The next book is finally OUT!!! Really proud of how it turned out. It has completely new information, as I've learned quite a bit about training since the first one. It's focused on improving your hypertrophy-training process and breaking plateaus. It includes an almost SEVEN HOUR audiobook, which I decided to record myself rather than outsourcing. Feedback has been excellent so far. I don't do sponsored videos or have ads on the channel, so I really appreciate the support. I really is YOU who keeps the channel going! Can grab a copy below if it sounds like something you'd be interested in! www.verityfit.com/product-page/resurrecting-your-gains-finding-your-muscle-growth-formula
Hi Geoff are you familiar with this new minimalist type of training trend going ? I heard from a number of people the benefits of 15-20 minute workouts but do you think you get what you put into a workout will be the results ?
Genius concept & useful archetypes, I will definitely be making a response ASAP as these can be so useful for people who want to sync in their programs to their needs
Part of it was inspired by this thread actually! www.reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuilding/comments/znu5v0/training_styles_of_geoffrey_verity_schofield_and/
It's worth mentioning that you can be in both categories for DIFFERENT body parts. I can grow my back, quads and arms with minimal volume. My shoulders and chest need way more.
Really good point. For me my hams are smashed after a couple sets of leg curls and a top set of Stiff leg D/L with one back off set. I notice for myself that some body parts almost never get sore where as others are extremely sore from less exercises and overall emphasis on improving those parts. My arms, chest and shoulders feel as if they need more volume but could just be weaker genetic points. Also the fact that you can train some muscles better in the lengthened position which seems to accumulate more fatigue. I’ve seen better gains over the years from 2 working sets for the majority of exercises. I think with certain compounds we develop imbalances that prevent us from progressing certain body parts as effectively. Ie over powering triceps for pressing movements. This might make us think we need more volume but may in fact need to address our form or swap exercises - many people struggle to connect properly to their chest in my opinion. In the absence of proper form the racehorse vs workhorse debate seems fairly irrelevant.
Just what I was thinking, obviously depending on muscle fibre types and muscle ''training age'' a person can have different 'horses'' or even ''donkeys'' throughout their body. :)
Yeah fr My upper needs so so much work (around 2 hours) to progress in size and strength. Yet my lower!? I've just been doing half repped squats (for athleticism) and I'm still consistently going up for year now
I slighty reduced my volume per muscle per session, and it's working great for me. I've always trained to failure, but I've noticed that by reducing the volume I can push intensity even more.
Same here. I've been doing around 10 to 12/13 sets per muscle per week, instead of 20+ previously (wich i was doing for years). Before i had to take frequent deloads and i was always feeling sore. Now (for some 6 months now) i am growing and progressing like never before.
Realising I was a race horse made me a lot more reluctant to give lifting advice because I couldn't relate my experiences to others. I would often give bad advice because it worked for me.
i had never thought about this when i started lifting and it is something that shocked me when i realized it, but i'm such a racehorse. (great way to describe it). i always assumed that more volume would be beneficial but i realized that i need to focus on the quality of my individual reps and sets as well as my recovery much more than the overall weekly volume. so many people tell me i'm wrong but i made negligible gains training like a workhorse for 2 years then switched up my perspective and gained upwards of 20 pounds of muscle this year along w a significant amount of strength.
That's awesome! More often I see it the other way, but I've certainly heard similar stories before. Highlights the importance of experimentation for sure.
How many sets with what intensity did you change from and to?(How much did you decrease the volume?) And did you feel very sore when doing the high volume? I suspect i might be a racehorse, but even with high volume, high intensity workouts, i dont get sore.
I think you’re also a workhorse in terms of RUclips. Super consistent, authentic, and highly relatable for many. You’re making a genuine difference 👍🏼.
I really like the style of your videos. They feel a lot more personal and relatable than any other fitness influencers. Thanks for all of your content.
Back in school I was a donkey in terms of running and endurance. Then I discovered the gym, which I realised I'm a racehorse. Over time I got better and better at cardio, now I'm not only a gym racehorse, but a cardio racehorse. Stronger muscles for me lead to improved anaerobic and aerobic work
I’m glad you also mentioned that this can shift archetypes across someone’s training, I find that often as the absolute load on every exercise goes up people tend to become more workhorse. I certainly have seen this shift pretty hard across the last 10 years of my training, it used to be that my training volume was very high and that’s what was needed to move forward on a week to week basis and it was perfectly sustainable to recover from. As my sets of 10 have gone from 135 to 225 to 315 to 405 that effective range of volume (assuming we are tracking number of work sets) has come down a huge ways! Also strongly agree with your note that most self identified donkeys are just in really bad shape and improving work capacity usually shifts then into workhorses
You might mean racehorse instead of workhorse. Also on another note, the way that you have structured this comment, I can hear your voice and inflections perfectly in my head while reading it, your voice seems really easy to deepfake haha.
