Philip Pape: 0:01

Happy Tuesday everyone. This is another bonus episode, and today is election day here in the US, where lots of us have an important choice to make. But I'm not talking about politics today, don't worry. I did want to get your attention, but mainly to distract you from the politics and talk about a different, important choice outside of the voting booth, and I'm talking about a decision for your training and for growing big and strong, for growing muscle and improving your fitness, and that is the age old debate of volume versus intensity, Something I've been thinking a lot about lately, as I recently started a new training program myself and I'm also now in a bulking phase, and there's a lot of debate as to the best approach. Right, Because we have individuals at different training levels, different goals, and also what you've done in the past should inform what you do next, because there is a history component, an adaptation component to it. That's important, and so let's talk about the two options here. You know, as if they were candidates in an election.

Philip Pape: 1:01

But in one corner there is volume. Volume meaning work, more reps, more sets. You know kind of the long game of getting a lot of tonnage in your workouts, which can be brutal for some people, but it can also be a massive stimulus for growth. And so volume is really about putting in steady work, building up that base of strength, laying down a foundation, having a skill component to your lifts by exposing your body to the movement patterns time and time again, and it's how you get that. Um, you know, brick lane approach to muscle growth, the kind of boring but frequent and uh, work centered approach, if you will. So that's volume, just to simplify it. Then, on the other corner, we have intensity, Intensity meaning weight on the bar, right Fewer reps, heavier weights, sometimes maxing out, sometimes getting close, working in that high percentage of your max, and also trying to increase the weight on the bar. And it is really about expressing strength and showing what you're capable of at that peak, that capacity, and hitting those top-end lifts to use what you've built to express power and strength.

Philip Pape: 2:17

And so the question is which is better? And of course I think you know my answer it doesn't come down to one or the other, does it? And it'd be great if politics could work that way, if we could all just get along. But you know it doesn't work that way. And so, when it comes to volume versus intensity, I think the best result comes from knowing when to shift gears between them, sometimes when to blend them across weeks or blocks or cycles of your training, or even uh phases of your training. When we talk about multiple uh blocks strung together, and also what I alluded to before, which was it matters what you just did, it matters where you've come from, because if you're doing the same thing over and over again, that itself can cause stagnation and plateauing and and and prevent you from being able to make progress. And this is where variety itself not for its own sake, but variety for mixing up the stimulus and allowing you to re-attack something that is somewhat detrained in you, whether it's volume or intensity can be a really powerful approach.

Philip Pape: 3:22

And again, that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately, because I, for example, have not focused a lot on going after peak strength on my main lifts in quite a while for different reasons, Part of it being I recovered from surgery and I didn't want to, you know, injure myself again. But for whatever reason, I have gone through a period where I focused on more on muscle mass and hypertrophy and using top sets, back offsets, things like that, and now I want to cycle into a period of volume followed by intensity, with a very deliberate approach to push up my main lifts squat, deadlift, press overhead and this also keeps things fresh. It keeps them sustainable, as in, you're going to keep wanting to go to the gym, You're not going to feel discouraged. You're not going to get tired of just doing fives all the time. Fives. You're not going to get tired of the same rep ranges or the exact same programming. And just because you are sick of doing the same thing over and over again, because it barely gets you results, doesn't mean someone can criticize you or judge you for that and say well, do you just need to grind it out? You just need to push it through Like that's. Your problem is you're not sticking with it. No, I'm talking about the person listening here who is really good at sticking with something for weeks at a time, making progress, and then realizes that there is some value to switching to something else for a while, to kind of cycle through that building of base and peak performance, and then your body gets the best of these different amazing worlds of strength training that foundation and then the peak and expressing that foundation.

Philip Pape: 4:58

So what's the takeaway here? The winning choice is a balance and also rotation between the things that are going to make you grow the most right now for this cycle. This block, this phase, Whether it's volume, intensity or some combination of the two. You can use them together. Do not fall into a camp, Do not fall into the fallacy that one is superior to the other. It's all going to depend on context, your own history, where you are right now, what your goal is, so that you can keep growing and stop hitting these walls and stop failing reps in the gym, because that is not the goal of training is to fail reps, it's to execute and actually proceed.

Philip Pape: 5:35

And when you're working in the gym because that is not the goal of training is to fail reps, it's to. It's to execute and actually proceed. And when you're working in the volume range, that's going to be submaximal, that's not going to be cranking out one RMs all the time. When you're working in, you know strength or peak or intensity phase, the goal then is to express and increase that weight on the bar. So cast your vote for the smart strategy, the one that adapts and moves with you, and then get out there and vote for gains. And let's get stronger together and just show up like, just show up to the voting booth of strength and you're going to get there and stick with me as we do that. Thank you for listening to wits and weights. If you're voting today, um the all I can say is enjoy, enjoy it, enjoy the entertainment and, um, good luck. Okay, We'll talk to you next time here on wits and weights.