“If you haven’t switched from high volume to low volume at least three times, you haven’t lifted long enough.”
Observation:
The high-volume people become low-volume advocates — and vice versa (several times).
Expansion:
Lifters chase novelty because the body adapts, and the mind gets bored. High-volume builds a base, while low-volume refines it. The pendulum keeps swinging because both work — for a while. What matters is not the method but the phase of life you’re in.
You can’t always train like you did at 25, but you can still train like you give a damn. The biggest takeaway from this one is that change is necessary. You can’t do the same thing ALL the time and expect results.
It doesn’t work that way. In my experience, work capacity is left out of these conversations. I have heard and understand the “effective reps” idea, but what happens outside these reps? Some will say this is all “junk volume,” and who knows, maybe they are correct.
This aside. Let's look at two extreme examples. 10 effective reps across five work sets per week - five movements with 10 reps, with the last 2 being adequate reps - and two work sets per movement. We are looking at 200-250 reps per week with warm-up sets. Let’s now say all these reps feed into your ability to do work - or work capacity.
Conversely, let's say you do 100 effective reps weekly. Now, we are looking at 2000-2500 total reps (work capacity). Do these play any role in one's fitness or conditioning at all? If it's all junk volume, then how can one ask athletes or clients to get in 10,000 steps per day?
Are all these steps effective steps or junk steps?
Of course, different mechanisms are at work here, but ultimately, we are looking at results and moving closer to or further away from your goals. Some of this makes sense if we consider hypertrophy in isolation, but does anything happen in isolation?
Ultimately, we are examining stimuli and adaptations. If the stimulus is always the same, you will adapt to both the low and high sides. This is why both have value. It is best not to shift radically from one to the other, but rather to move gradually from one to the other in a phased manner.
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