Question on stress and volume/intensity

I understand that volume is a key driver of hypertrophy and that you need more and more stress as you get advance to get further progress. If one is time constrained, or prefers shorter workouts, could he or she do less sets, but more intense sets (RPE 9, for example) to make up for less sets? For example, instead of doing 4 sets at RPE 6,7,8,8, the person may do 2 sets at RPE 9. I realize you can’t directly compare this, but is it accomplishing the same thing?

Eventually, I realize the person will need to add more sets to keep progressing, but this is similar to a person needing to add more intensity if they are already doing a ton of volume.

Hope that makes sense:) Thanks!

No.

You’re asking if the following two scenarios are equivalent:

Scenario 1: 16 reps with average intensity of 82%

Scenario 2: 8 reps w/ average intensity of 86%

Are they the same? If so, why? If no, why?

Why? Would the reps be more “effective” the closer they are to failure? I am skeptical that the reps below 7-8 RPE are stimulating that much hypertrophy. Also, the stress would be productive, right?

[/QUOTE]

You’re asking if the following two scenarios are equivalent:

Scenario 1: 16 reps with average intensity of 82%

Scenario 2: 8 reps w/ average intensity of 86%

Are they the same? If so, why? If no, why?

[/QUOTE]

Not exactly equivalent, but effective and productive. I am asking why the former would be more effective?

Effective for what?

Reps below 7-8 most certainly are stimulating hypertrophy, just depends on total volume, existing fatigue, etc.

Effective for what?

The former has more volume and the intensity might be more appropriate depending on overall context.

Probably about the same, but honestly it’s one set and both have very different ways of generating fatigue.

Here’s something to help you out though, 30% of 1RM and 80% of 1RM can generate the same hypertrophy in the same number of sets.

Effective for building muscle, and therefore, strength.

For example, if you are doing a set at RPE 7 for 10 reps, I would argue that only a few of those, at most, are really going to contribute much to hypertrophy. There needs to be a minimum amount of stimulus.

On the other hand, if you do a set of 10 at RPE 10, there are going to be more reps that are contributing to growth. So, I wouldn’t think you would need quite as many sets.

This explains the concept of “effective reps” which has been a hot topic as of late: http://drmuscleapp.com/news/effective-reps/

Hi Stevan.

My impression: The “effective reps” idea suggests that, assuming some minimum “base” number of reps are done (like … more than a double or something like that), you can probably get equivalent hypertrophy with equal numbers of sufficiently hard sets. However, performing 6@8 and 12@8, while they may provide an equivalent hypertrophy stimulus, differ in fatigue generation due to differences in load, which has implications for the programming context.

But there still seem to be some conflicting data when it comes to the “hard sets” piece, e.g., Effects of different volume-equated resistance training loading strategies on muscular adaptations in well-trained men - PubMed (though small, and using a less-than-ideal measurement technique) that leave us hesitant to discount the significance of total reps entirely.

Also - you may have noticed that this is a rather active forum, moderated solely by Jordan and I (and sometimes Leah). Threads do slip through the cracks, falling back to page 3 or 4 or 5, sometimes with unapproved replies that we sometimes never notice. Rather than handling things the way it appears you did, it would have been perfectly reasonable to just post a new thread with the question.