Are your gains stagnating? Then it seems obvious to increase training volume, which means to do more sets. New research seems to confirm this.
NON-RESPONDERS
The study looked at non-responders, also known as hardgainers. Can they achieve muscle growth if they do more sets?
The researchers had 85 elderly people train one leg with 1 set per exercise and the other leg with 4 sets per exercise. This way, you don’t have to take into account dietary factors, genetics and lifestyle differences between people in the study.
After ten weeks, over half of the participants did not respond to the low volume program, but the higher volume legs of these individuals did respond with greater growth. These findings suggest that hardgainers may need a higher training volume than genetically advantaged bodybuilders to make good progress.
MAXIMUM RECOVERABLE VOLUME
However, you do need to make sure that you can recover sufficiently from those higher volumes. And that’s where the shoe pinches: hardgainers often have a lower maximum recoverable volume.
This means you have to walk on a tightrope for maximum gains.
Our advice: work with specialization cycles. In other words, choose a muscle group that is far behind and apply the higher volume to it. Train the rest of the muscle groups at maintenance level.
AT LAST
According to Henselmans, true non-responsiveness is a myth:
Virtually anyone can build muscle and everyone can get lean.