Not Growing? You Aren’t Training Enough

Name: Not Growing? You Aren’t Training Enough
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T16:00:00.000Z
Duration: 24 min 14 s
Channel: Renaissance Periodization

Renaissance PeriodizationMay 6, 202624m

Topics13

The Global Conspiracy and Volume Reality0:00 Training Volume and Best Gains0:30 Minimum Effective Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)2:00 Recovery and Strength as Indicators2:31 Historical Perspective and Research Evolution4:30 Research Findings on Higher Volumes6:02 Realistic Constraints on High Volume Training7:32 The Club of Sevens11:01 When the Club of Sevens Approach Has Wisdom13:00 When Higher Volumes Are Needed14:30 Why Minimalism Is Popular16:31 Three Recommendations for Increasing Volume19:01 Final Advice22:30

In a Nutshell

The core message is that most people aren't training enough volume to maximize muscle growth, and the "Club of Sevens" (5-10 sets of 5-10 reps, twice weekly per muscle) is too low for stubborn muscle groups. Research shows 30-50 sets per muscle per week often produces better hypertrophy than 5-20 sets, provided you stay under your maximum recoverable volume where strength still increases session-to-session. When low volume isn't working, increase frequency, use myo-reps, or add supersets rather than just adding more traditional sets.

AI-Generated Notes

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There is a global conspiracy amongst us. The best training to gain muscle is 5 to 10 sets of 5 to 10 reps done twice a week per muscle. Most people thrive on higher volumes than they think, but not everybody. The hypothesis is that you are either doing too much volume or not enough volume. Not enough is almost always the case. You might need to do some higher volumes especially to bring up lagging muscle groups because that's the answer for growth more times than it's not.

Are you training enough to make your best gains? If told that training only a little bit every week could give the best results, would you do it unquestioningly or be skeptical? The big glaring reason that you're not making your best gains, especially in muscle groups with which you are struggling the most, is because you're just not doing enough training. Too few sets per week is your problem.

Minimum effective volume is the smallest amount of work you can do, the smallest number of usually sets per week working sets of your exercises for any given muscle. The smallest number of sets per week that you can do and see the least detectable gains. It's the minimum amount of volume that gives you any kind of progress. Anything more than that is going to cause you dependable growth. That growth continues generally seemingly to increase until you hit a very high point of number of weekly sets. That high point is called your MRV, your maximum recoverable volume.

Maximum recoverable volume means you are beating your body up so much that it cannot recover any volume beyond that. So, 30 sets a week for biceps is your maximum recoverable volume, 32 sets per week is a fast ticket to overreaching and eventually overtraining and is not going to dependably and reliably produce growth for you.

The big insight is between these two values. So long as you can still recover, which means your strength goes up a little bit from session to session to session. That's how we define recovery, a return to past performance. If you're at least as strong as you were and ideally just a little bit stronger, then the more volume you do and still preserve that relationship of getting a little bit stronger every time, usually the more muscle growth gains you will experience.

If you're doing 10 sets per week for your quads and you're still increasing strength a little bit each session, probably 12 sets per week of quads will grow you more muscle. If you're starting to do 12 sets per week instead of 10 and you're still making little bitty gains, probably 14 sets per week will grow you more muscle.

It is not the fastest way to make you stronger because the fatigue comes up and it interferes with the expression of strength. So, in the short term before you take a deload, it won't help your strength do more volume past much lower point. But for muscle growth, as long as you're demonstrating that you're under your MRV and demonstrating this by making a being able to gain a little bit of strength between sessions, even just 2 and 1/2 lb on the bar or one extra rep, that means your volume you're doing is absolutely causing you growth, and probably you could have more growth if you did a little bit of volume and were still able to perform.

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Not Growing? You Aren’t Training Enough

The Global Conspiracy and Volume Reality00:00

Training Volume and Best Gains00:30

Minimum Effective Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)02:00

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