Junk Volume: What It is, How to Avoid it, and Maximizing Effective Volume
Table of Contents
Volume is one of the key drivers of muscle hypertrophy. There is a linear dose-response relationship between training volume and muscle growth. In theory, the more volume you do without exceeding your ability to recover, the more muscle you will build. This is easier said than done, and not all volume is effective and contributes to gains in muscle mass.
When people hear more volume leads to more muscle mass, they increase their training volume. This sounds like a reasonable decision, but how you make those changes in training volume, and how you go about performing those extra sets and reps matters.
Many lifters make the mistake of overemphasizing volume, and not placing enough emphasis on intensity (amount of weight being lifted) and effort (how close the set is taken to failure).
Besides their intensity and effort not being sufficient, the majority of their reps might be poorly executed. Poorly done reps won’t place high amounts of tension on the targeted muscle group, and the stimulus will be weak. Some people lack control over the weight, they let the weight drop on the eccentric, they’re using momentum, their range of motion is too short, they lack mind-muscle connection and aren’t able to actually make the muscle move the weight. Not all sets and reps are created equal. Ten reps of curls done by a less experienced trainee can be very different than ten reps from a very advanced trainee who can get the most out of each and every rep.
So, adding more sets and reps when the quality of your reps is lacking, and each rep is no where near as effective as it could be, isn’t going to produce much better results. Also, there’s an effective way to add volume that can improve the training stimulus and help you build more muscle, and there’s an ineffective, non-stimulating way to add volume that does very little to nothing for muscle growth.
You want to structure your training so you’re maximizing effective volume, volume that contributes gains in muscle and strength, while not exceeding your ability to recover and keeping junk volume to a minimum.
Junk Volume vs. Effective Volume
What Is Junk Volume?
Junk volume is any training that does not contribute to muscle growth, but just builds up fatigue. Junk volume comes in many different forms.
The muscle group has already been maximally stimulated, and more sets and reps will only create more fatigue with no additional muscle growth. This extra fatigue requires more recovery time, and this increase in recovery time can prevent you from hitting muscle groups more frequently. Accumulate too much fatigue, both peripheral and systemic, and it could negatively impact your training for other muscle groups as well. This could all contribute to suboptimal progress.
Junk volume comes in many others forms. Sometimes it’s not that they’ve already maximally stimulated a muscle group, but the opposite. They’re doing reps that are not taken close enough to failure, and with a weight that is too light. The stimulus just isn’t enough to stimulate muscle hypertrophy. Nothing they’re doing is that challenging. They aren’t giving their body a reason to change—to become bigger and stronger.
Other times their form and execution isn’t good, like I mentioned earlier. Their range of motion is too short, they’re just going through the motions, using momentum, their form is off, and they’re not actually making the targeted muscle move the weight and do the work. Very few of their reps are actually effective, quality reps.
You also see a lot of lifters that do extra training at the end of their workout to tire themselves out. To them, being exhausted, getting pump, and being incredibly sore is a sign of progress, but it’s not always the case. A pump can be a good indicator of great mind-muscle connection and that muscles are working, but the pump is a side effect of proper training. It shouldn’t be the main thing you’re chasing by doing tons of extra work and using training techniques that aren’t necessary. Soreness is another thing many lifters are after. Just like the pump, it’s not something you should be after, it’s just a side effect of hard and effective training. Progressive overload with great form and execution across many exercises is what you should be after. It’s one of the best ways to tell if you’re making progress.
Many lifters aren’t making the best choices when it comes to exercise selection. No exercise is absolutely necessary, and you want to choose ones that work well for you, then focus on consistently getting better at them. People will tell you what exercises you should be doing, but that doesn’t make them a must. There are many different ways to make a muscle grow and build a great physique. Every exercise should have a purpose. Ask yourself what the purpose of an exercise is before adding it into your training program. You don’t want to be throwing in exercises that aren’t that effective for you, or extra exercises at the end of a workout that put you beyond the per training volume threshold and your ability to recover. Be careful and picky with your exercise selection when putting together your training program and making changes.
What Is Effective Volume?
Effective volume is training that contributes to muscle growth. Training that stimulates anabolic signaling and muscle protein synthesis. It’s training that is challenging enough to disrupt homeostasis and cause the body to adapt by becoming bigger and stronger.
It’s not uncommon for many lifters to do 6 exercises for a muscle group in a single training session. Instead of splitting up their training and increasing training frequency, they try to hit the muscle from every angle with many different exercises and all in one workout. They might do up to 18 or more total working sets for a single muscle group. This is way beyond per training session volume threshold, or the maximum effective dose. Most sets and reps done beyond the effective volume threshold won’t contribute much at all to muscle growth. You’re accumulating more fatigue which requires more recovery, but with no extra benefit.