This is damn cool. I always went towards the more workhorse style of training but I decided to try the more HIT approach when I started bulking about 6 months back. Making the best gains and recovery is top notch. Funnily enough I come from a sprinting and long jump background.
This video is the best treatment of this subject that I’ve ever heard. I love the way you contextualized it using the four different images. Turns out that I am a ‘race horse’ that’s been trying to act like a ‘workhorse’ for years because all I ever hear is volume, volume, volume. It’s high time I get real about how reactive I really am to the weights and act accordingly. Thank You!
I spent a lot of my lifting career thinking I was a race horse archetype because I was always good and sprinting and jumping and bad at endurance. Maybe I was just out of shape, because I can handle a lot of volume and need it to grow. Turns out I wasted a lot of years doing low volume training that did very little to grow my body. I should have known better, the best routine I ever did as a young lifter was Jay Cutler's 3x8-12 on a large number of exercises that I got from a bodybuilding mag in the early 00s. Currently trying to balance strength and size goals, using EvolveAI training app. If you know anything about it, it's supposed to be heavily "borrowed" from Juggernaut which uses a lot of sets of 10 (like 5x10 up to 7-8x10 depending on the phase), and it's right up my alley. I showed it to a minimalist powerlifter friend of mine and he about had a heart attack at the volume (he might just be an overly minimalist lifter though, not a race horse).
Just the first 3 minutes have been so useful for me. Thank you for this video. I wondered why working out the whole body one or two days can wipe me out the rest of the week... I must be a racehorse (and I am progressing).
Workhorse here, I had wondered why I had no trouble doing whole body a couple times a week but trying to do short sessions spread across the week left me feeling unfulfilled.
Bro I have been doing full body 2x a week inspired by alphadestiny and as soon as I dropped the volume I grew so much. I have achieved 90kg bench 6 months into training and the last 20 kg I put came in a month after dropping the volume to half. I'm probably a racehorse considering 4 sets of squats can get my legs sore for 4 days and your video enlightened me to improve my programing even more thank you so much❤
I'm very much a race horse as well. I'd say natural hypertrophy is probably on that end too, which is why he loves supersets. I utilize supersets and bro, I fuckin love them man. Half an hour of training just hitting like a set every 2 minutes and then walking off with barely any feeling in whatever body parts I was working? That's the shit man. I can't do workhorse, it's either all gas or I'm on cruise control.
I thought this was gonna be some silly "which color power ranger are you" typa clickbait but was pleasantly surprised. This is a really good, memorable, way of thinking about this. GVS keepin' it real and to the point as always.
Just analyzing the difference in styles n how each person responds completely different, I can’t help it n be fascinated with the human body. That’s what got me to bodybuilding
There is also the mule. Almost 40s, doing our best, don’t complain, can take a lot of work and gets good results. Things are not as impressive as they used to be, but we love working hard and keeping our heads down ;)
this actually explains a lot. My friend often makes the similar gains to me when I do way more sets than him on bench, but for him the idea of doing 12 sets is crazy whereas for me i usually don't feel very tired at all after any given bench set, even if i'm pushing very close to or to failure.
Excellent video! I found that there are differences like this between people, but also between individual muscle groups. My chest, hamstrings and calves get outoutrageously sore from 6-8 hard sets per week but my biceps, side and rear delts can be tortured for hours on end and feel completely fine the next day.
Honestly a really great video with solid information. I always wondered why I could deadlift heavy weights and be fine the next day (1RM), but when I go to do RDL's with 50lbs at 3x10 I'll be extremely sore. And that will be all I need to actually grow. My workout plans are extremely simple and yet are extremely effective for me.
The endurance background is so true. I have a friend who has amazing power in kickboxing, but a lot less endurance than me. He rarely lifts but when he does he puts up numbers that any novice would be jealous of. I'm a workhorse, he's a freaking unicorn, if only he would lift more often
Great video - another factor I always consider is how much digestive stress / capacity can you handle consistently vs training output. If you can't eat enough to support higher volume / frequency without negatively impacting your health, you need to find your compromise / balance that still produces gains and you can sustain. Quality volume is a huge factor for me.
There is also the possibility that one is comprised of various spliced equine species, in my case for example I appear to have a mixture of responses to training for different muscle groups, like hamstrings, triceps and calves get sore for a week by merely glancing at a barbell whereas quads and most of my upper body requires significantly more volume and recovers much quicker despite training closer to failure. It could be due to differences in training approach, relative loading or development level etc. between these muscle groups but the difference is so stark that I wonder if I'm just a crossbreed.
