having a compound lift. There's. There's no question about that. Whether it's more hypertrophic on a per set basis is probably. Is contentious and it's probably pretty close to equal. But I definitely think about that when I'm partitioning volume. So how many compounds do I have? How many exercises do I have that are specific to making the exercise difficult at a more lengthened position is another thing that I think of. I think those sets are gonna be more fatiguing and therefore. So, for example, I think I can tolerate more volume of lying hamstring curls than I can from seated hamstring curls and then rdls or straight leg deadlifts, in that order. So thinking about situating your volume for the week accordingly to what you can recover from and then thinking about situating your volume per session for what you can recover from both from a total session Volume and from an exercise order standpoint is also important. So I actually do my hamstring curls before I do my compound lift.

Whoa, whoa. Your isolation movement before your squats? Dude, you clearly have not read a textbook ever in your entire life.

Yep, I'm actually, like, a revolutionary in that way.

Oh, nice, man. Yeah, I'm getting my PhD and I never learned how to read. It's. It's a really incredible feat. I'm sorry, you were saying something actually important.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's important to think about how you can maximize session quality and doing that compound lift early on for me, and I think for a lot of more advanced lifters that have been lifting for a while where, like, you do that compound lift and then you have six more, you know, exercises to go or five more exercises to go, even if it's not for the same muscle group, it's just not a fun time. So having it closer to the middle of the session is usually a good idea for people who have. I mean, I would say experiment with it, honestly. Like, I think there's still advanced people that prefer to do that in the beginning, too. So I'm. It's not a hard rule, but I think it's something to definitely think about, and it's something that's ingrained in the community, that you have to do the compound first. That there's nothing to say that that's actually the. The case.

So, yeah, in fact, there's a lot of data out there to say that exercise order in general just doesn't matter at all. And I'm skeptical of that, obviously, but I did there. If anyone tells you that you have to do compounds or isolations first ever, you can just say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because, for instance, like, yeah, for sure, for sure. Because what else would we be talking about here? But, like, for. I just want to throw out the. The caveat to that, which is, I don't want to do rdls last. Like, I don't. Like, I don't want to do squats last or leg presses last. Like, for instance, I'm running a specialization phase right now for shoulders and back, but on my shoulder days, I usually train legs, and I will, on some days, train my legs first before my shoulders, even though I'm focusing on my shoulders. And that's because it's just easier for me to do a set of lateral raises after RDLs than it is for me to do RDLs. Like, psychologically, mentally, it's easier for me to do that than it is to do rdls after some lateral raises. I don't know why that is, but it's just it. That's just the way it is for me. Okay, last thing to touch on before we summarize the absolute word vomiting that I've been doing for the last hour, which is that I want to hear your critique of the fact that in both of these meta analyses, right, the ones we talked about in the Baz from 2022 and the show and filled from 2016, they're looking at studies that are done in the field of exercise science. And for those of you who aren't aware of almost every study that is conducted in this field is a quote unquote specialization phase where there is usually a muscle or a couple of muscles in interest that researchers will hammer and either completely leave out all other muscles in a training program or will have typically pretty low volumes for those in a training program. So for instance, my deload study, right, 20 sets for the quads, 20 sets for the calves, 10 sets for everything on the upper body and nothing for the hamstrings. Right. So with that being said is, are there issues with trying to take some of this, this meta analytic data in which they're all, they're looking almost entirely at specialization phases and applying that to a normal training program where you're trying to grow everything simultaneously? It's the last thing. It's a big thing, but it's the last thing I'd like to touch on before summarizing the podcast.

Yeah, so, yeah, I think there's a few studies that had like other stuff baked in. But yeah, for the, for the most part, most of the studies are just, at least with the researchers, they're doing a specialization phase where they're focusing on a few muscle groups, usually the lower body, but sometimes just the upper body and, and so on. So I think, yeah, I mean, that comes back to the practical considerations of the individual fitting that volume into the week. Like, practically speaking, a lot of these will be close to impossible to do if you were trying to get all of the muscle groups to those quote unquote. Like, I know for sure I'm at like a high enough volume where I'm not leaving anything on the table. Also, considering the fatigue, what we were talking about, the per session fatigue, you doing one muscle group or a couple of muscle groups is different than you doing, you know, a few muscle groups. Just adding one muscle group into a session, if you try it out changes the whole dynamic of that session and the quality that you can get in that session. So I think the reason why, even though the evidence is not super, super, super strong above 20, that I'm pretty comfortable saying that 12 to 20 is probably a good idea, is because if you overlay the fact that these practical considerations are a real thing, and these programs are typically specialization programs, you're gonna be hard pressed to find individuals that could get quality volume with trying to get every muscle group in at above 20 sets. Like, it's just not gonna happen. So unless they're doing something super weird like leaving tons of, you know, reps in the tank on every single set and so on. So, yeah, I think that's a great point that needs to be pointed out. Another thing that we should touch upon is that the set numbers that we're throwing out are in the context of adequate rest between sets. So typically this is around two minutes. So two, two and a half minutes, three minutes. If you lower the rest period to 1.5 to 1, you would need more sets to get the same amount of hypertrophy. So keep in mind, all of these recommendations are in the context of adequate rest between sets. If you're gonna do something like a, you know, 30 to 1.5 minute rest in between, you're probably not gonna get as much juice out of each set. So you have to do more sets to account for that and that.

