Intensity or volume: Develop effective workouts

With the support of Roberto Castellano, Helena Om, and Sergio Molina, we have developed some concepts to help you learn how to develop effective workouts.

Before discussing what to do to develop effective workouts and learn to regulate intensity or volume, we will discuss some concepts and debates surrounding these important variables, which are relevant to learning how to train.

Intensity or Volume: Which Builds Muscle?

So, what is the main factor that helps build muscle? Well, intensity—but this is a personal factor, and it is subjective.

Only you can feel how hard you are working; no one else in the gym can get inside your head and body and experience what you are experiencing.

Is reducing the repetitions and adding weight from one workout to the next a way to increase intensity? “Sure.”

But after a while, you will hit a wall in your ability to increase both your strength and muscle mass without damaging your joints.

It is better to have a few tricks up your sleeve;

Some other techniques for increasing intensity are not as glamorous, but they are useful for achieving effective workouts and, honestly, they will seriously challenge you if you work hard at them!

Before addressing these techniques, let’s examine a specific topic that is on everyone’s mind and, although it should not be controversial, still is.

Intensity or Volume: Why Does the Myth Persist?

The myth that the only factor in building muscle is lifting heavy weights has been perpetuated among bodybuilders for decades.

However, the key to increasing muscle hypertrophy is to increase intensity, along with other physiological factors that may have an influence.

Of course, lifting increasingly heavier weights over time is itself a way to increase intensity.

• The disadvantage is that lifting a heavy load for too long can cause pain and injuries in the muscles, joints, and tendons, eventually leading to exhaustion or overtraining.
• When intensity techniques are used to reach effective workouts, less weight can be used, resulting in less wear and tear. They also provide a break from the usual approach, increasing the ability to develop the mind-muscle connection.

There are several reasons why the myth that “heavier weights = bigger muscles” refuses to die.

• The first and most obvious reason is that when people start training, their bodies respond quickly by increasing muscle mass.
• Without much knowledge of how hypertrophy works, it is logical for beginners to think they should keep adding weight… until they get injured or reach a plateau…

Furthermore, they see bodybuilders in the gym and on social media lifting extremely heavy weights and think: “Hey, this guy’s chest is so big because he’s doing 10 reps with 315; I need to do that too!”

Moreover, comparing yourself with an IFBB professional bodybuilder is a bad idea because, on the one hand, they have worked for years to get where they are and, on the other, they follow a different protocol, both in volume and intensity, which enables them to have effective workouts.

Intensity or Volume: What About Technique?

One of the most obvious problems we have found and observed in a gym setting is the lack of proper form and the use of excessive weight when performing exercises.

As we mentioned earlier, beginners are so consumed with lifting heavy weights, thinking that their physique will improve along with their performance of heavy lifts, while neglecting the technique or form used to perform the exercises.

Not only can this be very harmful and inhibit muscle gains, but it will also be a complete waste of time, in addition to putting your physique at risk and potentially leading to frustration.

However, there are some tips you should keep in mind to develop effective workouts, and they have to do with technique, which ultimately will allow you to progress, whether in volume or intensity.

• Leave your ego at the gym entrance: the purpose of going to the gym may vary, whether it is to improve your physique or release some stress; regardless, you are there to take care of the most important person: YOU…
• Slow down: one of the biggest obstacles contributing to poor technique is performing exercises too quickly. In many ways, this is not only very dangerous because of the risk of injury, but it also prevents you from continuing to make muscle gains.
• Reduce the weight: another factor contributing to excessive momentum and poor technique is using too much weight. Exercises performed with heavy weights and good form will definitely improve your muscles, but using excessive weight can have adverse consequences.

All of this comes down to performing the repetitions correctly to achieve a certain “look”; however, this also depends on individual ability.

Intensity or Volume: It Depends on Your Ability

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with bodybuilding, especially for beginners and intermediates, is using workouts that are too advanced.

• For example, the young aspiring bodybuilder reads an article written by his favorite professional bodybuilder about how he trains to achieve success.
• The young man assumes that if he also follows the same regimen, he will achieve the same results.

If that were true, then this entire world would be full of bodybuilders with gigantic arms, and competitions would be brutal.

The truth is that professional bodybuilders manage many variables, including their genetics, skills, and so on.

In contrast, recreational athletes focus on diet, training, rest, or supplements in a given context, but they do not live exclusively to compete.

To put it simply, when we talk about the volume or intensity of a training program, in every case they must be adapted to your abilities, and you cannot treat them as an absolute solution.

In fact, it will have the opposite effect; using an advanced bodybuilding program will lead to overtraining and eventually disappointment.

Therefore, your effective workouts should be those in which your body’s capabilities are aligned with what you can do, not with the goals you envision.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a well-known philosopher, summed it up in a sentence: “one must learn to walk before one can run”… well, bodybuilding, or muscle development, is the same…

This could be reflected in the opinions of our guest athletes in this video, Roberto Castellano, Helena Om, and Sergio Molina, who discuss how an athlete should approach their workouts.

Each person’s physiological response to a weight is what matters, not the weight being moved.

Intensity: how can you increase it?

