German Volume Training

This October is going to be absolutely terrifying with volume - it's time for GVT. Kind of thinking we go Rob Zombie for a month, or GWAR, it's been a long time since we hit a month of a one band! Feel like if we are going to go all in on terrifying set and rep schemes in the same month as Halloween, we should go for the music as well. 

Besides this month being terrifying, it's also a great opportunity to shred up/increase muscle for that Halloween costume you always wanted to wear but never could pull off. 

So what is GVT (German Volume Training)? It's a high-volume strategy we use annually to elicit hypertrophy, or muscle gain. Every 2 minutes we hit a set of 10 for 10 sets. So 100 total reps in 20 minutes. If you are not familiar with that volume for that time, that is a lot of density. Comparably we traditionally hit 6 to 10 sets in that same time period and traditionally a lot less reps. So this will be incredibly taxing from not just the volume, but the density as well. 

What does density really get us? In short, it creates metabolic stress. For instance, we produce a lot of hydrogen ions when we do more work (force x distance) in shorter periods of time. What this will lead to is the production of lactic acid, or the byproduct when we can convert glucose to ATP fast enough. This will lead to feeling fatigued during the set and workout. Metabolic stress really gets us a response from the endocrine system, hormones, that will ultimately equate to increasing muscular hypertrophy. Some consider this nonfunctional hypertrophy because it is more associated with a pump and not directly stressing a muscle fiber. However, research has been able to debunk that notion of not being as functional compared to mechanical damage. 

What does volume really get us? Different from density, it gets us mechanical damage. We are contracting, shortening and lengthening of the sarcomere or the contractile unit, when we perform a repetition. More reps will mean more contractions and this will lead to more mechanical damage of the muscle fiber. That mechanical damage will respond with a need to rebuild. Rebuilding tissue can come in the form of adding more connective tissue (laying more collagen) or adding more sarcomeres (adding contractile units). This is also hypertrophy, but some consider this functional from having more contractile tissue within the muscle cell. Both density and mechanical damage will lead to increased hypertrophy, just in a different manner. 

GVT is unique because it taps into both mechanical damage and metabolic stress. We compound this by using compound (pun intended) movements like heels elevated back squat, chin up and trap bar deadlift. These compound movements recruit more motor units and therefore more contractile tissue. This will lead to a larger systemic effect from simply the external load we can potentially use and therefore amplifying the effect from the density and volume. 

This will be a scary month. As we all know, fear is only in your mind. Instead of constantly thinking about how hard this will be and how sore you are going to become, think of Rob Zombie serenading you during your 10th set of trap bar deadlift. Instead of thinking of you being so sore that you are afraid to go up and down stairs after Practice 1, think of GWAR tapping into emotions you have not felt in decades. When all else fails just understand that halloween is coming and you can open your options tremendously costume-wise by just getting 16 workouts this month. You get all that with an amazing soundtrack that you can use as a personal montage scene you always wanted to be in. You’ll learn to adopt fear as your ally in you never ending pursuit of optimization.