There is no doubt that high-volume training is very effective for thousands of bodybuilders for building the kind of mass necessary for standing on the bodybuilding stage. Sure, those low-volume, high-intensity articles look really good on paper. Why can’t a person attain maximum muscle in only one working set? Scientifically speaking, it looks great. However, in the real world, with so many factors (nutrition, diet, recovery, and those factors on the neuromuscular level), it’s darn near impossible to reach your bodybuilding potential without a lot of food, sleep, and yes, training sets.

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Many people love high-volume training – but many people hate it. At some time or another, most bodybuilders give it a shot. After all, it worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wouldn’t that be enough of an endorsement? However, for many reasons, high-volume training doesn’t work. We’ll look at these reasons now!

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Many articles have been written about the woes of overtraining. Lots of authors like to wax philosophical to those people without the heart to train like madmen for hours per day in pursuit of a larger and thicker body. It’s true that many bodybuilders can’t keep up with the demands in terms of diet and recovery that are needed to train using high volume. It’s also true that many lifters are just plain lazy, and are quite attracted to the prospect of only training 25 minutes, three times per week. Whatever the cause, high-intensity, low volume training has its fan base.

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Many bodybuilders find success with brief, high intensity training. They discover the magic secrets to feeling peak contraction, and can manage to elicit some growth despite only using a few sets. For steroid users, this sort of success is easy with low-volume, extremely heavy training. For naturals, it can be much harder. Meeting peak intensity and training to actual failure isn’t always possible, especially when training without a spotter. For this reason, many bodybuilders resort to higher volume training. Hitting that peak failure point or achieving absolutely perfect repetition tempo isn’t as necessary, when you hit the muscle group with enough quality sets. Let’s look at a sample back day utilizing high volume training. You don’t have to train to failure on any set, although it is productive to toss that method in at the final set of some of the movements. The key is to train hard consistently throughout the workout.

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There are all sorts of groups of bodybuilders in the gym, at varying levels of experience and development. Just as their years in the gym dictate their physiques will be different, their nutritional, supplement, and training requirements will vary as well. When it comes to set volume, different levels and types of bodybuilders also vary what kind of volume they use.

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The standard 5-workout per week, 20-set per workout routine is very effective for adding muscle mass and maintaining steady, consistent gains in strength. However, there are many times in life when the rigors of our schedules will prevent us from training in the high-volume, high-set routines we enjoy. When times like that arrive, we need to find way to stimulate the muscle group equally (or near equally) in a lot less time. Here is a complete 4-day workout which only requires 20 minutes of lifting time per workout. They are incredibly tough to complete, and attention must be paid to every detail. The goal is maximum intensity for a very short period of time, and it’s a goal that is not always easy to achieve. Let’s get started!

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Here’s an interesting training protocol for breaking through a plateau.

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Most bodybuilders believe that, like legs, the back is a complex muscle group, and therefore requires a higher volume of sets in order to properly stimulate the muscles into growth. They split back day into muscle groups, then train each muscle group as if it deserved its own day. An example of a high volume back day is as follows.

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Q: What do you think of high volume training? It just seems to me that these pros are lying - guys like Jay Cutler do six exercises and then do between two and three sets for those six, each. How is that possible?

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