For muscle groups like shoulders and arms, is it necessary to do a lot of sets on these, as compound movements like bench, chins, dips also hit them.
E.g in a week I hit 16 chest sets, wouldn't 16 sets for shoulders as well be overkill as a lotta chest exercises also hit them.
Same for triceps, with all the benching, dips, shoulder pressing, do I still need to do many isolation exercises.
@TM101 @Starski @phcitywarrior @Gully Bull @trap101
YT Dr. Mike Israetel & RP's thoughts on volume.
Short answer: Depends. How many is many?
Longer answer: Depends on what your goal is and what your max recoverable and min effective volume levels are. The longer you’ve been properly training, the more volume you’ll generally need.
1) Every lifter is *somewhat* different. For example, 16 working sets of chest a weak ain't shyt to me, I usually do more than that on just flat bench. Sixteen might be your magic number, or it might be less than ideal and you could be leaving gains on the table.
Most folks prolly need more than 1-2 working sets per muscle group and yet DC training has you do just that per session. (The sets are longer so the total TuT might be greater.)
2) Each lifter has a bare-minimum number they need to hit to grow and/or get stronger. That's their minimum effective volume. Any less and you get no gains.
3) On the other side of that spectrum you have max recoverable volume. It's the total amount of work you can do before you start overrunning, and eventually overtraining. Do more than your MaRV and you'll start to actually
lose gains.
4) Anything more than your ideal but less than your
max effective volume (the dose past which your gains are diminished) is junk volume.
Nothing wrong with doing 30 sets if 20 is ideal, as long as you can adequately recover, just know that extra
X number of sets isn't doing anything besides using up extra time and energy.
5) A compound exercise is generally inferior for targeting specific heads of a muscle for growth, especially if that muscle is not the primary mover in that exercise or if it's an especially weak point for you personally.
Heavy squats are probably better for getting bigger stronker quads but aren't ideal for hamstrings development, even though your hamstrings are involved in squatting.
6) If your goal is purely aesthetics, it's best to still devote a good amount of time to isolation exercises. If your goal is sport or strength specific, then no, your probably don't need to do “man“ of them unless you have a muscle group that is lagging behind.
7) Lastly, consider that all volume is not created equally [Exercise Selection]. Good form/appropriate RoM being equal, weighted chins will probably be better for lats, mid back, and biceps gainz than curls and pull-downs.
Ten sets of chins might have your lats grow while 10 sets of pulldowns only lets them maintain, because even though the number sets was the same, the exercise selection was not.
You'll have to experiment to find out what your individual tolerances are, to a certain degree.
-- Tails