I forgot to touch on that but yea it's very possible. Each area is going to be a bit different. There are systemic attributes that mean there will still be some correlation between muscle groups but it's certainly possible to have different training requirements for different areas.
Completely agree. My entire lower body seems to respond well to lower volume, but higher intensity. Conversely, my upper body needs a ton of volume to grow. This is interesting to me since I have a background in distance running and got great times at a young age.
I get this also, I think everyone does to some degree after training a good while we start to realise it when we learn more about our own individual muscle groups and their requirements through trial and error over time. I can pretty much hammer my shoulders every other day with high volume and heavy load (if I wanted) and they'll recover just fine where as my back will often require more than a week to recover even at low volume .
Geoff I can't wait to start watching you in 2023, its my last year as an intermediate. Near the end of the year I'll start doing deadlifts in the late 400s, 230 lb bent-over rows etc. 0:44 Kinda ironic I see you doing rows with 220 lbs total weight. You know what advanced lifter stuff feels like
This confused me at first 😆Because racehorses (English thoroughbreds, standardbreds, especially Arabians) can run quite long distances and therefore do more volume, where as workhorses (draft horses) actually have the more of the explosive type of strength (they can pull very heavy things but aren’t that great for endurance). For non-horsey people the analogy makes a lot of sense though. I also think you can be a workhorse for certain muscles/muscle groups and a racehorse for others. Great video again 👍
Saw your answer on Quora and was impressed with your self-awareness, especially when it came to BF. Checked out the youtube and was not disappointed, sensible analysis - subscribed.
Glad I subscribed to this channel, I think the content is great but the way he gets concepts across is really interesting. Especially being in the gym this long, I know this to be the truth.
I'm more of a workhorse when it comes to my upper body muscle groups but more of a racehorse when it comes to my legs and core. Because of this I typically do more upper body work per week.
That's like a super interesting concept. I'm a coach myself for many years and even tho I have definitely observed the phenomenon I haven't been able to put it down and analyse it the way u did here plus theres not much stuff in the literature realated to this(maybe only through stimulus to fatigue ratio) so it easily gets forgotten. Amazing job!
..this might be one of your best videos, geoff, just simply because of how insanely easy it is to understand, even for the layest of laypersons, while still being relevant to fairly advanced lifters, maybe even more so. Love it, keep up the superb education!
Thanks for the video Geoff. In my fitness career i struggled a bit with lowering my volume while advancing, because i learned how to train to failure. Everyone was telling me that i needed more volume because i got better, but the opposite was the case and now i can understand better why that was the case. Keep going!
I used to be somewhere in the middle of work and race horse. Had to completely switch up my diet(carnivore) and sleeping routine, now a lot closer to the race horse. Life is good. Your videos are great.
Just thought of an idea and thought it would be really cool if you could cover it in a video, Regular vs Deficit movements, in all kinds of categories, ex: Deadlifts, Rows, Pushups, split squats, hip thrust and anything else you could think of. Think about it!
I feel like this is so individual and can also heavily depend on programming. Personally the longer I workout I always find ways to improve my stimulus to fatigue ratio through form tweaks and better exercise selection so I think this is something that can actually improve over time. How to get more out of less weight kind of thing which I think is smart for bodybuilders to learn. Also wondering how many sets per week for a given muscle would constitute being a "workhorse" or a "racehorse"? Would be nice to get into some specifics.
I went from having a 350 lb total to a 925 pound total over the course of this year. I had previously been a distance runner throughout middle school and the first two years of high school, but started lifting when I decided to try the throwing events on a whim, started at 135lbs and now at 165lbs almost a year later. I’ve realized that my lower body is most definitely the racehorse archetype, I can improve my strength and size with relatively low volume. But my upper body is more “workhorsey ”. Although, this could be caused by the strength disparity between my lifts 340 squat, 205 bench, and 380 deadlift. Since my upper body is proportionally weaker it may require more volume since there’s less systemic stress and absolute load. I’ve also wondered if my running background gave me disproportionately developed legs and a lagging upper body. Either way, would be interesting to hear if other people are in one camp for a certain body part and another camp for a different part.
I legit made this EXACT comment, as I'm the same way. Legs grow EASILY, but fatigue easily, yet upper body growth is much harder, but they recover much easier as well. It took me forever to get my bench above 225, but it was EASY for me to squat and deadlift over 300.
