Junk Volume: Why You Must Avoid It For Max Muscle 

I'd love to know how this principle works with the secondary muscles worked by compound movements. For example, does a hard set of pull-ups count as a hard set for biceps? What about lat pull-down? Seems like a big grey area to me.

I still cant believe how good jeff is at holding presentations. He basically does minimized bachelore thesis in almost each of his videos.

If I close my eyes, Ben Shapiro is telling me my workout is trash.

As a scientist who regularly deals with scientific papers I must say that Jeff´s ability to interpret such papers and especially putting them into the bigger scope is exceptionally impressive!

Extremely valuable video. Thank you. I farm for a living which is very physically demanding. When I work out, I want to be as efficient as possible in my results so I'm not burning myself out for my work. Videos like this really help

The info. The explanation. The organization. The literature review. The video editing. Jeff's videos are better than what the online fitness community deserves.

Great video! The visuals and graphs helped illustrate this topic particularly well for me.

Thank you - this video in particular was more useful than most content I've seen... I love that you back up your claims with meta-analysis of the scientific literature. Thanks to you I'm going to be able to save a significant chunk of time related to "junk volume" with confidence. I've already been trending this way already from personal experience (breaking up big sessions into many sessions over the week), but now that I have some evidence behind the decision, I'll be able to modify my remaining 'big' sessions into multiple 'smaller' sessions with zeal.

Thank you for posting this. Answered questions I have had for quite some time. BTW, I have followed you since you started and would just like to say, you should be proud of yourself. Your gains are incredible. I'm 82 and still learning after weight training and exercising since I was 15. Always appreciate your knowledge. Thank you.

Dr. Krieger is such a boss. I literally was sending some of his research to an excercise phys colleague last week as she prepped for a lecture about optimal sets for resistance training. Thanks for making such high quality knowledge available in video format Jeff.

Jeff puts so much work into his videos the only thing i can do for him is standing ovations . Thanks bro!

Great video Jeff. Quality information and very well thought out. Brilliant.

Undoubtedly, the most consistent fitnesses you-tuber. Clearly putting in the work in order to bring out the quality content!! 👏👏

Absolutely! Jeff, incredible insight bro. Thank you for your relentless digging for our benefit

Jeff, your content is amazing. Recently started following and it is clear you're passionate about what you do by the amount of time, research and information you put into each video.

Brilliant video. I'm going back into training after a nearly decade hiatus. Good to know these tips for optimising my workout.

Would love to see a breakdown video on warm up sets. Specifically how many sets to do, how heavy each set should be, etc

Thanks so much, Jeff! Having followed you for several years now, it's so cool seeing the production quality of your video just keep going up and up and the information staying as amazing as ever. Really grateful for your stuff! Keep up the awesome work

This channel is outstanding. Well done! Fantastic and succinct presentations. Top notch quality!

Ive been looking for a video to answer questions I’ve had with no luck until now! Great Vid

I appreciate you leaving the links to the studies in the description, high quality information right here

Thanks for these ultra valuable videos. Just as a side note: the "easy sets" only becomes a problem if one does not have a working progression scheme. Else, easy sets only happen temporarily until one has increased the weight / reps / sets until the exercise becomes challenging again.

Thank you for your honesty and patience of being one of the few really natural body builders. Really real is better because longevity and quality of life prove it.

Love your stuff, your body is the best example to show how and where the muscles work in videos

Thank you Jeff this is literally the best stuff on the Internet as far as I’m concerned. Following your videos has been a major contributor to my training results.

Love the presentation format and the video flow. I'd be curious to see a similar video but with regards to max strength. Keep it up man!

BIG THANX! I needed help understanding all this. Appreciate you 😉✊🏾.

An excellent video and one that is particularly useful for me. One thing about the volume studies that needs to be clarified is which people in the studies are on gear, and which people are not.

I’m grateful every time I see a good video like this that gives me the opportunity to learn something that will stay with me throughout my training. Thank you.

The amount of effort and research you put into your vids are INCREDIBLE Jeff !!

Thank you, Jeff! I'm a philosophy student, I do read researches as a routine. Your video is like a meta analysis to all. I have good leverage in my learnings, all because of you. I love your sources and all!

I started watching RU-vid to make sure I develop good form. Thanks to the algorithm, I've watched a few of your videos on volume, and have switched from two to three sets per exercise, per workout. Next, I'm going for three full-body resistance workouts per week, up from two. I'm still a noob, but I'm aiming to achieve beginner status. I wish I had acess to this kind of "lift with your mind, not your ego" content when I was young! I wouldn't be getting such a late start.

