Volume sensitivity for older lifters

[manveer]

But thats not a new and fundamental, but gradual phenomenon for someone above 50 vs a 20yr old: The often besung "genetic limit" is, in practice, simply a recovery limit. For everyone, regardless the age.

So the 60yr old as well as the 20yr old needs MORE volume if he has increased it and still plateaus. If either of them cant recover from more volume (in their current life circumstances) - then thats the point they max out. Simple as that. And thats one of the reason older people max out sooner than younger.

So, you don't think one can develop the ability to tolerate more volume?

[Marenghi]

Of course I think that.

Its just that the ceiling for adaptation to more volume is, well, lower in older trainees aka less recovery.

[Meshuggah]

I'm 56. Low volume, high intensity is the ticket for me. Proper use of Conjugate Training allows me to lift heavy every week.

[Elephant]

It depends on what you mean by "older" and "evidence." I notice that most of the people commenting here are in their 40s, which for an already-training lifter is not really that old. Late 50s and 60s heads in that direction, and the "evidence" I have accumulated indicates that the ability to recover from higher-volume training -- multiple sets across and multiple exposures per week, as is commonly programmed for novice/intermediate/advanced lifters in PPST3 -- degrades rapidly after a certain point, reached by most men in their middle and late 50s. For these guys in particular, the concept of the "lowest effective dose" becomes very important, because time, sleeping ability, soreness tolerance, and a desire to compete (either formally or informally) become more and more scarce. I have trained a lot of guys in this demographic, and am in it myself, and I'd like to see your evidence to the contrary. It could be that we are talking past each other, due to the differences in motivation and expectation between 42-year-old guys who are young enough to remember high-school football and older guys who are about to file for Medicare.

One key question of what is counts as "evidence". You most likely have more experience than anyone posting here. Is that enough to count as good evidence? Are large scale controlled experiments needed?

I'd think the answer is to titrate volume. Start with a reasonable template and then experiment. If you can handle more, then it works. If not, see if less volume works better.

[Austin Baraki]

It depends on what you mean by "older" and "evidence." I notice that most of the people commenting here are in their 40s, which for an already-training lifter is not really that old. Late 50s and 60s heads in that direction, and the "evidence" I have accumulated indicates that the ability to recover from higher-volume training -- multiple sets across and multiple exposures per week, as is commonly programmed for novice/intermediate/advanced lifters in PPST3 -- degrades rapidly after a certain point, reached by most men in their middle and late 50s. For these guys in particular, the concept of the "lowest effective dose" becomes very important, because time, sleeping ability, soreness tolerance, and a desire to compete (either formally or informally) become more and more scarce. I have trained a lot of guys in this demographic, and am in it myself, and I'd like to see your evidence to the contrary. It could be that we are talking past each other, due to the differences in motivation and expectation between 42-year-old guys who are young enough to remember high-school football and older guys who are about to file for Medicare.

To summarize this long post: given that total training volume is considered to be the primary driver of long-term muscular adaptation, I find it difficult to reconcile the ideas that older folks exhibit increasing anabolic resistance but are simultaneously increasingly volume sensitive.

In the context of nutrition, we say that younger folks need less protein because they’re more “anabolically sensitive” to its effects on muscle protein synthesis. But for older folks it is suggested that they need less training volume, even though they’re more anabolically resistant.

Most lifters approaching the end of (or coming off of) the novice LP are used to grinding near-5RM loads for multiple sets across. This strategy is extremely fatiguing, unsustainable over the long term, and is one of the primary reasons why we shy away from recommending the original Texas Method. The volume alone isn’t the problem – the high single-session training volume at a high intensity is what quickly becomes the problem. It’s a significant increase in the dose of acute stress being delivered, while the weekly training volume actually decreases (from 9 sets on LP to 8 sets on TM, or even fewer sets on the split).

In the context of intensity, it is not at all surprising that you’ve observed a poor tolerance for “high training volumes” among older folks performing multiple sets across with multiple exposures per week as written in PPST. In fact, I’d argue that most people – myself included – wouldn’t be able to make much progress grinding heavy doubles and triples across multiple times per week.