I feel like I'm blessed with mild unicorny-ish traits, I remember when I started just exercising in general and was doing like 10 pull ups from time to time, after having done that for 2 months, I started getting compliments on my biceps almost instantly from family members even though I never even mentioned exercising to them
Now I'm realizing why I strongly prefer doing multi-hour whole body routines a couple times a week and hated trying to do multiple one hour sessions spread across the week. I always felt like I was just finally getting into the groove after the first 30 minutes, like I need time to build up momentum.
I noticed that I recover really fast with my upper back. I did Wide Grip Pullups, trap bias weighted Inverted Rows and dumbbell rows for cluster sets beyond failure. A day later my back was not that sore at all.
Being a unicorn does not equate directly to seeing results. Knowledge is way more important than you're genetics, which is why I'm on RUclips watching your videos (I'm a unicorn)! We're all on our own journey, and I believe we should strive to maximize our potential regardless of our starting point. 'Good genetics' are great to have, but they're overrated compared to discipline, ambition and knowledge about nutrition, lifting technique and so on. I don't think anyone walks into a gym and gets big/strong just like that or by accident, they just get bored or injured more likely. Sure you could probably do fine with a generic program and no 'real' effort, but why not reach higher? If you do indeed have the potential and of course the time to put in the effort. Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. Great video as always Geoffrey! You're one of the few authentic natty RUclipsrs and I love your content!
A very interesting topic. I'm one of the racehorses myself, I'm not world class, but I have the same characteristics. I've been training for 40 years now, and every workout makes my muscles ache. I mainly train a muscle group only once a week because it takes time to recover, I train hard, but little in quantity. I have to be really careful not to overload myself, especially when I'm 53 years old. If I do a set to failure and maybe do a drop set, one set per movement is fine for me.
I am very much a racehorse. Early on in my lifting, I found myself constantly getting injured from overworking. And then, I realized that during the recovery process of those injuries (I still lifted with half the volume), I was stronger than I was before the injury. I realized that low volume/high frequency is the way to go for me, and I never looked back
@@GVS niceeee, I also have a burning question: Do you think it is absolutely necessary to train your back as much as your chest? Would it be a problem if I do 1 or 2 sets more for my back than my chest, in terms of ruining my posture and causing injuries? Thanks and congrats on 100k
@@cglnarcissist5700 it will not cause injury or bad posture at all, and there's no correlation im volume between chest and back. Train your back (or any muscle) according to your goals, recovery, work capacity, enjoyment.
@@cglnarcissist5700 what suboptimalgains said, they don't have to have a specific ratio. back might be higher but only if that's what is needed for you.
this is one of the things that the Stronger by Science podcast has definitely done some great coverage about: the fact that the research on volume/intensity/hypertrophy relationships produces averages, but the actual data show that different people respond very differently to the same amounts of volume/intensity. which is also why guys like mike israetel make don't give specific volume recommendations, instead giving instructions for how to figure out your own MEV/MRV by continuous experimentation, so one person's program should probably look a little bit (or a lot) different from someone else's program, even during the beginner stages
Not sure if you said any of this but I’m more of a racehorse and I’ve noticed that correlates with more fast Twitch muscle fibers on average. They tire faster and also my recovery between sets has to be at least 3+ minutes because I get so fatigued off of just one set to failure. I’ve been tested genetically for the double actN3 fast Twitch gene so I’m pretty sure it correlates with the race horse analogy. Great video I really liked it, keep it up!
I like this topic. With weights, bag work, mitt work, sparring i can go all day. Increasing weight but still have to get high volume to feel anything. With that said i can sprint like a fart in the wind but can't run long distances to save my life. Genetics are something we'll never truly understand.
i think there has to be more to it than this - from what i understood from this video, this implies that muscle is built differently from person to person. imo that can't be true. what he says about starting as a racehorse then progressing to a workhorse - to me that just seems like you're progressively overloading total tension stimulus over time and more is needed as you get more advanced. so what is actually happening is that as a beginner you don't need much, so do enough to get growth, then when that's not enough, do more - eventually you'll be advanced and doing quite a bit. even advanced guys who are still doing low volume are still doing more total tension stimulus than when they were beginners. to me that's what makes this work - not that we have an underlying archetype that we're predestined to be
For me I have one PR day per week and the rest "practice" days of the moves lighter weights. The practice days will ramp up from 2-4 depending on how good I'm feel that week. When the PR days hit a plateaus after 3-4 weeks then I change the PR exercises and repeat. This has worked for me the best
oh hell yeah... for a hecking looooonggggg time I've been struggling with increasing my volume / work capacity. Volume seems to be one of the biggest factor determining hypertrophy (it still is IMO). Did a program with medium intensity for around 3+ months and it was hell throughout that period, it was weird because everyone else around me made a phenomenal gain with the program I was following but I was feeling overtraining all throughout. I did make good gain, the gain i made was during the resting period after that program. And made steady gain after i switch to low volume, high intensity program. I do believe after certain threshold, i do need to increase the volume a bit to continuously make gains but just wanna say that low volume high intensity do more for me in term of hypertrophy. My built is far more suitable to be a sprinter and jumper (long jump and high jump in high school), more of the explosive kind of built, as you've said, a racehorse indeed..
