Author: Riley Pearce
Director of Social Media
For athletes the off-season is a time to improve on what could have gone better during competition season, to build upon what went great, and to essentially rest, recover, and then prepare for the next season.
For weight-lifters and bodybuilders this is a key time to put on some serious size. Many studies have shown that working a major muscle group for 10 – 20+ sets per week is a great way to promote muscle gains – or hypertrophy. There is one protocol, proposed by coach Charles Poliquin, that takes this theory to an extreme level.
The protocol is known as german volume training, or GVT, and was developed to mirror the effort and volume observed in german training programs. The idea behind the protocol is to drive up the volume for specific muscle groups in order to supercharge your hypertrophy training sessions.
So how is it done?
Basic GVT (there is an advanced version) is a training program that has you doing 10 sets of 10 reps at 60% of your predicted 1 rep max. Some GVT programs will also have you do a set of antagonist muscle movement between sets of the main movement. This means that if you were doing chest, and therefore a dumbbell chest press for 10 x 10, between each set you would do a movement for back, like a reverse fly, or some kind of row.
This type of protocol seems like it has the right idea. If you kick the crap out of your muscles, you’ll promote major time under tension, major muscle breakdown, and should therefore give you the results you wanted.
For a long time after Charles Poliquin first proposed this style of training it became a bodybuilders holy grail. It feeds right into the intense personality that many elite athletes possess to push themselves to their absolute limit.
New research is coming out though that may challenge GVT’s effectiveness.
In a study published in 2018, they discovered that in the last 6 weeks of a 12 week GVT protocol that participants actually saw a slight decrease in lean muscle mass in their lower body. Between the 10 set protocol, and the 5 set protocol that it was being compared to, there were very little differences between the progress made between each group.
What this tells us is that if putting on size is the goal, GVT may not be the holy grail workout plan we once thought it to be. You’d be better off saving some time, increasing your intensity (% of 1 rep max), and cutting your sets in half.
There are a few other shortcomings of this program. Doing 10 sets of a single exercise can be very boring, and will quickly make this program one that you do not look forward to.
We all know that your diet during any training program can make or break that program. GVT is no exception to this. Most professionals and experienced GVT coaches would recommend a minimum addition of 500 kcals per day! For some of the more advanced powerlifters they are probably already eating upwards of 3500 – 4500 calories. So to add an additional 500kcals can be tricky.
Last, but certainly not least, this program is really reserved for experienced lifters. It is not that accessible to new trainees because at the beginning of your lifting career doing too much can be hard on the body, and could inhibit progress.
So should you saddling up for a 10 by 10 day of squats at your next gym session? You’re probably better off keeping your sets in the 4 – 6 set range and pushing for greater intensity if you want to put on muscle mass.