I had a friend that always complained that no matter how much protein and surplus he had & how often he worked out he couldn’t put on more muscle. He was lean and a bit muscular but could never put on noticeable muscle… one day we did a “I’ll train one day with you and you train one day with me.” So it was his turn first to workout with me and workout the way I do. Mind you he’s about 4 inches taller than me and normally stronger. So I started & showed him the routine for the day and my work out philosophy and mentality. Predominantly, low reps high weight. So for example, our first workout was bench press. I did 10, 8, 5, 3 reps (sometime most of y’all might already consider too high volume). With 10 being a decent challenge weight, let’s say 50lbs (yes I am completely weak in the chest), then by the 5 rep weight I would be doing 75lbs, something that for me already required a spotter. And for the final set, 3 reps of 80lbs which was literally almost my max, I’m talking like barely being able to actually do it. So you feel me? That sort of workout where you can actually feel your muscles sore and like they’re torn up. Constantly doing reps close to your max. This system really works for me, and I notice very fast and good results from it. So it was his turn to do the bench, and I told him “make sure that you use a weight where 10 reps ends up being a decent challenge, 8 you increase the weight a little more, 5 is a hard challenge, like you might not finish it. And 3 reps of a weight that you can barely do.” Dude was like “yea yea,” and proceeded to do the same weights I did with so much ease that he did like 15 reps, then 15 more, then 10, and 10 :| so we moved on and all throughout the workout I kept telling him that it seemed he was going too light and to increase the weight more and he kept on bitching and telling me no. We finished and he was like “that’s it??? This is so easy man” meanwhile I’m there feeling all the muscles we worked on about to rip and tear :| A week later it was my turn to workout out with him. Needless to say, we did like 40 more minutes of cardio than what I normally do. Then we “hit the weights.” We started with bicep curls, and he was like “alright dude let’s do 50 curls…” and he preceded to grab the 15lbs when I know for a fact that his one rep max for a curl is at least at 50lbs :| and like he wouldn’t rest either, it’s like his rest from doing curls was dips, like you feel me? By the end of his workout routine I felt tired ye, and sore but it wasn’t the same soreness. My soreness was over literally like 6 hours later, whereas the soreness from my workouts usually last 2-3 days depending on how close to failure or my one rep max I’m getting to. I was like, yo no wonder this dude can’t put on weight or get stronger, he just trains light weights for insanely high volume and never gets close to actual challenging weight. He never understood this, no matter how I tried to explain it or how many RU-vid videos like these I showed him. To this day he still workouts out like 2 hours daily, diets severely (I’m talking, any surplus calories must come from greens & proteins, almost no fats not even healthy ones, and no bad carbs, dude literally takes the bread off his burgers… no he’s not gluten intolerant), prioritises high volume as opposed to high weight, and still bitches about not getting bigger or any stronger 🤷🏻‍♂️

Jeff, your content is unmatched on this platform (or any platform for that matter) and you are an extremely knowledgable individual. After the great (late) JOHN MEADOWS you are my go-to science based fitness RU-vidr. I am sure you will not mind being number 2 to the legend! :)

Great video G. Make sense. Very clear explanation

Thank you for covering the point at 3:46. In the past, when I have decreased volume based on things like this, I felt progress slow. Everyone is different so I appreciate that you acknowledged that it's not 1 size fits all

His ability to explain the concept is exceptional. Like an instructor I once had told his students, if you can explain it to a 6 y/o and they get it, you understand it yourself.

This guy is so fucking good. All the research, the papers and work puts in, i really appreciate trainers who actually show proof and know what they are talking about .The fact he is researching and trying to learn and present to us, means that what he says is even more trustworthy, and not just broscience

Very informative, I’ve been doing the 5 day a week full body routine and man I’ve not ever had results like this, thus far I’ve gone up in weight everyday on every muscle group except on pull-ups, that’s been a constant, but I’m not doing full body weight on those yet. Great routine and I’m absolutely loving it!

