Volume vs. Intensity: A Veteran Coach’s Final Take

Training to add muscle has become part of the revolving door of education that the rest of the fitness industry has fallen victim to. The industry can fall into trend-driven territory, similar to fashion or music. But in health and wellness, it’s important to acknowledge the multitude of ways there are to achieve an outcome that matches a goal.

Two approaches, high volume and low volume high intensity, currently dominate the conversation, and it’s worth understanding how they actually compare.

Key Takeaways

• Training volume refers to the total reps and sets you do, while training intensity refers to how heavy the weight is relative to your max and how close you train to failure, and most hypertrophy programs lean into one or the other.
  
  
• There’s a dose-response relationship between reps and growth, meaning you can build muscle with anywhere from 5 to 30 reps per set, as long as effort stays high.
  
  
• More volume doesn’t automatically mean more muscle growth, and more heavy sets aren’t superior either. Volume and intensity methods can build muscle mass effectively; the better choice depends on your joints, schedule, and what you’ll actually stick to.
  
  
• High volume training built legendary physiques for decades, and the recent shift toward heavy, low rep training doesn’t make it obsolete. It’s simply another proven route to great results.
  
  
• Whatever your approach is, track your workouts in detail to monitor volume, intensity, and progressive overload. Hevy allows you to log each session with all the details you need.

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The New Hypertrophy Trend: Heavy Weight, Low Reps

When size is the name of the game, there’s been a ‘trend’ that’s started to take over.

Until recently, we’ve known muscle growth training to be well fit for rep ranges between 8 and 12, with attention to classic progressive overload and typical loaded movement patterns. Methods that involve extending sets (like drop sets), fatiguing and exhausting muscles in isolation, and an increased work-to-rest ratio dominated the space.

Lately, however, it’s the opposite approach that has garnered the most traction on the internet.

This approach hinges on lower volume, maximized mechanical tension, and very heavy lifting in a generally low rep range (typically between 5 and 8). 

Because recent studies have suggested that muscle hypertrophy can be attained through a very broad range of reps – namely, anywhere from sets of 5 reps to sets of 30 reps – the focus shifted much more toward overloading the muscle with the heaviest possible weight for the given rep range, with a strength-oriented bias in a stable environment.

Although this is the more popular method of strength training dominating the web and social media, it’s worth fleshing things out thoroughly when comparing and contrasting both methods.

Where both approaches are concerned, what matters most is how far you push yourself and your muscles. The general aim should be for your last reps of a set to take you just shy of failure; one rep in reserve would be ideal, with the final set’s effort taking you to failure.

In this comparison, for clarity’s sake, we’ll call the higher rep work the “volume” method, and we’ll call the heavy weight, low rep, low volume method the “intensity” method.

Volume Method: The Good

We can start things off by establishing a very important realization: 50 years ago, lifters were building impossible physiques while mainly utilizing this general philosophy. You name the legendary bodybuilder, and I’ll show you a high volume, high lactate, very fatiguing training method they were known to use at the cornerstone of their weight training.

Vince Gironda had 8×8’s. Arnold and Ronnie had pyramid training. Tom Platz would squat 405 for 50 reps. Or do a 10-minute back squat with 225.

Each of their physiques spoke for themselves.

One thing this style of training can deliver, in addition to hypertrophy and muscle gain, is great conditioning. Each of these methods had something in common:

They spike your heart rate, for an extended period of time – both during and after a set. That can have an impact on your metabolic demand and help train your heart and lungs while at it.  I don’t see any drawback from training also helping with your athleticism from the inside out. 

It trains your muscular endurance at the same time, which has much more carryover to real-world scenarios involving feats of strength (think of the actual demands of helping somebody move out of their home).

Beyond this, it also finds a way to make lighter weight feel heavier based on the rep ranges being used, or the minimized rest periods requiring a lifter to adjust loading and temper expectations. If you’re a lifter who doesn’t have it in them to lift heavy, or even more commonly, a lifter with a history of joint injuries, this can act as a saving grace and a way to get bigger without having to lift bigger.

Volume Method: The Not-So-Good

To be blunt, ramping up the training volume and using lower weight isn’t quite efficient.

There are more total reps you’ll have completed by the end of the workout, and more total sets. When you repeat that approach with 1 or 2 more exercises, you’re looking at a longer workout duration (plus the possibility of junk volume).

Secondly, it’s simply an imprecise way to gauge your strength and maxes. You only have your internal monitor to gauge how hard you’re working and your proximity to failure. That may change from day to day. Since involved in the volume approach are techniques and methods that pair or group sets, extend sets, and generally emphasize the accumulation of fatigue, you never get a true idea of exactly how much you “can” lift, especially when fresh. 

In other words, you could be in a plateau (not really doing more over time) without knowing it, and struggling to see the visual improvements you want.

That’s why methods like GVT (10 sets, 10 reps, 60 second breaks), ladder set training method (the 2, 3, 5, 10 rep method), or Vince Gironda’s 8×8’s, recommend starting with weight around 60% of your true rep range max, to accommodate for the imminent fatigue.

