Ep. #186: Research Review: Dr. Eric Helms on German Volume Training

Eric: [00:00:00] Any adaptation, it’s going to follow a parabolic curve. So what that means is that, as you’re increasing volume, you’re going to get this kind of diminishing returns as a volume keeps going up. And eventually you’re going to increase volume to the point where you’re not making further gains.

You’re just doing more volume.

Mike Matthews: Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And as you probably know, I work pretty hard to understand and promote high And that’s why I have spent and continue to spend quite a bit of my time researching and then writing articles, writing books, recording podcasts, recording videos, and so forth.

And that’s why I reference quite a bit of scientific literature in all of my work. Now something I don’t do though is produce a Research review where individual studies are broken down and analyzed [00:01:00] because one, my plate is already overflowing with projects as it is. And two, I honestly don’t think that I could do it better than the researchers who are out there.

creating research reviews, and whose work and research reviews I myself read regularly, like James Krieger, Eric Helms, Greg Knuckles, Mike Zordos, Alan Aragon, and Brett Contreras. And so I had an idea, why not get those guys to come on my podcast to discuss various studies that they have analyzed in their reviews and share with us what they’ve learned.

what they’ve learned, and how we can use these key takeaways, how we can use the information in those studies to better optimize our diets, exercise routines, supplement regimens, and our overall lifestyle. I reached out to them, and they thought it was a great idea, and so a monthly series was born.

Basically, once a month, I’m going to talk to you I’m going to have one of these guys on the show [00:02:00] and they’re going to break down a study that they have analyzed in their respective research reviews and they’re going to explain to us why these studies were conducted, how they were conducted, what the results were, what their interpretations of the results were, and how we can use the information to improve our diets, our training, supplementation, or in some cases just the overall quality of our lives.

In this episode, I have the newly minted doctor, Dr. Eric Helms, on to discuss a study published in 2016 titled, Effects of a Modified German Volume Training Program on Muscular Hypertrophy and Strength. And this study looked at the very popular German volume training program, which in case you haven’t heard of it.

involves performing 10 sets of a specific exercise in a single workout. And it’s usually 10 sets of 10 reps. So it’s very high [00:03:00] volume. It’s not 10 sets of one rep or two reps. And this study gave great insights into the overall effectiveness of this style of training, or as you will see, lack thereof, Versus more traditional moderate volume work.

This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my 100 percent natural greens supplement, Genesis. Now, Genesis is a very unique combination of greens, superfoods, adaptogens, herbs, and other phytonutrients that have been proven to increase immunity, heart and circulatory health, energy levels, libido, mood, and more.

Genesis is also naturally sweetened in flavors and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all that is why it has over 200 [00:04:00] views on Amazon with a 4 star average and another 150 plus on my website. Also with a four star average. So if you want to be healthier, feel better, train harder, and increase your immunity and longevity, then you want to head over to www.

legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Genesis today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps. Use the coupon code PODCAST at checkout and you will save 10 percent on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this.

You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don’t have to return the products, you don’t have to fill out forms, you don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, [00:05:00] place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet.

And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on The spot. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show. Eric, thanks for coming back on the show. Welcome back. And actually I should I should be calling you Dr.

Helms now, right? Out of respect and deference. 

Eric: It was always an honor and I’m happy to be back on, but technically it’s Dr. Helms PhD. You have to pre and post load it like it’s protein around training. 

Mike Matthews: Oh shit. I’m sorry. I apologize. But okay. So Dr. Helms PhD is back and back to talk about German volume training and also just high volume training in general, going to be breaking down a study for us that was reviewed in his research review.

I’m excited to put this information out there because it’s something that I actually do to ask about fairly [00:06:00] frequently, GVT in particular, and also just high volume. Most people know you can’t go balls to the wall all the time, but they will ask if it’s a good idea to do occasionally for short spurts of time, Eric is going to break it all down.

Eric: For sure. Yeah. So this study is titled the effects of a modified German volume training program on muscular hypertrophy and strength. And I’m going to try to pronounce the lead author’s last name by Amir Thalingam. And that’s probably not right. And my apologies to the author. It was close enough, right?

Or not, but I did my best. Let’s put it that way. 

Mike Matthews: Not bad for a doctor PhD. Yeah. So 

Eric: just a really cool study to see come out because, when I was coming up and first lifting weights German volume training was something pretty much you’d only read about on forums or on like teen nation.