I'm sure there's genetic predisposition to be more inclined to being a work horse or a race horse, but as someone who used to be able to do 300 burpees in a row and now gets tired doing 20 burpees in a row, above all, one gets accostumed to the type of training one does. You plow what you sow
Will watch in bit. Right now I'm watching a really toxic yugioh deck player shred people in an unbanned card style tournament. My god is it so good😹 Free algo boost from me, happy holidays Geoff🎉🎊🥰
Great content! Deff a mixture but more workhorse but its kinda changed on some body part as ive hit 40’s and having a physical job plays a big part in it . Imo
I think I’m the unicorn because I’ve tried it all different ways and it all works. It even seemed at one point like the elliptical trainer was growing my legs
This is quite an interesting topic, great analogy! I do have a question though: Would it be possible for each muscle group to differ on the same person? Example: My upper legs (Hams, Quads, Glutes & Hips) seem to be racehorses, they're VERY sensitive to stimulus but also VERY sensitive to fatigue. It's not uncommon for moderately heavy leg training to sideline me for a week, yet they grow SO EASILY. Yet my upper body isn't as sensitive to fatigue, recovers fairly quickly, but doesn't grow as quickly either. It's not uncommon for me to hit upper body 2-3x a week, because it just recovers that rapidly. Calves however, unsurprisingly, are absolute donkeys 😭😭😭.
I definitely am on the side where I really have to focus on managing fatigue... doesn't take that much to take me out. But I don't really gain that easily, either. 😂 am finding the right balance is to just do a heap of sets (like 40 per week per muscle group) with very low RPE rather than do the HIT method and hit few sets with high RPE.
I’ve been a work horse in the past. It worked well. Until it didn’t. Been a race horse the last year or so and gains have returned. Ultimate race horse. Jeff Alberts. Ultimate work horse. GvS. At 53 I think I’ll follow the Jeff Alberts low volume approach seeing it’s working. That said I’m doing a stint of high frequency training over the holiday period and loving it. Your comments about phasing both is good but you can definitely transition from one to the other over time.
This is also like a very broad outline, it's all on a spectrum. I'd say the biggest thing to take from this is the simple statement "if you are progressing with what your doing, keep doing that." It's not like you'd be progressing 3x faster doing another method. I'd also say this is why while PTs are very good at a certain point you gotta go it on your own for a bit. Make your own mistakes, learn about your own body. Try everything, if your in it for the long haul then a few months of not 100% perfect optimisation isn't going to hurt you.
Absolute truth about donkeys and low activity. I have a low activity life(working at PC), and I do trainings, and lately running 1km after the training to balance it out. I'm not obese/overweight but after I started running I started recovering much faster between the workout sets and I can do bigger volume with less fatigue. It's actually amazing how much of a difference running makes: if before I had to rest for 8-10 minutes between 2 sets of pull ups(first set until failure, as in I can't do the 13th pull up even if you poke me with a hot fire iron), after I started running I can recover in 4-6 minutes now.
In my case, i can't handle so much volume. I always go to failure every single set, except things like squats and deadlifts. And i tried to stay in the 3x a week stimuli frequency, but it crushed me so much, and i started not being able to progress and plateaud. I scaled down to 2x a week, and the training started to work again. Total weight and reps started to rise again, and muscle eventually started to grow again. But still, time from time i get back a little bit on higher volume/frequency, just to get crushed again and make sure its not for me lol. Also, i happen to have kind of a struggle in "resistence exercises" like running. Its funny that me and my sister (she also trains for some years now), have more or less the same volume thereshold. She built some very thicc ass and legs doing less than doing more. We both are more like a meso/endomorph cross type of body, just to put It in perspective. I never thought about this types of diferences between "Racehorse" or "work horse", but It makes Sense.
I realize I'm a donkey after watching this video, and probably need to do some more cardio. Haven't had a very active childhood, struggling with fatigue and putting on strength and size. Good wake up call!