Obviously, one way to increase intensity is to increase the weight; however, there are some things you can do to have effective workouts:

• Shorten the rest between sets: this is one of the easiest ways to increase intensity. Shortening your rest periods means you will probably have to reduce the weight you lift.
• Modify time under tension: you can also change the speed of your repetitions; depending on the exercise, you can vary the eccentric and concentric phases or pause in the middle of a repetition… one example is to do a set of 12 reps and, starting with the 8th or 9th repetition, slow down the cadence, which will ultimately have a significant impact on your target muscles…
• Fatigue your muscles before your central nervous system: this way, you will make your muscles burn a little before you begin. For example, if you are doing bench presses, you can start with a few light sets using dumbbells to warm up your chest.
• Do drop sets: this technique will work both fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers, pushing a great deal of blood into the muscle and causing enough damage to force your body to respond by growing.
• Do giant sets: these are simply three or more exercises performed consecutively, with little or no rest between them; if compound exercises are used, they will have a major impact on the muscles, especially lagging muscles and particularly the leg muscles, which generally benefit from this brutality.
• Perform forced reps: when you reach failure in a set, you have a few options; you can stop, of course. But if you use forced reps, you could break through your limits and increase intensity.
• Develop supersets: especially for isolation movements, this type of variation will help you emphasize the point of reaching muscular failure and burn even more muscle tissue.

The theory of effective workouts

The main current theories on muscle growth point to “time under tension” as a means of growth.

Although this factor is widely regarded as the best for achieving effective workouts because of the research supporting it, the most effective training method for achieving hypertrophy is still debated.

Many believe in high-intensity techniques: low-volume, heavy-weight training as a means of illicit muscle growth. Meanwhile, many others believe that weight should be sacrificed to incorporate high-volume training.

Some of the best-known advocates on both sides are genetically superior professional bodybuilders, and their physiques or progress alone are not sufficient evidence to settle the matter.

To do so, we must analyze the advantages of both styles and draw the appropriate conclusions from research about what truly leads to growth.

High volume with low intensity

High-volume, low-intensity training is the most traditional and widely accepted form of training among bodybuilders.

• The idea is to incorporate multiple sets to repeatedly target a specific muscle group in an attempt to break down muscle tissue and increase time under tension as a means of illicit growth.
• Some of the most compelling evidence for using volume points to its ability to increase markers of protein synthesis after exercise, which is a very important indicator of muscle growth (1).

Despite research suggesting that this leads to effective workouts, it is important to understand the limitations of adhering to a single training style.

First, the research showing its correlation with protein synthesis had no obvious problems with the study itself.

The point is that most people take one study hypothesizing that high volume is the correct training style without taking the others into account.

Protein synthesis is:

• The production of proteins by cells using DNA, RNA, and various enzymes, or
• The process by which amino acids are organized linearly into proteins through the involvement of ribosomal RNA, transfer RNA, messenger RNA, and various enzymes

In both definitions, it is the process by which the body repairs muscle tissue damaged by exercise and, while it is involved in muscle growth, IT IS NOT AN EXCLUSIVE INDICATOR THAT MUSCLE IS BEING BUILT.

Low volume with high intensity

Now let us turn to high-intensity training; some of the key principles supporting high-intensity training are based on the fact that it can induce muscle damage and failure in fewer sets than you think, and you can only grow while you are recovering.

One of the key principles of this training style is to make every second in the gym count so that you can spend more time growing.

While this is a novel idea for achieving effective workouts, some of its biggest critics debate whether it is possible to maximize time under tension with so few sets and with greater fatigue from the perceived load of the weight you are lifting.

However, high-volume training is notorious for leading to overtraining of the musculoskeletal system, while high-intensity training with heavy loads is notorious for leading to overtraining of the central nervous system (2).

Here, if you perform a high-intensity routine, just because your muscles cannot lift a load does not mean that the result is muscle damage.

It is entirely possible to reach muscular failure during an exercise without inducing the necessary time under tension for growth.

Despite these concerns about high-intensity training, the fact remains that the best way to induce progress is to increase the amount of load being used to induce muscular tension.

From this point of view, the only way to do so is to incorporate heavier lifting at some point in the routine to promote progression. High-intensity training certainly incorporates the aspect of greater weight.

Effective workouts: which is best?

When we analyze the question “what is the best training style?” and ask why they use effective workouts, what do we answer?

As for which method incorporates aspects of both styles, Arthur Jones, the founder of Nautilus in the 1970s, claims to be one of the geniuses of physical conditioning through his high-intensity training approach centered on a relatively low-volume cadence (3).

His technique made the muscles fail without overstimulating the central nervous system or going overboard with total volume.

Research has never demonstrated or compared effective workouts or determined which is best for athletes and bodybuilders.

This analysis is provided because of the lack of periodization principles (progressive training and overload cycles), which are fundamental.

The best possible final result is to use periodization techniques, taking individuality into account by combining:

• Low intensity and low volume.
• High intensity and low volume.
• High intensity and high volume.
• HIIT: interval training at high intensity.

What is the best training system?, this is answered for you by Raúl Carrasco and Roberto Castellano in a compendium of criteria that will help you better understand how to develop effective workouts.

References

• (1) Burd NA. low-load high volume resistance exercise stimulates muscle protein synthesis more than high-load low volume resistance exercise in young men. PLoS One, 2010 Aug 9;5(8): e 12033
• (2) Lehman, Manfred et.al. Overload, Performance Incompetence, and Regeneration in Sport. 1999, 187-202, DOI: 10.1007/978-0-585-34048-7_15
• (3) Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy – 2020: Nautilus Training System versus Traditional Weight Training System