German Volume Training

One of the most effective, and proven, ways to gain muscle mass quickly is to the use German Volume Training (GVT). As the name suggests the stimulus of the programme is based on doing really high volume of lifting.

The GVT has been advocated in the coaching and popular media as an effective training method to help athletes gain lean body mass and muscle size.

It is believed that German weightlifting coach Rolf Fesser developed GVT to assist his athletes who wanted to increase lean body mass.

GVT works by targetting a group of motor units, exposing them to an extensive volume of repeated efforts, specifically, 10 sets of a single exercise. The body adapts to the extraordinary stress by hypertrophying the targeted fibres.

The normal protocol call in this programme is to do 10 sets of 10 reps which straight away would indicate this is not for the novice/beginner trainer, only the advanced/experienced should undertake this regime, an it is nuerally very fatiguing.

You should try and begin with a weight you could normally lift for 20 reps to failure in need be. A rough rule of thumb would be 60 % of your 1 Rep Max (1 repetition of your heaviest lift for that particular exercise) for example if your best Squat is 100 Kg 60% of your 1 RM in the squat is 60 Kg.

I have experimented with this programme for 8 weeks in March of this year with some of the Long Term Injured (LTI’S) athletes and they packed on 4 - 6 Kg’s of lean muscle mass.

Let

me share with you my GVT experience.

I had often heard about the benefits of GVT, normally a sceptic to anything that claims to be brilliant and wonderful, I normally try out these claims before I become a believer.

Reading through the vast amount of literature in documents and on the net about GVT, it was telling me to train my athletes 3 days a week, monday, wednesday and friday. The reccomendations where, to do a lower body (squat/deadlift) on monday, a chest and arms on wednesday, back and shoulders on friday. You can mix match this sequence any way you want. Ie you may want to do chest and back on monday, legs on wednesday, arms and shoulders on friday

I am not a great lover of isolating body parts for any training regime, but for the purpose of this experiment I was prepared to bite the bullet.

I planned out my GVT training schedule and it took the format of below.

Monday 1)

Squat 10x10 @ 80Kg Superset with Push Press 10x10 @ 60Kg with 90 secs recovery

2)

Barbell Shrugs 5x10 @ 80Kg S/S with DB Push Ups 5x10 Bodyweight with 90 secs recovery

Wednesday 1)

DB Bench 10x10 @ 35 Kg DB’s S/S with Barbell Curls 10x10 @ 45Kg with 90 secs recovery

2)

Dips 5x10 S/S with Hammer Curls 5x10 with 90 secs recovery

Friday 1)

Rack Deadlifts 10x10 @ 130Kg S/S with DB Shoulder Press 10x10 @ 30Kg with 90 secs recovery

2)

Single Arm DB Row 5x10 @ 45Kg S/S with DB Lateral Raise 5x10 @ 10Kg with 90 secs recovery

So as you can see there is big volumes there, if you take the squats alone on monday 10 x 10 at 80 Kg is 8000 Kg you will squat in that part of the session. The other important factor to mention at this juncture is the beauty of GVT is it can be completed in under 30 minutes.

The ideal progression is to increase the weight of all the lifts by 5-10 kg per week or 4-5% of the previous weeks weight if the athlete is able to deal with the initial loadings.

My LTI’s undertook week one and right from the very 1st session they felt the intensity ratchet right up from a normal traditional lower body session. The fact that you where sticking to a 90 secs recovey time after effectively squatting 800 Kg ( 10 X 10 of 80 Kg) then 600 Kg (10 X 10 of 60 Kg) of Push Press meant they had exposed their body to 1400 Kg of loading in one hit, and they still had 9 hits to go!!!!!

After completing the first 3 sessions in week 1, the feedback was the players felt wee bit sore and stiff but mentally felt good, GVT becomes a real mental challenge where they approached all the sessions with the attitude, “Right today I am going to rack deadlift 10 sets of 10 at 120 Kg that’s 12000 Kg, plus with that I will be doing DB Shoulder Press at 10 sets of 10 at 30 KG that’s another 3 000 KG that’s a total of 15 000 Kg in 20 minutes!” that’s where they where getting their mental stimulation from!

By week 5 and 6 most players had gained put on 3.5-5 Kg, all from doing 3 X 30 minute sessions a week, the weight they where lifting had increased, but the cumulative fatigue was starting to kick in. The players found they where eating a lot more in this phase and sleeping really well, 8-9 hours a night. (the most anabolic thing you can do is eat and sleep !)

Into the last week and the players where really struggling, dreading the sessions, but determined to complete their targets, I was starting to realise that 8 weeks is too long on a regime like this, as their bodies screamed for something easier.

They completed their last deadlift session which had gone up to 140-150 Kg for 10 X 10, the squats had increased to at 130 KG for 10 X 10.

I weighed the LTI’s 2 days after their last GVT session and they had gained an average of 4.5 - 6 Kgs over the eight weeks and lost 2.6% - 4.3% body fat (the high intensity nature of GVT gives you a high aerobic hit ).

So with this data collected I was happy with the outcome, in summary GVT is brutally hard but it is an effective way to pack on muscle fast.