"Volume" workouts - waste of time?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve recently come across what is apparently the next big thing in the world of the workout avant-garde, namely “volume workouts.” This article explains it well, but it basically boils down to: Instead of doing a set to failure, or working on 3 sets of X reps to failure, I will be better served by doing an amount that I can easily handle, say 10 pushups, every hour that I can (i.e. when it’s convinent; not while sleeping, maybe not at work or while on the train, etc.). The idea is that by the end of the day I might have actually cranked out 50-60 pushups and won’t suffer muscle fatigue, lactic acid buildup, etc., but still get the benefits of doing 50-60 pushups. Ideally, I will be doing more pushups, increasing my possible reps and eventually I will be able to do a single set with significantly more reps than I would be able to do if I did my 3xXr to failure sets.

Anyone have any experience with this? Does this have any basis in reality?

I tried this last night (I think I whipped out 4 sets of 15) and, while I didn’t feel anything when I went to bed, I felt it in the morning. Will see how it works out; I really like the idea of pushups without the work.

2

I believe it’s called ‘manual labor.’ And though many manual laborers do have relatively defined, toned, and beefed up muscles; it comes no where near what a body builder can do with repititions to exhaustion.

Here, try this experiment: Walk on your legs using all your leg muscles as you normally would. Your leg muscles do support over a hundred pounds when in use. Don’t push them to exhaustion, but use them rather regularly all day long. Within a year, your legs should be the size of any massive body builder.

Well, several million people exercise their leg muscles this way every year without huge muscle development.

Muscles for nothing. Sorry, pumpkin, ain’t gonna happen.

Peace.

3

It’s been my experience that whatever exercise you do, you get better at doing that exercise. If you work consistently all day, you will be able to do that better. If you try to lift a lot of weight, you will get better at lifting a lot of weight. If you want to get better at basketball, play a lot of basketball. IMO, no solid science there. As for which is better, depends what you will actually do and what you want to get out of it.

4

What are your goals?

I ask that every time I see someone asking whether a workout’s any good, because there are no objectively good workouts. There are workouts that are good for you right now, and there are workouts that aren’t good for you right now.

Volume workouts as you’ve described them will increase muscular endurance and can help with recovery capacity. That’s good, but if they’re all you do, you’ll lose size and strength, because you’re not training those capacities.

Now, you can combine volume workouts with another program (preferrably one that’s geared towards limit strength–big weights, low volume) to get good results. But on their own, I don’t think they’re worth much.

5

The basic formula for weight training:

high resistance / low reps to failure = muscle mass
low resistance / high reps to failure = endurance

low resistance, no failure? Well, you’ll be burning more calories than if you were just sitting on the couch watching TV, so that’s something. If that’s your goal, then I guess it sounds ok and I’d recommend doing whatever you can get in the habit of doing regularly. If your goal is either of the things mentioned above, then I’m not sure this plan will really get you there. Still, if you combine it with a healty diet, just staying a little more active every day may be a good way to significantly improve your health in the long run.

6

The notion of “ten pushups an hour as long as you are awake” will burn up the same number of calories as doing 150 pushups in a row, but you will not be stressing either your aerobic or anaerobic capacity. You will also incur the same stress on your joints and connective tissues as the 150 in a row.

Basically, what you are doing is stressing your long-term recovery mechanisms. Which don’t develop very quickly. I would expect that this regime would tend towards over-training in the long run.

The only other time I heard of such a regime is in a book I read called (IIRC) Total Fitness in Twenty Minutes a Day, by L. Moorhouse (or something like that). He mentioned it because one of his exercise physiology students made a bet that he could do 100 push-ups in a row. At the time he could do 40.

The idea was to do 20 push-ups with a twenty minute rest between sets, until he got to 100 a day. Then gradually reduce the rest betwen sets, until he could do the 100 in a row. The author said it didn’t work, because the student got the flu and couldn’t train, so he lost the bet.

Never tried it myself.

I would recommend circuit weight training if you want a “volume” workout. That way, you get aerobic as well as anaerobic benefits.

Regards,
Shodan

7

ultrafilter said it best, what are your goals. I’m surprised everyone is so quick to put this down. They have no idea what you’re trying to do. Neither do I, but I can’t automatically write this workout regimen off as “bad.”

If right now, you can’t do more than say 25 push ups at a time, but you can do 60 push ups over a long period (like 1 per hour, but personally I think that’s too long to rest) than there is obvious benefit from the 60 as opposed to one set of 25, or even a set of 25 then a quick set of 20 and your night’s done.

When training for cross country after a month or more off, we would always have a morning run of 4 miles to start our day, then in the evening we’d have either a track workout, or another 4-6 mile run. After doing this for a month or so, we’d eliminate the morning run, and make the evening run (on non-workout days) 8-10.
The purpose at first was to get the benefit from the distance… at the end of the week the mileage still added up to, say, 60 miles, but it was a boatload easier, and a LOT less exhausting, than just starting out with 8-10 mile distance runs per day. The reason that you combined the runs later, though, was because for what we were doing, there is absolutely no substitute for that full 8-10 miles, because as you reach exhaustion, you use all of those obscure stabilizer muscles that you’d never get to otherwise, plus varois other benefits too long to write.

But again, my goal was to run a 14:30 5k, not just work towards completing x distance. So if your goal is to simply complete more push-ups, and over-all tone up a bit, I say you’ve got a good start. But if you seriously want to increase strength, and make it so 100 push-ups are easy because you’ve built muscle mass and are getting in great shape, then I say this method is good as a start, but eventually you need to tear down the muscle so it can repair stronger, and go towards exhaustion so the stabilizer muscles (stomach, shoulders, etc) start to get into the act.