But what if, as a lifter enters their intermediate phase, you add one single back-off set of squats or deadlifts at 10%, 15%, even 20% lighter than their work sets on a given day? Or, if you had them complete their novice LP with twice weekly training due to their age, what if – since they’re now presumably much stronger and better conditioned – you actually added a third training day (like a TM light day), where they start out with 70% of their previous day’s training weights for just 1-2 sets?

It’ll be light, I know – but it’s more work than they were doing before. And with the understanding that 1) they’re more anabolically resistant, and 2) training volume is the primary driver of long-term adaptation, then the logical conclusion is that doing more work is your best bet at stimulating continued adaptation. This stands in contrast to the idea of grinding the hell out of three sets of near-3RM triples that takes 10 days to recover from, thereby reducing the amount of work they can effectively complete in the interim (which they perceive as being “volume sensitive”).

For example, over the past year I’ve used an approach like this with a gentleman in his mid-60s. He continues to train on a 3-day per week program, but through careful, gradual titration we’ve now worked him up to squatting 3 times per week (heavy/light/medium-style), benching and pressing twice per week each (heavy/medium), and deadlifting twice per week (heavy/light). He is recovering just fine, training weights are inching upwards, and his technique is dramatically improved with the increased practice. Once I pointed out to him what we had done, he said, quote: “You're absolutely right - I don't seem to be in the "volume sensitive, intensity dependent" crowd. I've been responding quite nicely to the additional volume and frequency.”

He is not a unique case, just another trainee who adapted to increasing doses of stress over time.

[Austin Baraki]

Do you use RPE with him?

Nope, I still prescribe his specific weights.

[George Christiansen]

For example, over the past year I’ve used an approach like this with a gentleman in his mid-60s. He continues to train on a 3-day per week program, but through careful, gradual titration we’ve now worked him up to squatting 3 times per week (heavy/light/medium-style), benching and pressing twice per week each (heavy/medium), and deadlifting twice per week (heavy/light). He is recovering just fine, training weights are inching upwards, and his technique is dramatically improved with the increased practice. Once I pointed out to him what we had done, he said, quote: “You're absolutely right - I don't seem to be in the "volume sensitive, intensity dependent" crowd. I've been responding quite nicely to the additional volume and frequency.”

He is not a unique case, just another trainee who adapted to increasing doses of stress over time.

I think a lot of the reason people wind up finding themselves volume or frequency "sensitive" is both because they just jump right to a program with a big jump in volume, rather than gradually increasing it or having doses that are too concentrated instead of spread across the week more evenly.

I'd also bet that a lot of folks are just doing a bunch of junk volume that amounts to more fatigue, but not any more stimuli towards adoption, by confusing the two.

[Charlie Davies]

I'd also bet that a lot of folks are just doing a bunch of junk volume that amounts to more fatigue, but not any more stimuli towards adoption, by confusing the two.

What's the difference between "junk volume" and "stimuli towards adaption"?

[George Christiansen]

What's the difference between "junk volume" and "stimuli towards adaption"?

Well junk volume could be a couple of things:

1-Volume in an intensity range that doesn't do much, or maybe anything at all, to actually increase strength.
2-Volume that is is in the right intensity range, but crosses over the threshold of providing more training effect and instead just taps into recovery.

I don't know what those actual numbers are, but my hunch is that for every volume phobe out there there is someone doing more to do more and all it is really getting them in terms of adaptions is the ability to do more, which could be useful, but isn't the same as getting stronger.

[George Christiansen]

Most of the potential negative outcomes here are mitigated with keeping RPE in a sensible range.

I agree and wasn't directing the comment to anyone in particular. I can see how you can drive down the intensity too much with too many reps and sets before you get to true work sets though. Not too hard to correct for though........but a bunch of folks will still do it on 'The Bridge' because people have an amazing ability to fuck up the LP....and that is even more straight forward.

I can just see how just like some people insist on trying to add weight like we're just doing math, there are almost certainly people just adding sets too. The adding weight thing kind of corrects itself..or at least proves it doesn't work just by trying it long enough, but I am guessing that you could keep adding sets and increasing work capacity, but do pretty much jack to work quality.

I have a guy I know that had the folks at his gym doing crazy squat volume daily where it seemed like the folks I knew gained some confidence about what they could handle and such, but their actual number didn't seem to go up any more, and probably less than a sensible progression would have done.