Brad Schoenfeld's study of exercise volume and hypertrophy

[luisHK]

30 to 45 sets per muscle group per week? Please show me where. And do you think anyone natural could put up with that kind of volume for any meaningful length of time? By the way, according to Schoenfeld, all sets were to "failure" in his various studies.

Sorry, I was thinking more in the line of 5 sets are better than 1 for hypertrophy, 30 to 45 set in a single week sounds like a high range even for BBrs, that means either a wole lot of exercises for the same muscle group or working them very often and still at least 2 exercises per day. Sounds high, can't show you where. 16-30 sets sounds common for BBrs, they seem to enjoy doing several exercises per muscle group and work 3 to 5sets per exercise.
I wouldn't mind if a BBr could come and shed some light here, but Barron's leg press + curl + leg ext to do the same work or less than a squat is good hint. I see some BBs throwinga few partial squats on top of that.
Come to think of that I do a lot of sets whch stress the back, but than back is working with (about ?) every compound movement.

 

[luisHK]

3 And do you think anyone natural could put up with that kind of volume for any meaningful length of time? /QUOTE]

Dunno about the close to 45sets regime, and if we forget about the failure part, doing a bunch of 8 to 12 reps sets, especially of isolation exercises, even with short rest is not overly taxing - I've just switched to a higher volume program btw (The Cube method), from another program which was more to my taste working fewer sets and heavier weights but ended up very tiring after a few months and i'm having more energy again.
Doing a whole bunch of 10 reps exercises is much easier than the few heavy sets of a major compound sets at the beginning of the workout. I suspect if removing the heavy compound one could do a lot of sets without being overly tired - I'm not very curious to try that trade off though.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

doing a bunch of 8 to 12 reps sets, especially of isolation exercises, even with short rest is not overly taxing

According to a number of studies across a broad spectrum of the exercising population, single joint exercises are essentially superfluous in terms of gaining either strength or muscle size when also properly doing multi-joint exercises:

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...without-equipment.328433/page-17#post-4873084

 

[luisHK]

Yes, I read the conclusions of the studies you linked, it makes sense and i don't do isolation exercises, bar usually 3 sets of hammer curls a week and sometimes as many sets for triceps- and very recently introduced 4 sets of light Leg extensions on the Cube method BB inspired day. Used to do less fluff than that.

There are lots of compound exercises, for back i'm doing sumo, variations of sumo, BB rows, pendlay rows, pull downs( I was not very good at pull up and tendonitis had me give them up completely), Clean and press, Snatch grip DL. Squats and probably DB walks also work the back. Pressing exercises as well, go figure the stress our backs go through...Basically there are plenty of compound exercises, most of them are not overly taxing if not working too close to failure. Single joints exercises are much easier for sure

Bbrs also have to work symmetry, i suspect this requires some extra isolations exercises, dunno what the studies say about symmetry.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Yes, I read the conclusions of the studies you linked, it makes sense

Bbrs also have to work symmetry, i suspect this requires some extra isolations exercises, dunno what the studies say about symmetry.

If you accept the conclusions of the studies, then I'm not sure how isolation work would improve symmetry. If it's superfluous, then it's...superfluous. Unless maybe if you stop doing compounds, which doesn't make much sense. I would think that you can only bring muscles up to their potential, and that's what comprehensive exercise is supposed to do. You can't really change the shape of a muscle.

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/can-you-change-shape-your-muscles-certain-exercises/

 

[Frederick Foresight]

I'm more in the Visaria camp of stopping one rep before failure (also more than 1 rep depending on the plan)

Careful. He also thinks that competitive athletes should strength train twice a day, six days a week. Really.

 

[DTB2]

I have trained "enhanced" in my life. I don't change my training based on drugs. It just works better enhanced. There is nothing you "get away with" on drugs that you can't do natural. It is more "cheating" than that.

The reason that it appears that way is because you were most likely over training. Actually over training is a misnomer. You were under nutritioned and under recovered.

The juice corrected your training mistakes, that's why you were able to add reps and or weight nearly every workout.

Training is actually quite simple.

Power and strength, the effort is to make the weight feel lighter than actual. This accomplished via technique and low reps.

Size/bodybuilding, using techniques to make the weight feel heavier than actual. This accomplished via technique and low reps.This accomplished via technique and high reps.