Today, in another amazing Coaching Log I give you Old Man Conjugate: Escalating Volume Training. What the hell is that you ask? Well, it’s not too complicated, and it sucks. Not sure if I made that name up or not, but who cares.
I use a lot of Escalating Volume Training on the Prowler with clients.
I decided to try it out on myself.
Why?
Well, a few reasons:
- I’m losing muscle mass at an alarming rate
- The surgeon has me on restrictions of not lifting more than 20 pounds for 2 more weeks
- Time under tension with 20 pounds is pretty impossible (I'm limited by the surgeon to no more than 20 pounds)
My Old Man Conjugate: Escalating Volume Training is to address all of the issues above and to improve my lactic acid tolerance for the bodybuilding work I’ll add in once I am cleared to lift real weight gain. My training for the past few years has been really restricted due to the bad hip, the replacement (and the restrictions that came with that) and now the Hernia (Quato) repair.
Maintaining muscle mass as you pass 55 is not easy, especially if you can’t train hard. I wanted to see if adding in Escalating Volume Training would help me achieve these goals.
What is Old Man Conjugate: Escalating Volume Training?
I am pretty sure I made the term Escalating Volume Training up, and I am sure that someone else has done this type of training before, I just have not heard of it. So, I did it on the Leg Press this week.
Boy did it suck.
The surgeon says I am not supposed to use more than 20 pounds, but I added a 45 to each post on the Leg Press. It felt like 20 pounds, so there’s that.
I escalated the Volume each rep.
My Leg Press allows you to use one leg individually or both. It has two free floating foot plates and that made this easy to do.
I performed 1 rep each leg, then both legs, then 2 reps each leg and the both legs, then 3 reps each leg, then both legs.
To try and illustrate it more clearly, it went like this:
- Left Leg-Right Leg-Both Legs x 1 rep
- Left Leg-Right Leg-Both Legs x 2 reps
- Left Leg-Right Leg-Both Legs x 3 reps
- All the way up to 10 reps.
This is similar to Ladder Training, but you don’t go back down. You only go UP in volume.
My set of 45 pounds on each side of the Leg Press ended up being 110 reps total. I also made it harder by keeping continuous tension on the muscles and flexing the quads hard at the top of each rep.
There are many ways to use Old Man Conjugate: Escalating Volume Training for reps and exercises. And I also added it in with Dumbell Bench Presses on Wednesday. Using 20’s was not hard, but my man boobs are a little sore today.
My overall impression of this is that it needs more investigation.
My gut tells me it will work like gangbusters to maintain/build muscle using a reasonable load. As Dave mentioned on the podcast, at our age we need to NOT GET WORSE. I am pretty sure I can regain the lost muscle mass and then maintain it while using protocols like this.
Let’s hope so.
Please give my Old Man Conjugate: Escalating Volume Training a run in your own program and leave me some comments on how it worked for you.
Live, Learn, Pass on.
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Vincere vel mori
C.J. Murphy
Originally written on February 15, 2024
Posted on March 21, 2024
