In the last article titled, Alternate Between High Volume and Low Volume Training, I discussed the training option of doing a high volume workout and a low volume workout within the same week. If this combination works for you, then you can use it as a regular weekly schedule. Alternating between high volume and low volume training can also be done in training blocks that each last three to four weeks. This shall be discussed in this article.
Improve Your Recovery Ability with High-Volume
Using high volume training for three to four weeks and then switching to low volume training for three to four weeks sets your body up for gains. The high-volume training will tend to speed up your metabolism. Your body will be forced to improve its ability to recover because the high-volume training will create a lot of muscle damage and loss of protein in your muscles. High volume training will also cause a great deal of energy expenditure in the form of glycogen depletion within your muscles. Your body will respond to this increased demand with a greater supply of recovery power. This will come in the form of more protein synthesis and glycogen replenishment within the muscles to make up for the substantial loss that is caused by high volume training.
Supercompensation Occurs during Low-Volume
If you do three to four weeks of high-volume training, it will program your body to accelerate your supply of recovery power. Once the increased supply of recovery power has been programmed into your body, the accelerated rate will remain for a while, even if you cut back on the demand of your training by doing low volume workouts. This will cause the accelerated supply of recovery power to be greater than the demand of the low volume workout. The result is that your body will over-recover with extra protein synthesis and glycogen replenishment in the muscles. This will cause your muscles to super-compensate with added muscle size and strength. The trick is to do the high-volume training without overtraining, and to do the low volume training without undertraining.
High Volume Without Overtraining
How do you include three to four weeks of high-volume workouts without overtraining? You must control your training intensity. If you do tons of high intensity sets within the same workout, chances are good that you will over-train. When training a muscle group, you can do four to five sets of two or three different exercises. Your last set of each exercise can be a hard set, but the three to four sets that lead up to your last set of each exercise should be low to moderate in intensity. For example, we will imagine that you are doing three chest exercises consisting of flat bench presses, incline presses, and decline presses. You would work up in weight across five sets for each exercise as follows:
1st set: 1 x 10 40% of your single rep max
2nd set: 1 x 10 50% of your single rep max
3rd set: 1 x 8 60% of your single rep max
4th set: 1 x 6 70% of your single rep max
5th set: 1 x 6 80% of your single rep max
The same procedure can also be repeated for each exercise that is performed for the other muscle groups that are trained during your high-volume workouts.
Low-Volume Training
After three to four weeks of high-volume training, you would switch to low-volume training. You can still do two or three exercises per muscle group, but your warm up sets should not have nearly as many reps as the amount that was used for the high-volume block. Another very important point is that after you do warm up sets for your first exercise, do not do any more warm up sets for the exercises that are done for the same muscle group. For example, if you do a chest workout consisting of bench presses, incline presses, and decline presses, do bench presses as your first exercise, and only do warm up sets for bench presses. You should not do any warm up sets for incline presses or decline presses as the warm up sets for the bench press will also serve as warm up sets for the other chest exercises. An example of this type of low volume chest workout is presented below:
Flat Bench Press
1st set: 5 reps using 40% of your single rep max (warm up set)
2nd set: 5 reps using 50% of your single rep max (warm up set)
3rd set: 3 reps using 60% of your single rep max (warm up set)
4th set: 10 reps using 70% of your single rep max (work set)
Incline press
5th set: 8 reps using 75% of your single rep max (work set)
Decline press
6th set: 6 reps using 80% of your single rep max (work set)
I recommend that you train each muscle group twice during the three to four week high-volume block, and that you train each muscle group two to three times during the three to four week low-volume block). Keep alternating back and forth between high volume and low-volume training every three to four weeks if you choose to use this type of training.
A Training Option
Alternating between high-volume and low-volume training is just one of many different training options that you can try. Every lifter is different and some will respond exceptionally well to this type of training. The only way to find out if it will work for you is to try it. Best of training to you.
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