We always want more of everything, it’s in our nature. More money, more muscle, more strength, more cowbell.
A lot of information on the internet these days pushes new ways to get more results with less work. After all, that’s what we’re after. That’s the sexy stuff. In fact, I’m a big proponent of getting more out of less but somewhere along the way I think most people forgot how to just put in work. The truth is for the majority of people, if they’re no longer achieving adequate results in the gym it’s because they’re not training with a sufficient volume of work to affect change.
As a novice trainee pretty much anything will act as a good enough stimulus for change, but as you progress your body needs more work to shake that homeostasis. Unfortunately people get caught up in doing the same volume of work (same number of exercises, same rep range, same rest periods) over and over again with little to show for it. You just get tired and it sucks.
This is exercise, not training. Training is the pursuit of progression. You need to train.
A tried and true solution is adding sets. Adding extra sets to your usual training will cause a large increase in training volume which will spur some new gainzzz. Now unfortunately, we can’t keep adding sets because the quality of work still reigns supreme. The trick is to add only enough sets that you’re able to complete with good form and without a large drop off in intensity.
Note: By intensity I mean the amount of weight used, not the awesomeness of your imaginary gym montage.
Notice how I said a large drop off in intensity. When increasing volume you can expect there to be a slight drop off to ensure a good quality of work. That is, if you’ve been using an acceptable amount of intensity then adding an extra set should be tough. If you can add an extra set to the work you’ve already been doing with ease then you haven’t been working hard enough and you should just step your game up and train with some intensity.
Start by adding 1 set to your main lifts and go from there. Does it still feel easy? Add another set. Does it feel like you couldn’t complete the next set? Stop there.
The elite bodies of physique and strength development were not built by an average amount of work, they were built by an amount of work that pushes their boundaries and forces change.
Our bodies are adaptive machines and sometimes it’s just as simple as demanding more from them.
It’s time to get to work. Your 3×10 is obsolete.
