Alpha Progression
Training volume: How much to train for optimal muscle growth?

Training volume: How much to train for optimal muscle growth?

  • The amount of training stimulus is mainly determined by your volume when training.
  • Your body needs a strong training stimulus to force it to adapt.
  • To achieve optimal results, you must train with the optimal training volume.
  • An average of 11-18 sets per muscle per week with mostly 8-12 reps is optimal.
  • You must increase the training volume from week to week, since the body will get used to a training stimulus if it remains the same over time.

Importance of training volume for muscle growth

The body is reluctant to change its current muscle mass. Therefore, it needs an incentive to change its current muscle-to-fat ratio. This requires a strong training stimulus, which can be achieved by strength training with weights.

In strength training, the level of training stimulus is mainly determined by the training volume. This is the total amount of weight that is lifted per day, or per week. For instance, if you perform three sets of 10 reps with 100 lbs each, the total training volume is 3000 lbs.

Studies have shown that the amount of training volume is the most important variable when training.

Overtraining and undertraining in bodybuilding

If your training volume is too high, all of the body's resources will be used up in repairing the damaged muscles.

In the worst case scenario, it's even possible that the body will only be able to partially repair the damage from training. Then the body will no longer have the resources to strengthen and enlarge the muscles beyond the repair process.

On the other hand, if training volume is too low, the body will see no need to invest precious energy into building new muscle mass.

Therefore, more and more intensive strength training leads to more muscle building - as long as you don't overdo it. You should be careful to do neither too little nor too much in terms of training volume in order to avoid plateaus or even muscle loss in case of under- or overtraining. In order to achieve optimal results, training should ideally be done at the optimal training volume.

Optimal training volume for optimal muscle building

You can find more detailed information here on how optimal training volume varies from muscle group to muscle group.

This optimal volume depends on a number of factors unique to the individual. For example, gender, training experience, and whether you are in a calorie surplus or deficit. Future blog posts will explain in detail how exactly these factors play out.

Adjusting your training volume for continuous progress

Furthermore, it must be noted that the optimal volume changes over longer training phases. Since the body gets used to a training stimulus that is always the same, the training volume must increase from week to week until the so-called deload.

This is the last week of a training cycle where the training volume is lowered to fully reduce the fatigue accumulated during the training cycle.

The next two blog posts will describe in detail how to keep up with the change in optimal training volume with an appropriate progression strategy and how many times a muscle group should be trained per week.

Conclusion

A strong training stimulus is necessary for muscle growth. Here, the amount of training volume is the most important variable. However, the training volume should be neither too high nor too low to avoid overtraining or undertraining.

In addition, the optimal volume changes over time as the body becomes accustomed to the training load. Thus, regular adjustment of the training volume ensures continuous progress in strength training.

If you want to record, evaluate and optimize your training, download the Alpha Progression app here.