Hope that helps a bit.

8

I would agree that ‘volume workouts’ sounds similer to manual labor, however I don’t think normal walking and use of your legs is a good example. Or maybe it is, my legs can support my body weight completley effortlessly and walk all day long.

I have done intense manual labor all my life and most of the guys I work with are way stronger than they look. Guys who look like a strong wind would blow them away and guys who look fat and out of shape can both throw around amazing amounts of weight effortlesly. I am in the first catagory and always find it amusing when a new employee who looks like he lives in a gym can not lift half of what I can.

If ‘volume workouts’ have similer reults it would be good for improving strength but not do much for building mucle mass or improving your appearance.

9

Sorry for the hijack, but F**kin-A, **The_Llama **, what an awesome sig line! Lol!!! Thanks for the laugh!

10

Whilst a lot of the original OP has been covered here, it’s worth repeating that sporadic, low intensity/high volume work is not a formula for hypertrophy (increase in muscle mass).

The article seems to be based upon the assumption that volume is all that matters. Umm right, well I can 100,000 pushups, just give me 10 years… :rolleyes:

By the same garbled logic I could bench press 10lbs, 500 times over a given period (a ‘day’) and claim I can bench 500lbs… hmmmm.

As several people already mentioned, this kind of activity is essentially manual labour, and just performing a low (resistance) intensity movement, even for long periods of time, will not create inroads into muscular develpment. Just look at the Kenyan who won the London Marathon.

The ‘push up plan’ mentioned in the article will certainly burn some calories, and will help you perfect your push-up form, which will in effect boost your performance of that movement, since you will be able to more efficiently recruit your existing muscle to perform the movement. This is the only way that you will get ‘stronger’ without gaining appreciable muscle mass. This is how a neophyte powerlifter can go from barely being able to lift the Olympic bar to lifting XXlbs in a matter of days.

If your aim is to have excellent push up form then this may be a good way of fitting a large number of push-ups into a day, otherwise I dont see how this regime can be at all effective.

Cynically, I rack this regime up to the ‘lets find a way to make exercise easy’ mentality that most people buy into at some stage.

Jim

11

I find this idea intriguing. If, as has been mentioned, it replicates the effect of manual labor (I’m not convinced it does) then I would consider this an excellent idea. As our economy has morphed from using manual labor to automation, we have become fatter and less fit overall, even with the amazing proliferation of health clubs.

Yes, it’s certainly not the same as a regimented workout program, but if it gets people fitter, it can’t be all bad. There are worse things than to be as fit as someone who does manual work all day, especially if you just sit behind a desk all day like me.

12

The line about pushups without any work was fecitious, I was wondering whether the idea of spreading fatigue around in a workout had merit (merit meaning would allow me to increase strength, I could care less about muscle mass). I suppose that working this idea of multiple smaller sets into a larger workout was also intriguing in that it seemed like a way of prolonging fatigue to increase the number of sets in the workout (and here’s where I’ll need clarification) by giving the lactic acid some time to dissipate.

A superset might look something like:

Jumping jacks for warmup
15 pushups
30 squats
30 crunches
15 Hindu pushups

1-2 minutes stretching

repeat until fatigue.

That would be instead of:

pushups until failure

stretching/rest

squats until failure

stretching/rest

&c.

Of course, I’m not sure if the lactic acid disspiates that quickly. Does anyone else know?

13

Lactic acid dissipates within minutes of the end of work, but microtrauma (tears in muscle fibers) can last days, depending on how hard you push yourself.

The question of whether bodyweight work of any kind builds strength depends on what kind of strength you’re talking about. It’s definitely good for strength-endurance (the ability to move a moderate weight many times) and can be adapted to be good for strength-speed (the ability to move a moderate weight quickly), but as far as maximal strength goes, it’s worthless. What matters to you?

14

quasi-hijack:

slightly off topic, what about hyper slow reps (I’m talkin’ 30 seconds up, 30 down)? I assume the lactic acid never drops for the full minute, yes?

15

I dunno about the lactic acid, but I’ve never seen anyone advocate superslow training unless they had a buck to make off it. It’s pretty widely regarded as a failure, especially for those of us who care how our work in the gym transfers to outside activities.

16

Details? ( I never tried it much, and I can’t say that I’ve ever trained seriously enough in any particular niche to exhaust the possibilities of the regime. How do you make a buck of superslow training?)

I gewnerally try to fail as many time as possible, so each time I do I drop weight and fail agin till my reps start to increase, because the reisitance is so low.

17

Same way you make a buck off any other kind of training: you make up new words for old concepts, combine them in a way that’s slightly different from what everyone else does, and rely on the force of your personality to cover up your lack of originality.

Anyway, superslow training involves lifting light weights slowly. This will train you to lift light weights slowly outside the gym, but who the hell does that? The volume’s too low to build muscle mass or strength-endurance, the weights are too light to build limit strength, and as for strength-speed…well, that tends to require lifting weights quickly. Those are the major qualities that people are looking to improve through weight training, so what’s the point of a program that fails to build any of them?

18

well put.

all I remember about the super slow thing, other than it was a very pretty girl on tv talking about it, and I think I DO remember her suit, is that the theory was you would get more failures in less total work out time, or something like that…Perhaps it is really a cloaked way of persuading folks to work to failure, if that is something that they resist…