And if I remember correctly, it was first posited by, Charles Poliquin of all people. And he talked about it. It’s funny because 

Mike Matthews: it was a thing when I got into weightlifting, like doing squats ten by ten. That was something that everybody in the gym that was cool did. 

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair Charles Poliquin is as much heat as he gets these [00:07:00] days for like avocados and other things he said he was actually the first person who recommended undulating manner.

He’s had a few pretty decent training ideas and it’s only things only went downhill after a certain point. So anyway. A little bit of respect to Charles P there. So yeah, just the fact that there’s a study on something that was more so like an internet lifting culture thing is just really cool to me.

And yeah, so this is an article that Mike Zerdos reviewed and he’s, along with me and Greg runs mass in our first issue. And it was a, it’s a really useful study because I think. The research community has done a good job in establishing the link between volume and both strength and hypertrophy gains, and it’s pretty clear, but I think what we haven’t done a good job is on tempering that message to let people know that, hey, like any adaptation, it’s going to follow a parabolic curve.

So what that means is that, as you’re increasing volume, you’re going to get this kind of. Diminishing returns as a volume keeps going up and eventually you’re going to increase volume to the point where you’re not making further [00:08:00] gains, you’re just doing more volume. And then you start coming down the other side of that slope where you’re adding volume, but you’re actually progressing slower or even not progressing because you push yourself way past your adaptive capabilities.

And, you’re starting to get beat up and you’re not recovered. And do you want 

Mike Matthews: to quickly just define volume for everybody listening? Just so they make sure we’re on the same page in terms of our terms. 

Eric: Sure. And I think. People define volume differently. You’ll hear people define it as sets times reps times load and give you a tonnage value I think that’s probably only appropriate when you’re comparing it within yourself In research a lot of the times the way we will practically control volume Is we’ll assign a rep range and a certain number of sets and then the people will train to failure Or close to it or at the same percentage one rm So you’ll have a matched relative volume or you’ll have a matched number of Sets to failure.

So yeah, it probably looks like number 

Mike Matthews: of hard sets. 

Eric: Yeah, that’s probably the most practical way to, to think about your volume is a number of hard sets. And if you really want to get analytical about it, you could look at the number of hard sets in different [00:09:00] repetition zones because I think you probably wouldn’t compare, a hard single to a set of 10.

This is a study on German volume training. And for those who don’t know, that’s originally like you said that 10 by 10 set up. So it’s going to be messed in this setup at least in terms of per set basis, the difficulty. So what these researchers did was they essentially took two groups have trained.

And I put quotes around that cause they weren’t that well trained if you look at their their starting strength numbers, but. They’d been in a gym there. They weren’t unfamiliar to lifting weights. I think it’s probably the best way to put them. Maybe recreationally trained would be a good term.

They took these two groups, had them train three times a week upper, lower than upper fashion. So that is actually quite similar to the real world where you’re training, upper body twice as much as legs and you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway. And then they had a one group doing five sets of 10.

On each one of those exercises and the other group doing 10 sets of 10 I believe that’s on the main lifts and this is for a six week period So that’s a lot of volume when you think about it, you know per muscle group That’s 30 sets [00:10:00] per week in the 10 by 10 group And then it’s even a fair amount of volume in the 5 by 10 group.

That’s about 15 sets per week per muscle group Yeah. Now, the reason why I bring that up is because we’ve had a semi recent meta analysis come out by Schoenfeldt and colleagues who looked at the dose response relationship between volume and hypertrophy and found that it starts to kind of plateau and max out.

Actually, it’s not true. Somewhere around 10 plus sets is where the highest hypertrophy response to volume occurs. And we don’t have enough data on higher volume than that to actually see where that trend keeps going. It might plateau. And that’s per week. Per week. Exactly right. So that means even the quote unquote low volume group is doing 50 percent more volume.

That has really been effectively analyzed with kind of a pretty solid data set. It’s not to say that 15 sets wouldn’t be better than 10 on average in a large population of trained lifters. It’s just that there’s not enough studies where we’re taking really high volumes and putting people through training programs to establish that.

So this is a [00:11:00] useful study, and then it starts to investigate where are these boundaries, and it gives us some instructive value in what happens. So anyway, these guys are doing their training, and it consisted of compound lifts and isolation lifts. They did bench press, lat pulldown, inclined bench, seated row.

