Manipulating volume?

[SpinyNorman]

no. Unless you are in an alternate dimension with different natural laws and mathematical principles than ours, 30 singles will ALWAYS be more volume than 25.

The key is that there's more to it than just volume. And guys, you don't have squat sets, especially 5x5, that often take around an hour? I'm pretty surprised, honestly. Unless I'm just ramping back up in the first few weeks of going back to 5x5, my squat sets usually take at least 45 minutes minimum.

Including warm up I think I usually get 5x5 done in around 45 minutes, sometimes a bit less sometimes a bit more. I try not to let the rest intervals creep much past 5 minutes in order to keep the total length of volume day somewhat reasonable (see trapntan's comment above).

[Sean Stangl]

Including warm up I think I usually get 5x5 done in around 45 minutes, sometimes a bit less sometimes a bit more. I try not to let the rest intervals creep much past 5 minutes in order to keep the total length of volume day somewhat reasonable (see trapntan's comment above).

For the benefit of hsilman: 5x5 with 500lbs takes me about two hours, including warmup. Rest between sets is 20 minutes. With lighter 5x5 around 450, I can get away with 12-15 minute rest. As the weight goes up, the rest intervals get longer, unless you are willing to fail your sets due to inadequate rest.

[manveer]

For the benefit of hsilman: 5x5 with 500lbs takes me about two hours, including warmup. Rest between sets is 20 minutes. With lighter 5x5 around 450, I can get away with 12-15 minute rest. As the weight goes up, the rest intervals get longer, unless you are willing to fail your sets due to inadequate rest.

I'm a lot weaker than this... still takes me about an hour or more for volume squats (360#). Rest times get longer before the later sets - 10-15 minutes. I'm sure I could go faster and get closer to 45 mins, but I don't because as Sean said I don't want to fail to save a few minutes.

[MattJ.D.]

Actually, in physics, work is this:

W = C⌠Fdx = Fxcos(Θ), where C is some constraint from from point X1(t1) to X2(t2)

and no, I didn't just look at wikipedia for 5 minutes...


...I'll see myself out...

lol, someone paid attention in classical mechanics, work is the area under the force-displacement curve, so yeah this is the most exact listed in the thread so far

edit: actually you forgot your dot product notation by whatever

[John Hanley]

Ah. Found it. Very interesting.

Total work= weight x reps/time

So in theory 30x1 would only be more 'volume' than 5x5 if it is completed in the same amount of time or the threshold of time in which it becomes more total work than a 5x5.

Time to start timing my workouts? Lol.

Did we read the same series? The key concept in determining the "dose" of stress in a single workout is "fatigue".

"Fatigue" sounds vague/nebulous, but it accounts for volume & intensity...and if you think of fatigue as "reduction in ability to generate force," it's actually perfectly measurable (using RPEs or by measuring bar speed).

Most importantly, measuring fatigue & dialing in the perfect dose & frequency of stress really fucking works. For advanced intermediates & up, it's at the heart of any program I'll draft.

[OZ-USF-UFGator]

For the benefit of hsilman: 5x5 with 500lbs takes me about two hours, including warmup. Rest between sets is 20 minutes. With lighter 5x5 around 450, I can get away with 12-15 minute rest. As the weight goes up, the rest intervals get longer, unless you are willing to fail your sets due to inadequate rest.

Jesus, you're an animal

[Bryan Dobson]

Did we read the same series? The key concept in determining the "dose" of stress in a single workout is "fatigue".

"Fatigue" sounds vague/nebulous, but it accounts for volume & intensity...and if you think of fatigue as "reduction in ability to generate force," it's actually perfectly measurable (using RPEs or by measuring bar speed).

Most importantly, measuring fatigue & dialing in the perfect dose & frequency of stress really fucking works. For advanced intermediates & up, it's at the heart of any program I'll draft.

This concept is so simple it is lost on many.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Did we read the same series? The key concept in determining the "dose" of stress in a single workout is "fatigue".

"Fatigue" sounds vague/nebulous, but it accounts for volume & intensity...and if you think of fatigue as "reduction in ability to generate force," it's actually perfectly measurable (using RPEs or by measuring bar speed).

Most importantly, measuring fatigue & dialing in the perfect dose & frequency of stress really fucking works. For advanced intermediates & up, it's at the heart of any program I'll draft.

^^^ This.

[heman]

And to extend this:

If you normalize by time, you get power. Assume person A is doing 5x5 in, lets say, 30 minutes versus person B doing 30x1 in 60 minutes. While person B is indeed moving more tonnage (20% more), they are also generating roughly half of the power. Part of this whole "working out" thing is to become a more effecient mechanism for power generation.

So you can keep time in the equation for power,

where

power = [weight * distance]/time,

at the single-workout level, but remembering it has to be compared properly. Here conditioning plays a role. While strength is numerator, conditioning shrinks the denominator.

I do know physics. I wanted to keep things simple by not going into the details and mentioning all the buts.


When we talk about power in workout terms it is most often used on the rep level or set level (rather than single-workout level).
You can for example compare the power in a snatch with a deadlift. (If I remember correctly SS discussed the power difference in a Power clean and a deadlift )

You can also measure the time of a single workout (or time from start of first rep in first set, to the end of last rep of last set in a given exercise) and take that into account in your programming or training planning.
You can use the term "power" for that metric, but I think it is really confusing. (when discussing muscles ability to generate power, rest periods are rarely taken into account (if rest periods are taken into account, we are usually discussing the ability of the muscles to recover )).
I also think you can not do so much with the number you get, unless you do the same amount of sets and reps and weight in the same exercise.
That means that finishing 5x5 in 40 minutes can be compared to finishing 5x5 in 30 minutes with the same weight (because it has same amount of reps and sets and weigth), and you can claim that the latter is better because the power is greater.
But if you compare the latter (5x5 in 30 min) to finishing 3x5 in 18 minutes you get the same of "power" number. Does that tell us anything useful?

And if we read too much into the numbers we can calculate that 5x5 with 100 kg in 30 minutes is the same "power" as finishing 5x5 with 110 kg in 33 minutes. Does it tell us anything useful that the numbers are the same? (I don't think so).

Personally I think in most cases the metric "rest time between sets" is suffcient. (or total time of all sets)

TL;DR
What I am trying to say is that when we are talking about training and programming, we can use various metrics that we define, but we must be careful to not read too much into the numbers.
Muscles don't do math.

[heman]

Nope. But they obey physical laws. And those laws are modeled by mathematics.

Ofcourse they do. Power, force, work, momentum etc. can be calculated for muscles and exercises etc.

But there are no known laws that state that same amount of power or work or other physics terms, will result in the same amount of strength gains.
There are no known physics formulas or equations for strength gains. (there are many theories and ideas though).

It doesn't say anything to you if someone can finish the same volume of work in less time? That doesn't point to a different adaptation?

Not necessarily.
If the sets and reps are the same I think it says something yes.
But I don't think it is meaningful to compare the time of a 5x3 and a 3x5 (same volume).
or compare the time of a 5x5 and a 5x10 with half the weight (same tonnage).

Simply stating that power gives another perspective to the problem.

I can agree with that.
I just think one must be careful to not compare a power value to something that is not meaningful to compare it to.