You become a lot more resistant to fatigue over time, the first time I was doing high volume pull up sets to failure that made me sore for like a week, but now I'm just al little sore for one or two days from pull up sets to failure
I’ve found that I’ve changed over time in terms of my archetype. I used to be much more of a work horse when I was using lighter loads and the same rep ranges as a less advanced trainee but as I’ve gotten stronger I find myself being totally beat after less sets than I’ve previously seen as a normal amount of training. For back and chest it used to be 9-12 sets minimum per workout and now I find myself doing 6 way more often simply because my fatigue builds up way quicker with my developed strength
I think a "change of paradigm" of this kind is very needed in the fitness world because until now there was always this deterministic approach where; mesomorph=lucky, enjoy the gains; endomorph= focus on diet and then enjoy the gains; ectomorph= youre fucked :), go cry or take steroids. This new approach atleast provides some drive to people who has trouble seeing gains with their current training plan whereas with the mainstream pov everything tends to be because of genetics and theres not much one can do against that. Regardless of it is completely true or not I think people rllly need to hear more things like this.
With this in mind i woukd say that ive benefitted alot from racehorse type training recently and workhorse training in the past. However, ive npticed that by mixing and matching certain types of training to certain musclegroups i am able to better progress overall. Arms and calves recover fast -> workhorse. Upper and legs recovers slower ->racehorse. Thats what has been working for me so far, i think. Im only about 8 months into serious lifting for a better physique and strength so i could be wrong about alot of things.
I am 100% a workhorse. Everyone I lift with complains about my volume and intensity. I tried low volume with high intensity, it doesn't work for me. Now that I do higher volume with 1rir-failure and I am getting gains like never before and getting stronger than ever. It feels like newbie gains all over again.
@@bobjohnson1633 What does it mean to work hard then? Increase volume? My volume is already pretty damn high, if it was higher I don’t think I could complete a full workout.
"Workhorse" from day 1, having been lifting hard and consistently for 6 months now. Been seeing fantastic results, a lot to do with beginner gains, but it's also more satisfying in the long run. I feel elated for the entire day after a workout from just emptying the tank completely.
The next book is finally OUT!!!
Really proud of how it turned out. It has completely new information, as I've learned quite a bit about training since the first one. It's focused on improving your hypertrophy-training process and breaking plateaus. It includes an almost SEVEN HOUR audiobook, which I decided to record myself rather than outsourcing.
Feedback has been excellent so far. I don't do sponsored videos or have ads on the channel, so I really appreciate the support. I really is YOU who keeps the channel going!
Can grab a copy below if it sounds like something you'd be interested in!
www.verityfit.com/product-page/resurrecting-your-gains-finding-your-muscle-growth-formula
Geoff, I watch all of your videos, please don't put background music, it's so distracting.🤣
@@LegsON thanks for the feedback, I probably won't use it again as a few other people have also said that!
@@GVS I don't think it was super distracting. Just noticed barely in the background. I think it was cool.
Hi Geoff are you familiar with this new minimalist type of training trend going ? I heard from a number of people the benefits of 15-20 minute workouts but do you think you get what you put into a workout will be the results ?
I started making videos. What do you think about the ones I made? Any tips or advice would be welcome.
Genius concept & useful archetypes, I will definitely be making a response ASAP as these can be so useful for people who want to sync in their programs to their needs
Part of it was inspired by this thread actually!
www.reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuilding/comments/znu5v0/training_styles_of_geoffrey_verity_schofield_and/
Geoffrey Verity Schofield, A thoroughbred racehorse ego but Shetland pony performance.
@@hercules4999 Buuuuurn. Now post physique
I started making videos. What do you think about the ones I made? Any tips or advice would be welcome.
@@hercules4999 the silence is deafening
It's worth mentioning that you can be in both categories for DIFFERENT body parts.
I can grow my back, quads and arms with minimal volume. My shoulders and chest need way more.
Really good point. For me my hams are smashed after a couple sets of leg curls and a top set of Stiff leg D/L with one back off set. I notice for myself that some body parts almost never get sore where as others are extremely sore from less exercises and overall emphasis on improving those parts. My arms, chest and shoulders feel as if they need more volume but could just be weaker genetic points. Also the fact that you can train some muscles better in the lengthened position which seems to accumulate more fatigue. I’ve seen better gains over the years from 2 working sets for the majority of exercises. I think with certain compounds we develop imbalances that prevent us from progressing certain body parts as effectively. Ie over powering triceps for pressing movements. This might make us think we need more volume but may in fact need to address our form or swap exercises - many people struggle to connect properly to their chest in my opinion. In the absence of proper form the racehorse vs workhorse debate seems fairly irrelevant.
Just what I was thinking, obviously depending on muscle fibre types and muscle ''training age'' a person can have different 'horses'' or even ''donkeys'' throughout their body. :)
I'm donkey in triceps and chest
Yeah fr
My upper needs so so much work (around 2 hours) to progress in size and strength.