Crunches on day one, they did leg press, lunges, leg extensions, leg curls, calf raises. It’s a kind of typical leg day on day two. And then they came in and they did shoulder press, upright rows, triceps, biceps, and then more ab work on day three. These are on non consecutive days. So again, one group. Did basically twice the volume of the other group and interestingly enough, it was the group that was doing five sets of 10, not 10 so 15 sets per week per exercise or per muscle group.

I should say that actually gained more lean body mass and more strength than the group that did more volume. So that is a very clear. Kind of proof of principle that indeed you can do too much volume. And I think going back to the training age of these individuals, when you are this early [00:12:00] in your career, there’s no point.

And you can actually, there’s a detriment to doing way more than you need to progress because it can just slow down that process. 

Mike Matthews: And make for grueling workouts that you don’t like, which is not a good introduction to weightlifting. 

Eric: That’s right. Weightlifting and bodybuilding and the kind of like the crossfit culture and the fitness culture in general, we tend to really glorify a little bit of masochism and promote hard work.

And don’t get me wrong. I think there are aspects of that. That’s good. It tells you, you work hard and you get rewarded for it. But at the same time, like not everyone who comes into fitness has that kind of little sick, twisted person inside like we bodybuilders have. And Just because we’re the leaders and look up to, because we have good physiques and we have the training experience and knowledge doesn’t mean that everyone getting into fitness has the same goals or the same mindset.

And what we don’t want to do is push that philosophy on people who that might actually turn them off or turn them away. When, having six pack abs is fine and dandy, but the real benefit is changing your lifestyle and staying active and living a healthier, longer life [00:13:00] and feeling empowered.

I think that’s the real reason why most people want to get into lifting and by taking it in that angle, like we said just having this grueling, punishing workouts. That’s not always a beneficial thing by any means. And clearly here, Quantitatively. Objectively, it wasn’t. So yeah, I think the take home message here is that it’s probably better to err on the side of doing a fair amount of volume, but not the most you can handle is that’s not the same as the most you’ll benefit from.

And that probably has a strong relationship to one’s training age. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And something else to be said for people that are new again, I think they’ll https: otter. ai

They try to make it more complicated than it needs to be in the beginning. Cause if you take your average guy, he starts lifting weights. He’s looking at, let’s say 15 to 25 pounds of potential muscle gain, depending on his genetics and compliance and diet and lifestyle and so forth, you don’t need super fancy programming to get there.

A lot of people get there with something like a starting strength or a five by five. [00:14:00] And it’s funny, you mentioned a lot of lower body. Training or the people training upper body too much and lower body too little. One thing though, that I’ve run, I’ve found with people that start with strength training programs is because the lower body volume tends to be quite a bit higher than the upper body, their legs and butts grow a lot faster.

This is guys in particular, a lot faster than their Pecs and biceps, and they don’t like that. So they like a more modified where it’s, maybe you start with a push pull legs and then add in some accessory work for the pretty muscles. And that alone gets you, at least in the beginning for the first year or so, everything that you can possibly get.

If that gets you your 20 pounds of muscle and it’s put in the places that you’re happy about, then what else do you want? 

Eric: Yeah, that’s 100 percent right. It doesn’t take anything fancy and it doesn’t take anything extreme to make really good progress in the beginning, some people go what’s the cost?

What if I like training more? Like every time you step in the gym, unfortunately there’s a risk of injury there. And when you’re first starting [00:15:00] out, you don’t want to ingrain bad habits, and if you’re, Yeah, Doing this right and you’re using some relatively, high risk, high reward movements like your, squats, your presses, poles, deadlifts, things like that manner, RDLs, different variations of it, effective exercises.

You want to make sure that when you’re in there lifting. You’re not only trying to stimulate the muscles in your body, but also learning the skills of being someone who lifts weights so that you have a lower likelihood of injury over time. And I had a tough time seeing, for example, in this study, the starting one rms for bench press were like 80 kilograms.

So 176 pounds. And in the other group, there were 70. 7. So we’re talking about people who are benching like 1 50 to 1 85 for a 100 max. They’ve been lifting them. Probably hard for three to six months in most cases, and that’s really not the person who should be in there punishing themselves with 30 sets per week.

