Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2022-04-03

Intensity or volume? I got this wrong until only a few years ago. Then I met someone very special who gradually brought me around to seeing things differently (thanks, Janet!).

Early in my athletic career, I was taught that you do heavy weight and low reps so that you get strong without getting big. "Volume is the enemy, it makes you bulky and slow."

After Janet persuaded me to change my program from low volume to high volume, the progressive increase in size became obvious in my climbing videos despite my age (athletes over 50 don't increase muscle mass, or so they say). My testosterone, which had been toward the high end of normal, moved well past the high end of normal (this means stronger bones and more muscle mass).

Mistaken beliefs

It's a common misperception that you must choose between volume and intensity. Volume is associated with hypertrophy (size) and intensity is associated with strength. This leads to the idea that size detracts from athletic performance, but we look at someone like Usain Bolt (the world's greatest athlete) and instantly see this is not true.

Most people believe you can't get intensity if you are doing high reps. While that is true (for 99.999% of us, myself included) it is true only when you are thinking of the number of reps per set. You can change this by simply doing more sets.

Another belief is that in a single set, you use a heavier weight to get the same amount of work (weight times distance traveled) or same muscular damage with fewer reps; this is also true only through a specific lens. By "stacking" your sets, you can use a lighter weight and actually get more intensity. In fact, it's a common mistake to use too much weight and forego intensity due to compensation by other muscles (also known as "poor form") or failing to get enough range of motion (another form of poor form, an example being the "knee dip" that some people mistakenly call a squat). Let's say I use more weight for a biceps curl than my biceps can actually move. I will work very hard in that set, but not by targeting the biceps. Other muscles share the load and there's no intensity involved with any of them or with the biceps.

For best results

The best results are achieved when you get both intensity and volume in the same workout. Here is how you do that:

Develop the plan for a given workout such that you have multiple exercises per muscle. For example, my shoulder workout includes 4 exercises for the rear deltoids. Most people will do one or even no exercise for rear delts.
Take short breaks between sets. By not allowing your muscles to recharge very much, you can use less weight (thus less stress to tendons and ligaments while still stimulating them to grow) for the entire set while also having each rep being a challenge.
Do many sets per exercise. I typically do 4 sets.
Stagger the exercises such that the target muscle is rested between blasts.

Here's an example. In my shoulder workout:

I start with rear delts alternating with standing lateral raises (I do a set of each with no rest between the sets, for a total of four sets of each). This hits 2 of the 3 heads.
I then do 4 or 5 sets of standing overhead presses.
I follow this by another rear delt exercise.
Then I do alternating sets of front delt raises and seated lateral raises.
Then another rear delt exercise.
Then standing lateral raises alternating with standing overhead presses.
Then I do 4 sets of rear delt bentover rows.
I end by doing one set each with light weight of front raises, side laterals, and overhead presses for as many reps as I can do.

Analysis

You can see that at no time am I doing anything that reduces intensity. More weight does not equal more intensity, it equals more weight. Intensity is a measure of how hard that muscle is working. If the muscle has to struggle to move 20 lbs because you have pre-exhausted it and never let it recharge, it gets the same (or better) stimulation as if it is trying to move 40 lbs on a full recharge.

"Muscle A" does get a moderate recharge while you are hitting "Muscle B" and then "Muscle C" but then when you come back to "Muscle A" the second time it is weaker than it was the first time. Hitting it a third time and then a fourth time will trigger the adaptive response four times. That's one reason my testosterone is so high even at my age (it's above the normal range).

It's critical that you approach each exercise (first, second, third, fourth) as if it is the only one and do every rep with the full range (for that exercise) and aim for intensity by using enough tension on the muscle that the reps are difficult. Not so difficult that you have to cheat on your form, but difficult enough that by about the 6th or 7th rep you have to mentally push to keep going.

Does it seem like all those sets mean a very long workout? Well, it's not all that long. My shoulders take about half an hour. The "secret" to that is I take very short breaks between exercises and almost no breaks between sets for an exercise. It's go, go, go. Does that sound like an endurance workout? Well, it's not. To build endurance, you must lower intensity. So this is a strength workout with volume. That means it builds size and strength. You get the stimulation to grow both muscle (strength) and capillaries (size, capillarization is key to packing on the size beyond what you get from just strength training).

Presup?

This kind of workout is grueling and exhausting. Should you take a "presup" to get you through it? No, those are pretty worthless. Having creatine in your system will definitely help, but you don't need to take creatine at any specific time. Beta alinine, same thing. The other ingredients in the typical "pre sup" can actually hurt you. For example, many of these contain sugar and that means testosterone will be depressed due to the insulin spike (same thing with "recovery" or "post workout sups").

Train smart

Don't fall for the intensity versus volume "debate". It's a false controversy. You may have to leave your comfort zone to get away from a training method that goes one way or the other. But that would be the smart thing to do.

Mindconnection eNL, 2022-04-03

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