This is where Hevy comes in handy. By logging every set and rep, you get an objective record of your working weights and volume over time, rather than relying on how a session “felt.”

Hevy – Workout Tracker

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Intensity Method: The Good

Compare the above approach to another successful bodybuilder known for the exact opposite: Mike Mentzer.

He believed in no more than two top sets where certain criteria were to be met:

• Each work set was at absolute maximal effort, with the heaviest weight possible for the low rep range of 5-8
• The lift was stable
• The movement was isolated

This makes for a time-efficient, extremely focused workout, but it’s one you’ve gotta be ready for. The workouts would usually be divided into muscle groups, like a chest day, a back day, a leg day, and so on – and they were called “heavy duty” for a reason.

Because most of the workouts would be performed on isolated machines or other systems that don’t make use of much compound lifting, the risk of lifting heavy weight is mitigated by the fact that most patterns are joint-friendly by comparison to their free weight counterparts.

Finally, you’ll have a great gauge on just how strong you actually are, since the workouts are also completed with ample rest periods of 2-3 minutes to ensure freshness for each of the heavy sets.

Intensity Method: The Not-So-Good

As mentioned, you’ve gotta be game for this.

Lifting heavy weights consistently, week in and week out is no simple task – physically or mentally. It goes without saying that diet and recovery are kept in high priority with any training program for results, but I’ll argue that it’s even more important when using this method to appropriately track and achieve progressive overload, and for the nervous system to be sharp enough for you to perform week after week.

If you’re a typical working-class adult, chances are, a method like this works best in theory and is the prettiest on paper. The actuality may tell a different tale, especially if your starting point isn’t a clean slate of health or a lifestyle completely concomitant with a serious lifting program. 

In my career, I’d be much more prone to put a 22-year-old size client who lives at home and works part-time on a program like this compared to a 40-year-old family man who works 50 hours weekly and has a history of shoulder and knee injuries.

So, High Volume/Low Intensity or Low Volume/High Intensity?

I’m going to address the elephant in the room.

There’s no study that will ever say what your body will respond best to. Research can only suggest options for you to explore. These are two. Everyone’s life story and physiological responses are different. And for a program to work, it has to accomplish a few things:

• Your body has to agree with the exercise choices and intensity levels
• You have to be able to sustain your efforts for the long haul
• You have to actually enjoy it

That third point? Huge.

Your mindset, optimism, and proactivity toward a workout or program has a correlation to how it’ll “take.” Even if it takes trial and error, find the structure that gives you the best feeling when you do it, and gives you the best results with the fewest drawbacks. Here is a training split example of each method for you to choose from:

Sample Program 1 – Volume (5-Day Body Part Split)

Save this workout to your Hevy app profile:

1. Open hevy.com and log in with your Hevy app credentials. Skip if you’re on your phone with Hevy installed.
2. Click this link and tap the blue Save Routine button.

(All workouts come with an automatic rest timer for each exercise.)

*Do the two exercises back-to-back with little to no rest and take the recommended rest time afterward.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Learn about other 5-day workout split options in our guide.

Sample Program 2 – High Intensity Training (5-Day Body Part Split)

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

*This rest period only applies to the working set. You can rest 30-90 seconds after the warm-up sets, enough to prepare your next set’s weight.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

Save this workout to your Hevy profile.

FAQs

1. Can you combine volume and intensity training in the same program?

Absolutely. You can have dedicated “strength” (high intensity) sessions and high-volume sessions (like in a PHUL split) or include both in each session. For example, start with heavy compound exercises and gradually decrease the weight and increase the rep ranges as you get to assistance and isolation exercises.

2. How do you know when to switch from one method to the other?

You can ebb and flow between volume and intensity, increasing one and decreasing the other when you feel like your training isn’t as productive anymore. For example, you get stuck in a plateau, you feel overtrained, workouts don’t excite you anymore, or your joints start to ache from constantly lifting heavy.

3. Should beginners start with volume or intensity training?

Volume is generally safer for beginners because it allows them to learn proper form with moderate weights they can control well. In contrast, lifting close to one’s 1RM and very close to failure can be more risky for inexperienced trainees who don’t know their limits and can’t gauge when their form starts to break down.

Two Methods, Two Philosophies, Same Gainz

Think about it like this:

Training with volume stimulates growth by accumulating work. Training with intensity stimulates growth by maximizing effort.

Each provides unique benefits, and it’s only polarizing to choose one as the be-all and end-all over the other. It all depends on your body and what best suits your needs. Both methods have been tried, tested, and proven true via the test of time, with plenty of awesome, well-developed bodies that speak to their efficacy.

The question it all comes down to for you is which of these you’ll put to the test first.

Download Hevy before you go. Log workouts with all the details, track your sets per muscle and individual lifts’ performance, enjoy automatic rest timers, and much more.

Hevy – Workout Tracker

Create and log your workouts with Hevy and track your progress. Join 16+ million athletes.

Create my workout

Hevy – Workout Tracker

Create and log your workout with Hevy and track your progress

Create my workout