I guarantee you, the quality of those sets are going to go right down the terrain and the risk of injury will probably go up as you’re going to be training in a fatigued state with poor form on risky movements. So I think it’s difficult to take a [00:16:00] long view when you’re 19 and you’re just starting lifting weights, but.

Man, I can tell you as a 34 year old looking back, there are things that I wish I’d perspective that I wish I could have had at that age when I first started. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, same. I totally understand and agree. So what then would you say to people who are, let’s say they are intermediate or advanced and are looking to, let’s say whatever the programming normally is and make it a lot harder.

Sure. For a temporary period of time. So let’s say they’re going to be in a surplus and they get plenty of sleep and maybe even they’re in their twenties. So they’re in their prime hormonally. If GVT, if this approach isn’t the way to go, what would you say to those people? 

Eric: Excellent question. The cool thing about research is it can, at some level, these single studies can compare one versus the other and tell you what’s better, but they don’t tell you a whole lot about what you should do to actually figure out what you should do.

You have to look at a broader. Yet [00:17:00] lower resolution data, like some of those meta analyses I talked about. So we’re fortunate to be in a time where there’s been a bunch of meta analyses on things like protein intake, meal frequency, volume, et cetera. And we’ve got a few key metas that have looked at all the studies on a given topic.

And they’ve told us, Hey, if you’re somewhere in the bell curve, you’re probably going to respond best to this. And that’s going to apply to about two thirds of people. So what we know is that you probably want to be training each muscle group around two to three times per week. And you probably want to be doing Probably at least around 10 sets per week per muscle group, and I think that’s a great place to start, if those have decent effort and you are getting 10 sets per week spread out over 2 to 3 sessions.

Really? That’s 3 sets on 2 days and 4 sets on another day, or maybe a 5 by 5 on 1 day, and then 3 by 10 on another, and then a couple sets of flies. If that was bench and fly, there’s many ways to set that up, and none of them are going to be. Better than the other, unless they work better for your schedule, your personal preference.

So I think first thing you do is set up. Let me get in the ballpark of what we think is probably going to be in the [00:18:00] ballpark of optimal. And then from there you go, right? I’m not the mean of 15 studies on trained individuals. I am me. So you have to then look at your progress. So if you’re making measurable progress in terms of strength over say two to three month periods, which I think is a reasonable amount of time to track progress for an intermediate or an advanced lifter.

I don’t mean a lot of progress. Measurable. So yeah, I added, five, 10 pounds on a lift. That’s awesome. Yeah. Then you’re doing something right. And. That’s awesome. If you are stalled, but you’re feeling well recovered and you think maybe you want to experiment with pushing up the volume, my advice would be, yeah, like you said, do it while you’re in a calorie surplus, maybe do it off of a deload or do an introduction block coming into it so that you can acclimate to the volume and then make a reasonable increase in volume, not a crazy increase.

If you think about what they did in this study, I guarantee you the people in this study, we’re not doing 30 sets prior. So if you are currently doing, let’s say, 10 to 12 sets per muscle group per week. And you want to increase it, I would go to maybe 15 to 16, not to [00:19:00] 30. So don’t triple your volume.

Think about maybe increasing it by a quarter. I think that’s a very reasonable increase and you’ll feel that and you’ll notice it. And if it was a successful increase in volume that actually produced gains, then you’ve learned something. If it made you really beat up and not progress anymore, then maybe you just need to evaluate other aspects of your training or other aspects of your life.

Are you getting enough sleep? Are you actually managing stress in your life? Is your schedule make sense with the, how much volume you’re trying to do? Are you trying to pack too much into too few days? That, that’s all of those are possible things and many more that is beyond what we can cover in this podcast.

But I think the take home message is that if you do want to increase volume do it in a manner that is. Respecting where you’re at and you’re increasing volume for a purpose and the purpose being to make more progress, not just increasing volume because you want to do more volume. 

Mike Matthews: Said, I like it.

And for how long would you, so let’s say that person is listening and they’re going cool. So I’m going to, I’m going to bump my volume up by about 50%, my number of hard sets. [00:20:00] How long would you recommend that? Would you say go as long as you’re progressing and feeling good, or would you put a more hard limit on it before they go back to normal?

