People are confused.

• Slamming the weights after banging out a heavy set to the applause of their fellow bros on Instagram.
• Marathon training sessions that’ll leave you crawling out of the gym.
• Hitting a muscle group every day in hopes of getting extra gainz.

And chances are, what’s their goal? A nice-looking physique. Terrible.

Last week, I spoke about the Principle of Specificity for Muscle Growth and how important it is when it comes to making your best gains.

In this article, I’ll take things even further and talk about balancing volume, intensity, and frequency is the key to maximizing muscle growth. With this info, you’ll be in a better position to create your workout routines and see why the examples at the beginning of this post fail when your goal is to maximize muscle growth. Let’s get to it.

The Trinity of Gains: Volume, Intensity, and Frequency

Muscle grows due to 3 main factors:

• Mechanical tension
• Metabolic stress
• Muscle damage

Mechanical tension is the biggest factor and has the most scientific support. The other two are much more hotly debated in the industry. To keep things simple, every workout program is going to come down to a balance between:

• Intensity
• Volume
• Frequency

These 3 factors are all important and very closely related. Each one has its role in the optimal program for muscle growth, which is why the picture I chose is an equilateral triangle. None of them could truly be said to be more important than another for achieving your best results.

Intensity and volume form the base of the program (and the triangle I’ve shown here) and are the most important by both defining the adaptation and the amount of that adaptation.

Frequency has more of a connecting role and helps you to manage the other two for optimal results (which is why it’s the point at the top of the triangle.)

Achieving a balance across all 3 here is the key to making great gains. Now let’s look at each in further detail. We will start with Intensity.

Intensity

• Weight/reps (intensity of load)
• How close you are to failure (intensity of effort)

There is a direct relationship between these two factors (the weight you use will impact the amount of reps you can do, for example). Both are important when it comes to muscle growth.

Setting Intensity

You can think of intensity like the volume knob on your car stereo on a long road trip.

You want it just loud enough to feel the bass and get into the music. Cranking it up is fun and you enjoy it more, but if you keep it like that, then your ears will get tired, so you’ll have to turn it off and cut off the fun before you arrive at your destination (aka drop the weights in your workout or deload in the middle of your mesocycle).

For a muscle to grow its best, you will need to both:

1. Recruit as many muscle fibers as possible and
2. Expose them to enough stress to cause them to grow and adapt (load/time under tension)

And as you’ll see, the more volume of this you do, the better (up to a point).

Therefore in line with the honored goal of muscle growth, you should be picking the intensity level that enables you to perform the most volume at an optimal frequency over the course of your training cycle while maximally stimulating the musculature.

But what intensity is that, exactly?

Great question.

The truth is, all rep ranges will get you similar amounts of muscle growth when volume is equated and provided you’re taking them close enough to failure. Therefore, you want to find the sweet spot to carry out that goal.

Heavy Lifting

Lifting heavy is better for strength, but muscle fiber recruitment is topped out at about 85% 1RM (5-6 reps), so there isn’t much of a reason to go heavier than that if your goal is muscle growth.

Heavy lifting also relies more on your technique, is more draining per unit of volume, is less time efficient in terms of warmups and length of training session, and can be tough on the joints and mind. This study is a classic example.

Light Weight

As crazy as it sounds to the alpha gym bros, light weights will still grow just as much muscle as long as you are taking your sets close to failure. It may also be better for growing your Type I muscle fibers, but more research is needed in this area.

On the flip side, going light for everything can SUCK. It basically just becomes cardio and burns like hell. It’s also really impractical for most compound exercises like squats.

Intensity for Muscle Hypertrophy

Given the above, the majority of your lifting should be in a moderate rep range (6-15) with 1 or 2 reps in the tank, as you’ll see below in my recommendations.

This is very practical and easy for accumulating large amounts of productive volume.

VOLUME

Volume is the king of the jungle when it comes to making juicy gains. It refers to the total amount of work you’re doing over a period of time (week/workout).

In science, volume is most often described as the product of: WEIGHT x REPS x SETS. Other people define it by the number of reps they’re doing. All I want YOU to focus on is the total number of sets you’re doing. The reason why is because muscle growth is similar regardless of what weight or how many reps you do so long as you take those sets close to failure.

Training volume follows something called a dose response relationship which means that in general, the more training volume you do, the BETTER…up to a point.

Volume also follows an inverted U-curve. This means that every extra set gets you more gains, but after a certain point you start hurting your recovery and will see less growth. This applies on both a weekly level and an individual workout level.

How many sets should you do?The amount of volume (sets) you need changes from person to person, muscle to muscle, by training cycle, training status (beginner vs. advanced), nutritional status (cutting or gaining?), and lifestyle factors (sleep, stress, etc.), so it will take some trial and error to figure out how much you need. What’s important is that you understand the concept.

FREQUENCY

Frequency deals with how often you’re working out each muscle. Making the best gains relies on spreading out your volume in a way that allows for the highest quality training you can do and making sure that the muscle is being trained to maximize its growth/recovery potential.

Muscle protein synthesis (muscle growth) only increases for 24-72 hours after a workout. By only hitting a muscle once a week, you may be leaving gains on the table, even when volume is the same.

Total Volume

Because of the relationship between volume and frequency, when you factor in the frequency, you get TOTAL VOLUME. Like I said earlier, the total amount of volume you do is the biggest factor of muscle growth.

We’ll now look at the balance between intensity, volume, and frequency before giving you some concrete recommendations to get you started in the right direction.

GET THE BALANCE RIGHT

Any workout program worth a damn is going to find a good balance between volume, intensity, and frequency. If it doesn’t, run far, far away.

Because of this, many programs work, but not all programs are optimal or optimal for you.

For example:

For example, to get the best growth:

• You can’t just crush a 1RM (1 rep max) and call it a day.
• You can’t just grind out 1 crazy set and leave the gym.
• And you can’t skip through the weight room with a set of pink dumbbells and expect to grow (ladies, listen up).

Will these stimulate some growth? Sure, but “some” isn’t what we want here, now is it?

Think about these relationships when approaching your training decisions.

STARTING POINTS FOR AESTHETICS

So there’s the basic framework to guide you when it comes to working out for muscle gain.

…but where should you start?

I go into much further detail on the particulars in the book, but to get you started in the right direction for making gains, here are my general recommendations based on my evidence based fitness model for volume, intensity, and frequency:

Intensity

• 6-15 reps for ~80%+ of the work subject to movement, programming, etc
• 0-3 reps from failure depending on the muscle, person, phase in program. Typically 1-2 RITTs (Reps in the tank) on each set
• 2-3 mins of rest between sets, more if necessary for high quality work to be done (volume and load lifted)

Volume

• 8-12 weekly sets per muscle to start – consider overlap
• Increase over time (beginner –> advanced) potentially reaching ~18-22 sets per muscle
• Increase as able to tolerate, consider periodizing volume across training cycles to maximize hypertrophic outcomes

Frequency

• At least 2x/week per muscle
• Consider 3 or more if required due to volume requirements
• Always factor in total volume and overlap

And of course, this talk on volume, intensity, and frequency is assuming other critical training factors such as the principles of specificity and overload, proper form, recovery, etc.

You also have to consider the 3P Framework of what will work best for long term adherence and satisfaction across the physical, psychological, and practical lifestyle levels.

The particulars for doing this and optimizing volume, intensity, and frequency will vary by person and by muscle, so don’t think there’s a one size fits all solution for everyone or even within one person.

Now go make some gains.

Joseph Murci