This little known training tip makes a big difference

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:46 The volume distribution across the week

02:27 My Online PT Course

02:52 The volume distribution across the week

04:03 Practical application

06:06 Conclusion

Transcript:

Most lifters are going about their training program design the wrong way around. They choose a training split and then they fill in the exercises and the volume and the frequency and the like to fit the training split. What you should do is think of the optimal program parameters or variables for what you want to achieve: strength development, fat loss, muscle growth… And then when you’ve selected the right volume, the right frequency per exercise, the right frequency per muscle group, then you make those variables fit in a way that creates a training split. And what that training split ends up looking like, whether it’s push-pull-legs, upper-lower or it doesn’t even have a name, which is often the case – that’s what you select. You make the program fit the variables that you want, not the other way around.

So when you pick a training split before you thought of training frequency variables, you’re putting the stroller in the baby. When it comes to optimizing your training frequency and volume there’s one thing that is very often not discussed and that’s the volume distribution across the week. And this can actually make a big difference, according to research.

We have a great study on this by Mike Zourdos et al. in competitive powerlifters. The researchers had these powerlifters perform a training program with Monday, Wednesday and Friday as their full body workout days and both groups on Monday that their “hypertrophy day”, which was relatively high volume, and then on Wednesday they did either a “power day” or a “strength day”. One group did hypertrophy- power-strength and strength was the most important day, also quite high volume, power being a relatively easy day, very easy to recover from. And then the other group did hypertrophy-strength-power. Now you might think – why does this matter? It’s the same program, same volume, same effort so you’re probably going to get identical results, right? Especially in well-trained lifters. But as we’ll discuss in a minute the results actually differed quite significantly.

Now to understand the study it’s important to understand the details. So the hypertrophy workout consisted of 3 to 5 sets of 8 reps at 75% of 1RM. So a relatively high volume but not too difficult. Power work was very easy. It was 3 to 5 explosive singles at 80 to 90% of 1RM. And strength work was three maximal sets at 85% of 1RM. So I already spoiled for you that one of the groups had significantly better gains than the other group. Which group do you think it was? If you thought it was a good idea to do the strength workout in the middle on Wednesday you are a loser, a failure at life. I never want to see your face again. Just kidding, I love you.

The workout that did their power workout in the middle got substantially better gains. And the reason for that is because they distributed their volume more equally across the week. So the hypertrophy and the strength days were clearly the harder workouts. What you want is after the harder workouts or around the harder workouts, you want more rest days, which means you can recover them from those workouts better and also you have higher performance on your strength day, which for them is the most important day because they’re power lifters. So the power workout is a relatively easy workout, it gives you more time to recover from the hypertrophy day, meaning that on the Friday when they do their strength work they’re more recovered, they can do more volume and indeed, we saw this in the results. There were significantly higher work volumes and repetition volumes in the group that had the strength workouts and the hypertrophy workouts separated more across the week, so basically with the more equal volume distribution. And these higher training volumes correlated with significantly higher strength gains.

Their gains were only statistically significantly greater for the bench press, but the effect size trend was the same for the total Wilks score, the squat and the deadlift strength gains. And this was in just six weeks in competitive powerlifters. So that’s a relatively big difference in a very small period in well trained lifters who cannot expect to make major gains anymore.

So I think this is a compelling study in a representative sample of serious lifters that should make us consider how we distribute our training volume across the week. If you don’t have certain exercises or certain days that are a lot more important than others, which is probably the case for most lifters that are just recreational lifters and train their entire body, then you should probably distribute your volume relatively equally across the week. Is simply makes the most sense and in most research, indeed, we see that when you distribute your volume equally across the week, when you increase training frequency, for example, and you take… If those 9 sets of chest work on national bench press day, you move some of them to Wednesday and Friday, for example, then we see that you get higher training volumes on Wednesday and Friday. Your total pressing volume in terms of repetitions or total workload goes up.

And that’s also an argument to consider full body workouts and do higher training frequencies. Higher training frequencies per muscle group, at least. You don’t have to go to the gym more often, you just spread your volume for a certain muscle group across your workouts for equally. Full body workouts by nature always achieve this so this is an argument to do full body workouts. Most lifters, especially beginners, don’t have to do full body workouts. If you do a bro split or something, you’re probably going to get pretty much identical results in most of the studies. Training frequency only matters to the extent it’s effect training volume. You want to facilitate a higher total training volume, and you do that by being more fresh when you do your exercises. And these results are actually more likely to be significant in well trained lifters doing substantial training volumes.

If you’re only doing three sets for one muscle group, then how you distribute it across the week just doesn’t matter as much. But when you’re talking about, say, 9 sets, doing all of them at the same day means that by set nine, you’re already very, very fatigued. So it makes more sense to spread those sets out across the week, move them to another day. And indeed, this is the trend we see in the training frequency research as well, where the few studies that do find significant differences they are almost all in favor of higher training frequencies and it’s usually in more well trained lifters doing higher training volume workouts. Which is probably a big part of you, because I know most of my audience is more serious lifters that are into evidence based fitness and are interested in the details.

So I hope this study gives you some of those details, gives you some more information to optimize your training program. And if you want to learn more about optimal training program design you can check out my online courses. The Henselmans PT Course is a very, very comprehensive course that goes into absolutely everything you want to know or possibly would need to know to make optimal training programs for muscle hypertrophy, strength development, fat loss, health improvement and client adherence. And it’s not just for personal trainers. About half the people that do the course are actually just serious lifters like me and you that are interested in just optimizing all of this for ourselves, because we are so passionate about this. And if you like this type of evidence based content, I’d be honored if you like and subscribe. See you next time.