And just to throw another layer of complexity to this, this has been the by far the most complex episode we've done. But, like, I don't need two minutes to rest between sets of calves. Like, you know what I mean? Like, whereas I finish a set of leg press, like, give me five minutes, I'm gonna go watch an episode of Love island, and then I'll be back to do my second set. Right? So that's another thing to keep in mind as well, is like, you know, listen to your body. Cause it'll usually tell you when you're ready to do that second set. Like, and sometimes it's gonna be less than two minutes and sometimes it's gonna be more than three minutes, and that's totally okay. So, yeah, listening to your body and being sure that you have adequate, you know, juice to give to the set that you're about to do, I think is, is a really good idea. So, yeah, just to say, like, summarize what you just said before summarizing everything we've said, which is that these studies are usually specialization phases. But given that, you know, you, you assuming you're taking your practical considerations into respect or into consideration, you, it still probably is 12 to 20, with. If you're trying to grow multiple muscles at once, probably closer to 12. Whereas if you're trying to. If you, like, really care about your triceps getting bigger, you would be like, throw 20 sets to that. We're keeping other things kind of lower, if that. If that makes sense. Okay, cool. So let's. Let's pause, as in, like, you guys will remove this from the actual recording. And then let's try and summarize everything we've said, because we have been jumping around like crazy.

Yeah, that's what I said it was gonna happen. Cause I think there's no way of, like. I think the flow should have been, like, really, really, really, really thought out, because it's impossible to touch on volume without frequency, and then it's impossible to touch on frequency without intensity. And I don't know that there's even, like, a really, really good way to go about doing it without jumping around a little bit.

But I don't think it was bad. Like, I don't think it's bad or anything, but it was just a lot of. It's like, the biggest topic we've talked about by far. Like, yeah, sure, no question. Um, cool. So, yeah, let's get just some bullet points here.

Adequate volumes are between 12 to 20 sets, and that frequency is used as a tool to get quality sessions in. So take the volumes that you can tolerate well and that you get good performance in, and make sure that your frequency matches that volume. And then looking at quality again, you look at session quality and then weekly quality. So in order to maximize that session quality, you want to make sure that you rest an adequate amount until you feel ready to go. And use reps in reserve on a per session and per weekly basis that give you the best quality. So if that means that if you're going closer to failure early on, then that tanks your whole session. Probably don't do that. So, same thing with session order. Make sure that the exercises are ordered in a way that gives you the best quality. Does that matter a whole lot? Probably not. But is it a good idea to do. There's no downside. Yeah, exactly. And then in terms of efficiency, like, don't be afraid to be at the lower end of volumes because you're probably getting the most bang for your buck at those lower ends, and you are potentially covering more of your basis by being on the higher end of volumes for certain muscle groups. But if you are pressed for time, don't feel like you're leaving a ton of gains on the table. Cuz you're probably making most of your gains at those moderate volumes and not those super high volumes. Closer to 20.

Cool. All right, so, okay, so to summarize it, we'll talk about what volume is. All right, you know what? Fuck it. Let's just see if this works. All right, so to tie all of this together, we've kind of been talking for like a good hour plus now at this point and throwing a lot of information at you guys. So we'll put a little clip together so it's just easy to summarize and you can reference this. Right, so volume quantified in a bunch of different ways. But typically for the purposes of this podcast and for Danny and I's life in perpetuity, volume is just the number of hard sets per week that you do. But a big portion of volume, a big understanding of volume, is its interplay with other variables. Right. So frequency, the goal of frequency is to take those optimal volumes for you, whatever they may be, and split them up in a way that gives you the most quality set per set, I guess per volume, you want the most quality work that you can get per set, so you use frequency to distribute that volume the best you can. And just like frequency, the type of exercises that you do and certain muscles obviously interplay with the amount of volume that you're gonna do. But just generally speaking, it's a good idea to be somewhere between 6 and 10 if you're looking to either maintain or just minimally train a muscle without worrying about getting maximum value out of your workouts. And then if you're looking to like really push a muscle for growth, that's probably good to be somewhere between 12 and 20. And if you're gonna be pushing closer to 20, you're gonna wanna make sure that the proximity to failure is a bit of. A little bit lower. Yeah. Conservative at the higher ranges. So you wanna be training a little bit further away from failure. And conversely, if you're training with relatively low volumes, you probably wanna be training a little bit closer to failure. Right. And then specialization phases, if, if there are muscles that you're particularly interested in growing, it is probably a good idea to push those a little bit further, maybe closer to that 20 end range. But keep in mind that you only have so much recoverability, so it's probably a good idea to bring other volumes down as well. Yeah. Cool. I think. Unless I missed anything. Danny, is there anything you want to throw in there as far as summarizing what we've talked about.

I think that's good. Although you did say that we were going to use this quantification tool in perpetuity. Hopefully we get to the point where we can just literally put on some sort of sensor that tells us exactly when we're getting the right quality of volume and then stop as soon as the sensor tells us what's up. And then further, I don't want to work out in the future either. So if we could just take a pill and makes it make us maximally jacked while not being depressed, because obviously without working out we need to solve that problem too, then I would obviously do so. So, yeah, just a few important caveats that will be very important for the listener.

Yeah, Cool. Well, everyone, thank you so much for listening. Danny and I are going to go solve all biological issues that have ever existed in humanity. But if you like this episode, please let us know. Reach out to us built with science. And please let us know if there's anything else you want covered in future episodes. Thank you guys so much for listening and peace.