This is the best content I’ve seen with regard to building muscle. Quoting active research too

Great video as always. It definitely gave me a lot to consider with respect to my own approach to training. I think that many people (myself included) might find it hard to reconcile this info with the general sentiment that more is better when it comes to training; personally, I would find it hard to shake the feeling that I’m leaving gains on the table if I only do 6 hard sets per muscle group per session. But if I could decrease my demand for recovery *and* further optimize strength and size gains by doing less volume, it does seem like a no brainer. I will certainly read the research for myself, but I would have liked to hear more about how the studies’ experimental conditions might affect the takeaway. For example, might more volume be beneficial to optimized trainees (ie those who have their exercise selection, nutrition, and recovery dialed in)? I think that question is particularly relevant for your viewers, who on average probably have more optimized regimens than the average gym-goer.

i think #2 is the most relevant to me... a few months back I realized that I essentially wasn't pushing myself hard enough in the gym, doing too many "easy" sets... while I was in good shape, I wasn't getting stronger and I wasn't progressing. I started tracking my PRs on every lift at every weight and my goal is to set a PR on every visit to the gym. so far so good.

Awesome vid jeff, learned a lot!

Thank you so much for sharing you're knowledge 🙏

The most results I have seen is with the 4-5 day a week full body workouts with the regimen spread out over those 4-5 days. I absolutely love the pumps and my results have been fantastic. Thanks Jeff!

The caveats are important, everyone is different which is not always highlighted in almost all RU-vid training video. I personally need volume to see big changes in my body which took a very very long time to realise, mainly because I was being far too sensible. The advice such as from these vids with a splash of Ryan Humiston is what works for me

Congrats! That’s hands down the best dslr camera out there for video production

Your video quality has gotten so good over the years.

Excellent video! I think lots of people have a junk volume problem and we should all be trying to optimise our programming in order to make all our sets as effective as possible. Also I think someone's junk volume could change with time. For example when they are novices perhaps 2 sets per body part is plenty to get them growing muscle, however as you get more advanced or even elite, you will have to add more sets in order to accumulate more tonnage to keep progressing.

This is actually what I needed, I want to increase my jiu jitsu and wrestling training to 5 times a week and strength and conditioning training 3 times a week, so this will really help keeping myself from over fatigueing. It is almost suspicuous how coincidental this video is

It's an amazingly useful video, thank you so much!

Jeff thank you so much for this!

Can you do an update on how to combine this with the other ways to stimulate muscle growth (specifically TUT)? Thanks Jeff, great content as always.

I am training with really low weekly volume per muscle and still making good progress . Every set and every rep must be perfect for me to get that progress . Thank you so much Jeff for your videos .💪

Yes thank you for touching on this subject. It's something that we all need to think about. I realized a long time ago . You hear from these other guys wondering how many repetitions and how many sets. If you feel it and it's burning and you've know your really hitting the muscle then you're doing it right If you're not going to go the distance then you're not going to feel that burn You're not going to get those gains. Yes there are junk days. I personally have had junk sessions. We have to avoid these and work hard enough and then you won't have to wonder if your doing enough sets or reps. Your muscle part will tell you everything 👍. And the way your physique looks after you've been doing your routine the way you do.

Great video! Well explained. 🙏

Very well done video! Personally I like to not make things too rigid, as i believe in many cases people set goals that are too far from where they are currently, and your mind subconsciously performs these sets with suboptimal technique just so you can grind through them and say "yeah i hit my number of sets goal.." Pushups frequently come to mind. You have some people say they can do 100 pushups, but can they really? Quality vs quantity. The point of working out isn't to mindlessly bang out sets and then go home. Bottom line, workouts shouldn't be "easy".. they prob don't have to be grueling, but they can't be easy.

Definitely makes sense. I made the jump from body building to powerlifting a year ago. I got myself a good coach who monitors my form and volume. I remember looking at his first program and thinking "where's the volume? I'm not gonna grow doing these 4 small full body sessions". Good thing I trusted the process because I'm in the gym less, still growing and adding weight to the bar week in week out.

Your info is honestly so good that it's stressing me out thinking about the million different little things I could be doing that are messing up either my fat loss or my muscle gain lol

This has been so helpful for me! I was putting the blame on my cardio sprint intervals training, but it was actually junk volume 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is a bit random but I just want to thank you for your videos, they have really helped me get an effective workout and its almost unbelievable how much I have grown and gained weight the past 2 years. Without your videos, I would definitively have been doing ineffective/wrong movements. Never stop making videos, bye!

Damn. 6 sets sounds like almost nothing. Very good to know though. I think another struggle that I and other gym rats struggle with is that we enjoy working out. Lifting is the favorite part of my day so why wouldn't I want longer workouts? Long hard workouts are very enjoyable too, at times, and it feels good to make a hard workout for yourself then succeed

Damn, this is enlightening, I sometimes break this rule and will rethink my workouts now, thanks Jeff.

