Whenever we consider the most important factors that lead to muscle growth, the amount of volume we produce in a training session, and how we progress this volume over time are the most important factors that determine rates of muscle growth.
The volume of our training is determined by the load we are lifting, multiplied by the number of reps and sets. For example, three sets of ten at 100kg equates to 3x10x100=3000kg of volume for a given exercise. The reason why increasing volume is so important is because this allows us to place greater and greater stresses on the body, which are required to force the adaptations we are trying to achieve through the adaptations between training sessions.
It may seem sensible then to train with high volume, and performing multiple sets would therefore be important to cause muscle growth. To a certain extent this is true, however we also need to factor in whether or not we are actually causing the right kind of stress, alongside if the stress is something the body can handle. High volume training is a fine balancing act between creating enough stress to allow for recovery and adaptation, balanced with over-doing it and pushing the body past a point where we can recover sufficiently between sessions to be useful.
It is easier to build volume in a training session at lighter loads, so the temptation might be to go with a lighter weight and perform a large number of reps. However, in this situation we need to consider if we are training in the right zones to really cause optimal muscle growth. Too light a load and this becomes focused more on stressing muscular endurance than forcing hypertrophy.
This idea of the right kind of stress is important, and, in fact, if you train high volume but without training to at least near fatigue, then the body will not be sufficiently stressed to make the muscles grow. If we consider training one set to failure, which may include drop sets, pyramid sets, super sets and giant sets to really fatigue muscle groups, then we can still build a large amount of volume in one set whilst causing ‘metabolic stress’ to trigger muscle growth. The question is, is this better than higher volume training?
The answer, with most things in training, is to do with context. Is one very hard set per exercise, to as much failure as possible, better than three or four sets training way below maximum effort? The answer is yes. Is it better than doing so much volume that it becomes counterproductive in terms of recovery and the correct training stimulus? Probably yes. Is it better than a structured session with higher volume that is progressed accordingly, whilst training at the correct intensity to promote muscle growth and enough metabolic stress to encourage muscle building processes? Probably not.
Therefore, when we train, we need to consider several interweaving factors that combine to really ‘optimise’ muscle growth. Each session, whether one working set or five, should be at the correct load and rep ranges to stimulate hypertrophy. It should push the body to fatigue within each working set, and week on week the amount of volume we train should increase in order to keep stimulating new muscle growth.
In order to increase training volume for a specific exercise, we can obviously increase the load lifted at a given rep range, we can do these reps at a given load, or if all else fails then we can use extra sets, including drop sets for example, to build more volume into a session and really push the body to grow.
Although it is certainly possible for experienced trainers to grow with one, often brutal, set to fatigue, it is often more beneficial to take this ethos and apply it to multiple sets within a workout, even if it is only for one working set for each exercise, whilst using other sets to build volume without over stressing the muscles and the joints on the body.
Paul Rimmer (BSc, MSc, PhD).