Yet my lower!? I've just been doing half repped squats (for athleticism) and I'm still consistently going up for year now
I came looking if anyone had mentioned this. And yup here it is,
I slighty reduced my volume per muscle per session, and it's working great for me. I've always trained to failure, but I've noticed that by reducing the volume I can push intensity even more.
Same here. I've been doing around 10 to 12/13 sets per muscle per week, instead of 20+ previously (wich i was doing for years). Before i had to take frequent deloads and i was always feeling sore. Now (for some 6 months now) i am growing and progressing like never before.
@@redpillforrealbrasil1405 same
Same here, lowering the volume and upping the frequency feels more fun
Geoffrey brought the ultimate gift... the gift of gains. Thanks swol santa
Realising I was a race horse made me a lot more reluctant to give lifting advice because I couldn't relate my experiences to others. I would often give bad advice because it worked for me.
Same. I'm like 'Do I really wanna tell this person to do two sets of hamstrings once every 4 days?'
Absolutely superb analogy Geoffrey, your way of communicating your ideas is awesome.
One good rimming deserves another eh Faz? Vomitous as usual
i had never thought about this when i started lifting and it is something that shocked me when i realized it, but i'm such a racehorse. (great way to describe it). i always assumed that more volume would be beneficial but i realized that i need to focus on the quality of my individual reps and sets as well as my recovery much more than the overall weekly volume. so many people tell me i'm wrong but i made negligible gains training like a workhorse for 2 years then switched up my perspective and gained upwards of 20 pounds of muscle this year along w a significant amount of strength.
That's awesome! More often I see it the other way, but I've certainly heard similar stories before. Highlights the importance of experimentation for sure.
Train like a workhorse like me and you'll get thick. My legs put most horses to shame.
How many sets with what intensity did you change from and to?(How much did you decrease the volume?) And did you feel very sore when doing the high volume? I suspect i might be a racehorse, but even with high volume, high intensity workouts, i dont get sore.
I think you’re also a workhorse in terms of RUclips. Super consistent, authentic, and highly relatable for many. You’re making a genuine difference 👍🏼.
I really like the style of your videos. They feel a lot more personal and relatable than any other fitness influencers. Thanks for all of your content.
Back in school I was a donkey in terms of running and endurance. Then I discovered the gym, which I realised I'm a racehorse. Over time I got better and better at cardio, now I'm not only a gym racehorse, but a cardio racehorse. Stronger muscles for me lead to improved anaerobic and aerobic work
I’m glad you also mentioned that this can shift archetypes across someone’s training, I find that often as the absolute load on every exercise goes up people tend to become more workhorse. I certainly have seen this shift pretty hard across the last 10 years of my training, it used to be that my training volume was very high and that’s what was needed to move forward on a week to week basis and it was perfectly sustainable to recover from. As my sets of 10 have gone from 135 to 225 to 315 to 405 that effective range of volume (assuming we are tracking number of work sets) has come down a huge ways! Also strongly agree with your note that most self identified donkeys are just in really bad shape and improving work capacity usually shifts then into workhorses
You might mean racehorse instead of workhorse. Also on another note, the way that you have structured this comment, I can hear your voice and inflections perfectly in my head while reading it, your voice seems really easy to deepfake haha.
This is damn cool. I always went towards the more workhorse style of training but I decided to try the more HIT approach when I started bulking about 6 months back. Making the best gains and recovery is top notch. Funnily enough I come from a sprinting and long jump background.
There ya go :)
This video is the best treatment of this subject that I’ve ever heard. I love the way you contextualized it using the four different images. Turns out that I am a ‘race horse’ that’s been trying to act like a ‘workhorse’ for years because all I ever hear is volume, volume, volume. It’s high time I get real about how reactive I really am to the weights and act accordingly. Thank You!
This is the dimension that's missing from Mike Mentzers training philosophy, most people need to do more.
It's what the acolytes don't understand, people are different and not everyone will benefit from higher intensity instead of volume.
MM was probably fast twitch predominant
This gives a whole new meaning to being called a 'stud'. Anyway great video new perspective gained keep it up.
I spent a lot of my lifting career thinking I was a race horse archetype because I was always good and sprinting and jumping and bad at endurance. Maybe I was just out of shape, because I can handle a lot of volume and need it to grow. Turns out I wasted a lot of years doing low volume training that did very little to grow my body. I should have known better, the best routine I ever did as a young lifter was Jay Cutler's 3x8-12 on a large number of exercises that I got from a bodybuilding mag in the early 00s.