He really answered my questions about back training. I always seem to do more volume on pull days than push and I was worried I was doing too much but I usually do around 10 sets

Jeff, I love your videos but I'd also be super interested to hear how this information stacks up when applied to calisthenic loads.

Love this. I think people at the gym think they gotta go as hard as possible on every set. Since he brought up the chest. I probably do 4 different chest exercises per workout. But on each different exercise the first set I always start with a light weight in order to not over fatigue myself, but to also make sure my technique is feeling good.

Thanks for the info man!

very helpful video. encourages to the thinking

Thank you so much Jeff! I understand the correlation between frequency and hypertrophy, but as a 45 year old lifter have there been any studies involving recovery of connective tissue in relation to volume. High frequency workouts work on my muscles but they always beat me up in my joints.

Great video!! As a beginner, my two main mistakes were lack of sleep and not eating enough. I was disappointed because my weight stagnated. Then I got my first diet plan (I think it was from Nextlevel DIet). I realised that my previous food intake was way below my needs, although I thought I'm good. At the beginning it was hard to eat so many kcal in a day, but I got used to it. I started noticing real gains and it felt amazing. I wish I'd understood the importance of diet earlier.

Absolutely fantastic content

Great video, thank you!

Amazing content like always! Wish I had known all this 20 years ago haha! Doing 6 sets per workout and 10-20 sets per week per muscle group is the holy grail of training. I've been able to maximize gains while minimizing recovery time and recovery past your mid 30s gets brutal. I realize not everybody has easy access to the gym but I've seen a huge benefit of doing short workouts 4-5x a week instead of cramming the same workload into long grueling gym sessions 2-3x per week. Consistency and moderation is key! Thanks Jeff!

I recently switched to a low-volume, higher-weight routine, and I'm starting to see some pleasing results. I feel much stronger and my physique is much fuller as well. Definitely going to stick with this for a while at least.

This is very helpful thank you. My job is very physically demanding on top of that I was way over training, not gaining weight. I didn't realize how few reps I actually had to do for optimal training

The thing I'm wondering about is different parts of every muscle. I have a dedicated upper back/shoulder day, a dedicated leg day and a dedicated chest day. For the chest day, I do barbell bench press, incline dumbbell bench press and cable flys with core/stomach exercises thrown in between. Bench press is 5x5 heavy, incline db press is 3x10 medium and cable flys is 4x8 or 5x5 depending on how the shoulders feel, often medium to somewhat light. Now, this is only one day, but it is also the primary volume for the whole week courtesy of only one chest day. And the incline db press is for example supposed to hit upper chest much more than the barbell bench press. I have felt like my upper chest has been gaining, and so it doesn't feel like junk volume, but this perspective might be a little bit overlooked or at least understudied regarding the point of Jeff's video above.

Hi Jeff, really hoping you or the community could give me a definitive answer on this: As a calisthenics athlete, a couple years back decided to make the switch in my programs and training from training the larger muscle groups as a whole towards breaking them down into compartments, for example: Chest would become Upper, Lower and Mid (the same for Back and Quads). On my push days (running push-pull-legs split at the time 2x/week) I would then try and hit each compartment: mid, upper and lower chest with an exercise in each session. Shortly after having made the switch I began to see noticeable visible gains. However having run this program for quite a while now and finding it quite fatiguing week to week as volume is inevitably quite high, as one can imagine (12r x 5sets/exercise/Mid-Upper-Lower compartments/day) I'm looking to make the change to the said recommended 10-20 weekly sets per muscle group with my latest program (the latest program having become more conventional lifting as goals have shifted). The question is this: When you layout your weekly program, would you look to try and cover Chest as a muscle group in such a way that by the end of a week, you would have done exercises that hit it from each angle? Something like 5x Sets / Incline, Decline, and Flat Pressing per week accumulating to 15 Sets of weekly volume. Second to that, what would your recommended ratio of exercise in the case of something like Back look like? Would it be a 1:1 ratio of Vertical to Horizontal pulling Exercises? Or would you look to regulate that based on what you would deem as weaker or needs more work?

Excellent video, Jeff! A quick question, how are drop-sets accounted for in overall volume? In one of your prior Q&A sessions with Dr. Schoenfeld, the term "volume-equated" drop-sets was mentioned. Can you elaborate a bit on how this is achieved?

