Hello! I’ve been trying to learn about Hypertrophy training specifically recently, and reading works of Mike Isratel, BBM, and Chad Wesley Smith mostly…I have a question about applying overload throughout a Hypertrophy Mesocycle. Mike Isratel recommends that one should start a cycle at 6-7 RPE, training at a volume which represents one’s MEV (minimum effective volume), and add sets/increase RPE so that by week 7 or so, you would end the Mesocycle by functionally overreaching your MRV (Maximum recoverable volume), and working at RPE 9-10, and sometimes failure. This is of course followed by a deload. So we’re achieving overload by adding volume, and increasing our proximity to failure. Are we limiting our growth? Because we could probably do more volume at a lower fatigue if we didn’t get so close to failure…But obviously Isratel knows that. So why would someone want to get so close to failure? Is there benefit, or would we be better off just keeping a reasonable intensity range and maximizing our volume? How does BBM approach overloading through a Hypertrophy meso? Thanks for reading, I hope this wasn’t too scatterbrained.
Not only that, but is working at RPE 9-10, and even failure a good idea while simultaneously functionally overreaching? Would that not increase injury risk? I suspect the rationale is that you’re not spending many weeks at this high fatigue while keeping a high output. So does that help keep the injury risk low, or is even just that one week of high-RPE training while being so fatigued I’ll-advised from an injury-risk reduction standpoint?
(My issue here is that I’m just struggling to know what to believe and what not to believe. I try to be skeptical, but I’m no expert in programming and struggle to know when my contentions have merit).
My super useless answer is that we just don’t know for certain. You can train as per Mike’s recommendations or just keep volume static and no one would think you are doing something retarded (unlike in case you did TM or something). So yeah, try it and see for yourself maybe ? We just have to be careful then as to not read too much into it, as in eg. increasing volume was so much better because what probably made it better was other things (better recovery during that cycle etc). I’d say the difference between the approaches is miniscule.
I’m not sure what is the purpose of overreaching in hypertrophy training.
For strength the idea is that past a certain stage of advancement you need a greater stimulus than you can recover from week to week to drive adaptation.
For hypertrophy by definition if you are training at or above your MEV you are in fact capable of making progress. Whether aiming for your MRV (which, again by definition, will require a subsequent deload because it exceeds your MAV) makes sense would seem to be a question of time efficiency.
So the question is can you make progress faster working up to your MRV and then deloading or just staying at your MAV every week?
BBM seems to me to be a little skeptical of the utility of functional overreaching, although they do program low stress weeks…
Yeah, I think Mike & Co. are saying MAV will rise to MRV in a matter of couple of weeks (very suspicious conjecture imo) and then you might do another week of overreaching as you will have to deload anyway or something.