It seems that most people benefit from up to about 10, possibly up to 12 hard sets per body part, per training session (some may need 12 sets, some only 8). This is approximately the per session volume threshold that maximizes anabolic signaling and muscle protein synthesis. About 10-20 sets per muscle group per week is recommended for most lifters. Some can get away with less than 10 sets for certain muscle groups, other might need more than 20, but 10-20 hard sets per week for each muscle group is a good place to start.
This a meta-analysis found that there’s an upper limit to the amount of muscle hypertrophy that can be stimulated in a single training session, about 10 sets per muscle group. Think of it as the maximum effective dose per training session. Additional sets beyond this threshold will not help you gain more muscle, but will create more fatigue which increases recovery time.
So, why not hit most muscle groups more frequently to maximize the muscle growth stimulus more frequently? You can train a muscle group 2 or 3 times a week, instead of blasting a muscle group once a week with an unnecessary amount of volume that won’t result in any additional muscle growth. More frequent stimulus means more opportunities for growth. Hitting each muscle group once a week is only 52 opportunities per year. Hit each muscle group twice a week and you double that to 104 opportunities each year.
Also, there’s a high likelihood the quality of your training will diminish as your workout goes on and you try to complete 16+ working sets for a single muscle group. You’ll be far more fatigued, form and execution could start to slip, and you won’t be able to lift as much. If you split up those 16 sets into 2 training sessions, each training session will be less fatiguing, higher quality reps, and you’ll be able to lift heavier.
There is only so much muscle you can build in a single session. More is better, but only up to a certain point. Annihilating a muscle doesn’t cause more growth. Once you’ve maxed out anabolic signaling, particularly muscle protein synthesis, get out of the gym, eat, and rest so you can hit that muscle again sooner rather than later.
It’s also important to improve rep quality to maximize effective volume. Effective reps are reps that are contributing to muscle growth. Reps that are executed properly, challenging the targeted muscle, and providing a hypertrophy stimulus. This usually involves great control and concentration, spot on form, and minimizing momentum. You’re stressing the muscle hard, making it work and move the weight. You’re not just moving weights from point A to point B. Like anything else, even lifting weights with the goal of building muscle takes practice. And you have plenty of opportunities to practice. Every repetition you do, warm up set or working set, is an opportunity to practice great execution.
Avoiding Junk Volume, Maximizing Effective Volume
Increase Training Frequency
Instead of keeping your training split the same and adding sets or even another exercise to each training session for a muscle group, you would be better off increasing your training frequency.
Instead of training the muscle group once a week, try twice a week. Do as much effective volume that you can recover from per session, and more importantly, over the course of the entire week of training.
Instead of training a muscle group once a week with 18 sets, do two workouts of 9 sets, or three workouts of 6 sets. You’ll have more opportunities to maximally stimulate each muscle group. Also, the quality of your training sessions will likely improve by distributing your volume more evenly throughout the week.
You should design your training so that you’re maximally stimulating each muscle group, just reaching your per session threshold for effective volume that’s needed to maximize anabolic signaling and muscle growth. Then get out of the gym, eat, rest, and recover.
RPE/RIR Scales
Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Reps In Reserve (RIR) are tools that can be used to measure how close you’re taking sets to failure–how hard you’re training.
Junk volume consists of sets that people consider working sets, but the set wasn’t actually challenging enough. It wasn’t taken close enough to failure. You should be taking sets 1-4 reps shy of failure most of the time. More taxing compound lifts like squats, overhead press, and deadlifts don’t need to be taken as close to failure very often. Less taxing exercises like bicep curls, triceps pushdowns, lateral raises, rear deltoid flyes, and leg extensions can be taken very close to failure, or to failure, much more often. If the sets aren’t challenging enough and the hypertrophy stimulus just isn’t there, or it’s very weak, you won’t grow much.
RPE/RIR scales can be great tools to measure how hard you’re training, but most people don’t train hard enough and don’t know what it feels like to truly take a set to failure. When someone isn’t familiar with the feeling of taking sets to failure, they often stop far short of failure. What they believe is an RPE 8 might actually be an RPE of 4. They aren’t training as hard as they think they are, and there’s lots of junk volume. So what I recommend is occasionally taking your last set of an exercise to failure. Do this with more than one exercise since some are more difficult than others. Be careful about doing this on squats, deadlifts, or barbell bench. It may be better to use exercises with a lower risk of injury like a row, dumbbell press, pulldown, chest fly, or leg extension.