Great video sir.

Great insights!

Can we stop and appreciate how good the quality of Jeff's videos are. Crazy honestly

I've been doing Jeff’s upper/lower program for 7 weeks now, and I gotta say - I was definitely doing a ton of junk volume before starting the program. When I originally got it I thought I would see no progress because it was almost half the total sets per week as I was doing before, but I've already really improved my squat and I've been having to add weight the last 3 weeks to hit RPE 7-9 for most movements in the rep ranges he gave. Most importantly, I don't feel run down and exhausted outside the gym, I feel awesome.

Great video. I figured out a few years ago that more is not always better. More workouts and more volume can be a waste of time or counterproductive. Squeezing every possible rep out of every set does more harm than good.

Excellent content 😊

I’m glad that you mention this curve trajectory at 3:46 as I’ve always kept my core building sets for each muscle at around 8-12 sets (think 4 progressively heavier for each flat, incline and decline) then move into lighter weights for finishing or giving them a good increased flow of blood by doing flys etc for that good pump. After around 35 years total of bodybuilding this is what I’ve found to work best for me. My hat’s off to Jeff and the new generation of bodybuilding because you have so much information, from Jeff really good information, that will help you reach your greatest potential much more quickly. No more trial and error like I had to go through.

Such an important & quality video Jeff! This is exactly what all beginner & even intermediate lifters need to learn to counter all the sub-optimal advice they’ve been fed by people on social media. 💪

An excellent explanation.

Good solid advice. As always.

Thanks a lot for this video Jeff! I think I have been in the intermediate level for a while now and have definitely been seeing a lot of progress across the board. BUT I do feel like I am starting to platue in weight level increases and have started adding extra volume by adding more sets and more excersises. Maybe it is time I re-trim my workout plan.

Good advice, I wish I had known this when I was a bit younger. I remember training 10 x 10 170 kg deadlift and all I got to show for it was two herniated discs! 😬

Dog you just answered a question could not get the answer for, for the last year. Nobody would cover it. People would say multiple sets per day, but they never mentioned how many sets for every variation. Like when they say 3 sets for biceps, they never mentioned if that's 3 sets for a specific head, or if it's 3 sets meaning 1 set per head. This changed the way I am approaching the gym now. Thank you x10000

This video is awesome thanks

It's amazing how barebones those studies are. They always come up with some golden rule based off pretty much anything consistent. That is it bro: do 6 sets per muscle per day. Here is the list of variables that don't play a role at all: height, weight, age; lenght of your arms, legs and torso; number of reps, RiR rate, type of exercises, difference between compound and isolated exercises, influence of compound exercises on pre-exhaustion of non target muscles, sequence of exercises, type of program, rest period between sessions, type of muscle (it is the same rule for quadriceps and biceps, hell yeah), etc... None of that matters, just follow the golden rule and go to town. People make fun about gym bros but I feel like a lot of these researches are conducted by the same bros who just put on a lab jacket

Trying to go from the intermediate to advanced and believe this video may have finally convinced me to switch over to the PPL. I’ll give it a go and see how it works out. Thanks for the video.

Damn bro your content continues to amaze me.

Depends what you do and how often you do it. Including rest time. Done 10sets of 3 multiple times for prep work for powerlifting meets. 7 mins rest. Strength went up in the last 6-8 weeks during prep every time. Even during the off season just mix it up, doesn't matter that much unless it's too frequent.

Hey Jeff. Love the vids! I have a question for you. I’m currently having some lower back problems which are restricting me from deadlifting. I was wondering if you could recommend some exercises to help preserve/improve my deadlifts whilst not being able to deadlift. And possibly recommend some things to relieve my back pain? Have a great day!

I do 3-10 sets of vertical pulls per day. Usually 3-5 weighted during a lifting session and the rest unweighted throughout the day. Idk if it's junk volume but I'm getting pretty good at vertical pulls 😄

Needed this gem 💎 I’ve been doing like 20+ sets per body part in a session but I changed it up to 10 sets perk session 3x a week and my bench and squat have sky rocketed thanks 🙏

Hi Jeff, I just stumbled upon your channel a few days ago. Thanks for the quality content. I love the data-driven approach. Question on sets: Many workouts will called something like "arm-blaster" and perhaps include 3 different Bicep exercises, each with 4 sets each. That would be 12 sets of Biceps in a single workout. Would you consider that excessive, or does the minor variations in different bicep-exercises make it viable? Appreciate any input.