3 Reasons To Reduce Your Training Volume

When it comes to writing training programme, I'm usually a "less is more" kind of guy. I like to work via negativa.

I like to use the minimum effective dose.

And every time I get stuck trying to write a clients programme it's because I'm trying to fit in too much.

This preference for working this way isn't just something I've decided or been told to do, it's because I've seen it consistently work better for the everyday athletes that I work with when it comes to building strength, power, muscle and drastically changing their physiques. So here's the 3 reasons why you should reduce your training volume for maximum results.

Higher Intensity Of Training

I'm a firm believer that training intensity is the single biggest factor in building strength AND gaining muscle.

For maximal strength, this makes perfect sense. It's the SAID (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands) principle in it purest form.

To get better at lifting heavy things, you need to practice lifting heavy things, usually completing sets in the 1-6 rep at 85%+ of your 1RM.

But I believe the same is true for muscle gain.

The main biological purpose of muscle gain is to be able to express more force. There is no other reason for you body to gain muscle other than this. In fact, your body would prefer to stay smaller on a purely survival basis if you didn't repeatedly stress it with the task of lifting progressively heavier weights (progressive overload). Yes, I do understand that the research says that you can build muscle across all rep ranges... but experience states that you don't get a pair of boulder shoulders doing 100 reps of 2kg lateral raises, or massive biceps from curling an empty EZ Bar all day.

Your body will work to create a bigger cross-sectional area of muscle (again build muscle), to increase your capacity to produce force, if you repeatedly ask your body to generate high amounts of force.

This is why intensity is king.

The caveat is that intensity (weight) and volume (sets x reps) have an inverse relationship.

When intensity is high, volume should be low. When volume is high, intensity should be low.

You can go through short periods where both are moderately high, but do this for too long and your system will go bang. Kaput. Broken.

So more often than not, to make significant changes to someones physique and/or performance, I'm choosing high intensity over high volume.

Better Quality Of Work

When I take on a new client who has been in the gym, training hard, feeling like they're putting in the work, but not getting results, I'll often notice they're doing too much volume.

So when I present then with a programme with a significantly lower volume, sometimes there is a fear that it's not going to work.

How can it work? There is less. Its because you'll be able to work at a higher intensity (as I've just described), but you'll also perform a better quality of work.

I'm talking technique, focus, proximity to failure.

See, if you're doing 5 sets of 8 bench presses, the focus is on the volume. I'm doing 40 reps and they're going to do the work.

But it may only be the last few reps of sets 4 and 5 that are truly stimulating reps. You cruised through the first few sets because you know you've got 5 to work through.

Then another 4 on the incline press, 4 on your flys, 4 on your laterals, etc.

You end up doing lots of work, but very little of that work is focussed and stimulating.

Now switch that up for 2 sets, and your mindset will shift.

You'll want to make sure those 2 sets are as good as possible.

You'll focus more on your technique, your tempo, tension, your loading.

And you'll make sure those two sets are enough, and probably get more from them in the process.

When you have less work to do, you can do a better quality of work... and in the gym that matters.

Improved Recovery Between Sessions

It's important to remember that you do not build muscle in the gym.

You build muscle when you're recovering between training sessions.

The training session itself is the stimulus to make you grow in those periods of recovery.

So when training, our focus should be to stimulate, not annihilate. When we do enough training to stimulate growth, recovery quickly, and go again, we create this consistent repeated cycle of muscle growth that we want.

If we annihilate by doing too much volume, too much work, and trying too hard, we prolong that recovery period, and prolong ourselves from getting another high quality training stimulus.

A lot of online cookie cutter training programmes are derived from bodybuilding programmes completed by assisted lifter.

Athletes and influencers who are the juice, taking gear, or being religious with their vitamins and prayers.

They can get away with higher training volumes and the gear they are on helps improve their recovery between training sessions amongst other things.

As a natural lifter, you will be better served reducing your training volume, to help maximise your recovery potential, and get yourself back in the gym to hit another session when well recovered.

Stimulate don't annihilate.

Not sure what the best training volume is for you, and how to best optimise your training time for maximum progress?

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