As you become more experienced, you should become better at making more accurate RPE/RIR measurements. This will help you reduce the junk volume, and do more hard and effective working sets.
Take Videos
There are other good reasons to take videos of your training besides showing off on social media. It’s a great way to check your form, technique, range of motion, and how hard you’re training.
A good thing to look out for is bar speed. Typically the closer you get to failure, the longer each rep will take to complete. The bar is moving slower because it’s becoming more challenging, and you’re getting closer to failure.
So, if you take a video of yourself squatting or deadlifting, you might have felt like the set was an RPE of 8, but then you watch the video and realize the bar speed hardly changed at all from the first rep to the last. Your RPE may have been lower than you thought, and you actually had a lot more reps in you.
Junk volume can also come in the form of poorly executed reps that are a waste of time and effort. When you take videos, make sure you’re performing exercises correctly. Proper execution is key. Think about it—we’re all doing lots of the same exercises in the gym, but some are doing them much more effectively and getting a better result. When it comes to building muscle, how much weight you’re moving does matter to an extent, but how you’re moving the weight matters even more.
Use Advanced Training Techniques Sparingly
Training techniques like supersets, drop sets, and giant sets have their place, but use them sparingly. They’re often best used when you’re short on time. Performing straight sets or pyramid sets aren’t quite as exciting as a skin splitting pump for a drop set, but they’re often more effective, and progress is easier to track. It’s also easier to be certain that you’re not performing junk volume. When you’re doing lots of supersets and drop sets, fatigue can accumulate which can make it difficult to accurately judge RPE/RIR, and you might end up using a weight that is too light and does not create enough mechanical tension. It’s also easy to let form and execution deteriorate when using different training techniques that really wear you down and build up a lot of fatigue. Different training intensity techniques have their place, but use them wisely. The goal isn’t to just wear yourself out and sweat a lot, it’s to produce a specific result from your training. You’re aiming for measurable progress in the gym that leads to physical changes in the way you look.
Exercise Selection
Choosing the exercises that work best for you is very important. Just because one exercise works great for someone else does not mean that it will work as great for you.
There’s no one perfect way to build a great physique, and no single exercise is absolutely necessary. Choose exercises that place a lot of tension on the targeted muscle, feel great for you, that you can perform safely with enough weight, don’t completely wipe you out and negatively impact the rest of your training, or cause any discomfort or pain that could be dangerous.
Don’t make the mistake of ditching an exercise too soon. Make sure you’ve given it all you’ve got, gotten the form and technique down, and have practiced it for weeks. If you feel very confident with your form and technique, and you’ve given it time and you’re not getting anywhere with it, then replace it for another exercise that’s more effective for you.
Sets and Reps
Sets that are not taken close enough to failure, about 4 reps shy, will not be stimulating enough in most cases. Beginners can get away with training further from failure and still see great results. Others will need to push themselves closer to failure. Don’t make the mistake of calling some sets a working set when really, it was more like a warm-up set.
We discussed this earlier, but another way to minimize junk volume is to improve rep quality, do more effective reps that actually provide a strong enough stimulus, and contribute to muscle growth. If your form starts to break down as you get deeper into the set and you’re no longer performing the exercise with safe and effective technique, stop the set. Continuing to perform low-quality and ineffective reps just accumulates more fatigue with no additional benefit. The amount of fatigue far outweighs the stimulus. When form and execution fall apart, you might be using momentum, or other muscle groups that shouldn’t be involved start assisting. It’s unlikely the targeted muscle group will be under enough tension, the hypertrophy stimulus will be weak and insufficient. And of course, poor form increases the risk of injury. Partial and forced reps have their place in training, but even then, your form should still be good.
Make sure each set has a purpose, move with a purpose, and make the most out of each set.
Key Takeaways
- Junk volume comes in many forms. It’s training that doesn’t contribute much to building muscle, but produces more fatigue.
- Effective volume is training that is maximally stimulating and does contribute to muscle growth.
- Doing 10-20 sets per muscle group per week is enough for most lifters. Some may need more, some may get away with less.
- The per training session volume threshold appears to be about 10-12 sets per body part per session. More than this will most likely be junk volume, and will not contribute to building muscle.
- Most working sets should be 1-4 reps from failure, and some less taxing exercises can be taken to failure much more often than more taxing compound lifts.
- Use RPE/RIR, take videos, and be picky with your exercise selection to make the most out of your training.
- If you’re training each muscle group once a week, increasing training frequency to add more effective volume and minimize junk volume.
- Add volume, but do so effectively. Don’t add volume, but then sacrifice intensity (weight being lifted) and effort (how close you’re training to failure). Not all sets and reps are created equal.