Volume manipulation

Hello Barbell Medicine,

From what I understand the best way to achieve an increase in strength is to increase volume over time, thus increasing stress, which will then lead to an increase in muscle CSA. So from that understanding a trainee must continually increase volume for the duration of their training career in order to keep improving the weight in their powerlifting movements. There is a certain amount of volume which produces too much stress to a trainee to the point where any more additional stress wouldn’t have favorable results.

My question is how do you know when someone has reached the point where they’re under too much training stress and would benefit from a decrease in volume for a time. Is it similar to intensity where too much volume starts to cause the perception of pain because of the workload? Besides motivation to train is there any other factor should elicit a decrease in volume? I think its Mike Tuchscherer that takes into account how “beat up” an athlete feels from training to gauge how much stress they are under. That, for me, is difficult to gauge since it is such a subjective concept and it’s hard to separate what is an acceptable feeling of being beat up and what is too much for useful strength adaptations. I think I remember Austin saying how there was a point where he was under too much training stress and had to dial it back for a time. How did you know dialing back the stress was the correct course of action for that situation?
Thank you very much for the response and the great information you guys continue to share.

You know by the consideration of their training performance trends, motivation to train (for some lifters), and reports of perceived effort/difficulty in training. If performance has plateaued or worsened, they have an abnormal change in their desire to train, and they report that training is generally more difficult or fatiguing than usual: modification of training stress is indicated. Generally, I use training performance trends to determine if I need to inquire with lifter about their motivation and reports of perceived effort/difficulty - unless they otherwise make comments about these two pieces of information.