Eric: This is a tough one. This is where you have to go back to that classic saying of know thyself if you’re someone who has a history, because now we’re talking about intermediates and advanced here. If you have a history of grinding yourself into the dust and taking it too far, and you’re notoriously bad at coaching yourself, you probably want to.

Institute a regular deload so that you can get out of your own way, and I would suggest doing that, every 4 to 6 weeks where you just take a down week. If you’re doing hard sets, make those moderately hard sets. So if you’re training normally to 8 to 10 RPE, drop that down to 6 to 8 and then just drop your sets down by a 3rd.

It should be a week that obviously not going to lose anything. You’re just going to. Hit pause and allow the fatigue to dissipate while you then get back into it. And I think in terms of how much time will it take for you to see progress if you’re smart about it and you do a little bit of a taper at the end, similar to that deload I described, and then you decide to test your strength, I think for an [00:21:00] intermediate or advanced somewhere between eight to 12 weeks, you should be able to see some level of progress on at least the majority of your lifts.

And if you’ve done that, then that’s good. Let’s say you’re, you got quote unquote, big six, cause you’re focused on hypertrophy. You’re doing, front squat, RDL overhead, press a row a chin up and another pressing movement, another hip hinge movement. And you test them all over the course of a week and, more than half progress and the other holds still.

That’s great. I think that’s good progress. I think a lot of intermediate lifters, especially they think That progress is defined by the progress they saw as a beginner and unfortunately, that’s just not going to happen again unless you decide to, jump on gear, you’re not going to have those kind of newbie games again.

That’s not an endorsement of gear, by the way. It’s just saying that. What are you saying, 

Mike Matthews: man? 

Eric: Fake here. That’s the solution to being an intermediate. Yeah, no, that’s what Instagram says. That’s right. But they don’t tell you that explicitly True. But yeah. So like for example my bench press in the first year of training went from a plate to two plates.

[00:22:00] That’s a 90 pound increase in my bench for the next 90 pounds from when I went from 2 25 to three 15. That took me another two years. So and then. And then from there, it really slowed down for me to get from 315 to now, just under 365 as I train in kilos here in, in down under land, that’s taken me another nine years.

The point is like I gained 90 pounds in six months to a year and then another 90 and two years after that. And then. The last 40, 40 to 50 has taken me nearly a decade after that. So I think that’s just the reality of the situation. And if you aren’t comfortable with that, you’re going to be thinking you’re not making gains when in fact you are.

And at a certain stage, progress is progress. Even if that’s, a two and a half kilos or five pounds on a squat or a deadlift, every two training blocks, that’s still. Quite good. And it adds up. And I think you have to have the perspective of, look, this is a lifestyle for me.

Now, this is something I do. Am I going to be not lifting when I’m 45? And you, if you ask yourself, honestly, you probably haven’t thought about [00:23:00] that, but you’d go no, of course not. I want to keep lifting and you go, all right if I’ve got 25 more years to progress, then actually I’m doing fine. You have to take that view at a certain point or you’ll be doomed to frustration.

Mike Matthews: I totally agree. Perspective matters. Okay, great. So there it is, German volume training, high volume versus moderate volume. I think that’s a wrap. All right. I hope you enjoyed this first installment of the research review series. Again, this will be a monthly series and I actually already have the second episode recorded, which is with Eric again, that’ll be coming out next month.

And then I will be reaching out to other people, as I mentioned in the intro to get their takes on various other studies. And in this case, again, if you really liked what Eric has to say, and you want to check out his research review, it is called mass M a S S. And you can learn about it at stronger by science.

com forward slash. Mass. M A S S. [00:24:00] And I will say, I highly recommend it. I read it every month. I learn a lot from it. It has articles from Eric, from Greg Knuckles, from Mike Zordos. And again, they do a great job, so I highly recommend you check it out. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too.

And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better.[00:25:00] 

I read everything myself, and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my 100 percent natural greens supplement, Genesis. Now, Genesis is a very unique combination of greens, superfoods, and vegetables. adaptogens, herbs, and other phytonutrients that have been proven to increase immunity, heart and circulatory health, energy levels, libido, mood, and more. Genesis is also naturally sweetened in flavors and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk.

And all that is why it has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a 4 star average and another 150 plus on my [00:26:00] website, also with a 4 star. Star average. So if you want to be healthier, feel better, train harder, and increase your immunity and longevity, then you want to head over to www. legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Genesis today.

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