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This is one of the better objections to science-based lifting, in my opinion.
If one study says “more volume is better” and another says “it doesn’t matter,” how are you supposed to know what to believe?
I think the answer isn’t to put the research aside and fall back on anecdotes, because they can contradict each other too. Instead, I think the answer is to look at the entire body of evidence, not single studies, and then combine that with in-field results and your own personal experience.
Anything else you’d add when addressing this question?
Transcript
Should you fully trust studies when studies can contradict each other? It's a good question because it's kind of true. Studies can contradict each other. For example, this study found that high volume training led to more muscle growth. The more sets you do, the more gains you make. However, this study found that high volume training was basically a waste of time. There was no difference in gains between nine sets a week and 36 sets a week. That's a contradiction. So maybe we should just look at what the best bodybuilders do instead. Jay Cutler was mister Olympia four tier, and he did very high volume training, long workouts with loads of sets. But Dorian Yates was mister Olympia six times, and he did very low volume just one or two all out sets. That's another contradiction, and now we're back to where we started. And that's the problem you'll run into anytime you put too much weight into single studies or single anecdotes. No. Instead, you need to look at the entire body of evidence. When you do that, you do see that, yeah, higher volumes generally do produce more muscle growth, but there's nuance because those extra gains are vastly diminishing rank the longer workouts that come from higher volume training might not be worth it for most people. Plus, if you do too much for too long, that can hinder recovery, and I think that the amount of volume that you need might depend on how hard you train. Like, Dorian might have needed less volume because he took every set to failure, whereas Jay Cutler may have needed higher volumes because he didn't train to failure as much. That's closer to how science based thinking is supposed to work. It's not about finding certainty in the perfect single study. It's about finding patterns across many studies, many athletes, and combining that with your own personal experience.