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VOLUME VS. EFFECTIVE REPETITIONS

newsletter Oct 20, 2022

Volume vs. Effective Repetitions

Reconciling Two Sides of the Same Coin.

By: Eric Bugera

  • Mechanical tension appears to be the main driver of muscle hypertrophy.
  • Challenging sets that generate high degrees of mechanical tension can be accomplished using many repetition ranges.
  • Use moderate to higher repetition sets (or a greater number of sets) to generate the required mechanical tension until skill or strength enable you to use higher load with less repetitions.

 

Confused?

Building muscle is one of the most common goals a client will bring you. Luckily, the literature on hypertrophy has expanded enormously over the last few decades – providing numerous strategies, clarifications, and mechanistic underpinnings to guide your decisions in the gym. 

Two seemingly rival themes have emerged amongst most successful muscle building philosophies. First, a set must be meaningfully challenging to assure a reasonable hypertrophy stimulus was delivered to the muscle – high effort (or “effective repetitions”) must be present. However, a large body of literature also indicates that increased training volume is a relatively reliable predictor of muscle hypertrophy. So which is it?

A Bit of Context

Mechanical tension is the strain experienced by a working muscle. It is detected by specialized sensors throughout the tissue called mechanosensors. Mechanotransduction occurs where a cascade of signaling events as a result of the detected tension promotes the accumulation of muscular hypertrophy. Repeating this process over the course of weeks, months, or even years worth of training results in the large-scale hypertrophy that you know and love.

The accumulation of highly stimulating repetitions – those that seemingly grind to a halt, are the main goal of a good hypertrophy training set. These are considered “effective repetitions”, the ones that likely contribute the highest degree of mechanical tension during your workouts. The problem arises when you are potentially inexperienced, pre-fatigued, or lack the full body strength to maintain biomechanical perfection across the duration of a hard set. The breakdown of technique may start to undercut the effectiveness of your repetitions before you hit the sweet spot of mechanical tension.

While you may not always execute a single maximally stimulating set – volume accumulation can help fill that gap. Reconciling effective repetitions and volume as the main driver(s) of hypertrophy is simple when you recognize that suboptimal does not mean zero stimulation. 

Although ending a set early to match your capability to remain technically sound may mean slightly less effective repetitions, it will allow for mechanical tension to be accumulated across the additional sets or repetitions performed. 

Where you lack the capability to lock in your technique for perfectly executed maximally stimulating repetitions, adding an extra set or reducing the load to chase a higher repetition count will provide the stimulation you need to continue growing while the remainder of your weak points improve on the back end.

Over time, aim to funnel as many exercises as possible towards heavier hypertrophy sets – reaching technically sound failure around 8–10 repetitions. 

Putting it all Together

Digging into the literature behind muscle growth should empower you to suit your training program to the needs and capabilities of the person in front of you. A huge array of options are available in order to grow muscle so long as the end of the set reaches a reasonable proximity to muscle failure. With this in mind, although peak tension is best acquired from the concept of “effective repetitions” – there also exists a continuum of effectiveness. The end goal should be to develop yourself or your clients. In the long term, pursue greater and greater degrees of training quality – but in the immediate term, take advantage of the options afforded to you.

 

Action items:

  • Know what training close to failure looks and feels like on each exercise.
  • Where possible, train close to failure in the 8–10 repetition range.
  • Where necessary, train close to failure in the 10–15+ repetition range, or, add additional sets to further promote hypertrophy.
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