Currently trying to balance strength and size goals, using EvolveAI training app. If you know anything about it, it's supposed to be heavily "borrowed" from Juggernaut which uses a lot of sets of 10 (like 5x10 up to 7-8x10 depending on the phase), and it's right up my alley. I showed it to a minimalist powerlifter friend of mine and he about had a heart attack at the volume (he might just be an overly minimalist lifter though, not a race horse).
Just the first 3 minutes have been so useful for me. Thank you for this video. I wondered why working out the whole body one or two days can wipe me out the rest of the week... I must be a racehorse (and I am progressing).
Workhorse here, I had wondered why I had no trouble doing whole body a couple times a week but trying to do short sessions spread across the week left me feeling unfulfilled.
Thought provoking. I really like your book as well thanks!
Bro I have been doing full body 2x a week inspired by alphadestiny and as soon as I dropped the volume I grew so much. I have achieved 90kg bench 6 months into training and the last 20 kg I put came in a month after dropping the volume to half. I'm probably a racehorse considering 4 sets of squats can get my legs sore for 4 days and your video enlightened me to improve my programing even more thank you so much❤
I'm very much a race horse as well. I'd say natural hypertrophy is probably on that end too, which is why he loves supersets.
I utilize supersets and bro, I fuckin love them man. Half an hour of training just hitting like a set every 2 minutes and then walking off with barely any feeling in whatever body parts I was working? That's the shit man. I can't do workhorse, it's either all gas or I'm on cruise control.
@@vanyel_etc8695 yeah man I can't imagine fullbody without supersets. I love doing my hyperextensions with my reverse curls
@@ledelt9309 ha, I do pelican curls as well! We out here destroying it homeslice, good stuff man, keep it up, let's get huge
I thought this was gonna be some silly "which color power ranger are you" typa clickbait but was pleasantly surprised. This is a really good, memorable, way of thinking about this. GVS keepin' it real and to the point as always.
This video is a masterpiece, idk if any person on yt beats you in the quality of the information
This is sooooo accurate, I'm a total racehorse and get those comments all the time meanwhile I get super duper sore from barely any volume.
Me too. I think we’re lucky to be honest. I think it’s way better to be a race horse than a work horse. Generally. Some love training volume tho
Just analyzing the difference in styles n how each person responds completely different, I can’t help it n be fascinated with the human body. That’s what got me to bodybuilding
There is also the mule. Almost 40s, doing our best, don’t complain, can take a lot of work and gets good results. Things are not as impressive as they used to be, but we love working hard and keeping our heads down ;)
this actually explains a lot. My friend often makes the similar gains to me when I do way more sets than him on bench, but for him the idea of doing 12 sets is crazy whereas for me i usually don't feel very tired at all after any given bench set, even if i'm pushing very close to or to failure.
Excellent video! I found that there are differences like this between people, but also between individual muscle groups. My chest, hamstrings and calves get outoutrageously sore from 6-8 hard sets per week but my biceps, side and rear delts can be tortured for hours on end and feel completely fine the next day.
Honestly a really great video with solid information. I always wondered why I could deadlift heavy weights and be fine the next day (1RM), but when I go to do RDL's with 50lbs at 3x10 I'll be extremely sore. And that will be all I need to actually grow. My workout plans are extremely simple and yet are extremely effective for me.
cause 1 rm isn't gonna do that much muscle damage and is mostly for strength lol
The endurance background is so true. I have a friend who has amazing power in kickboxing, but a lot less endurance than me. He rarely lifts but when he does he puts up numbers that any novice would be jealous of. I'm a workhorse, he's a freaking unicorn, if only he would lift more often
Great video - another factor I always consider is how much digestive stress / capacity can you handle consistently vs training output.
If you can't eat enough to support higher volume / frequency without negatively impacting your health, you need to find your compromise / balance that still produces gains and you can sustain. Quality volume is a huge factor for me.
Great stuff. Something to keep in mind for sure.
There is also the possibility that one is comprised of various spliced equine species, in my case for example I appear to have a mixture of responses to training for different muscle groups, like hamstrings, triceps and calves get sore for a week by merely glancing at a barbell whereas quads and most of my upper body requires significantly more volume and recovers much quicker despite training closer to failure. It could be due to differences in training approach, relative loading or development level etc. between these muscle groups but the difference is so stark that I wonder if I'm just a crossbreed.
I forgot to touch on that but yea it's very possible. Each area is going to be a bit different. There are systemic attributes that mean there will still be some correlation between muscle groups but it's certainly possible to have different training requirements for different areas.
Completely agree. My entire lower body seems to respond well to lower volume, but higher intensity. Conversely, my upper body needs a ton of volume to grow. This is interesting to me since I have a background in distance running and got great times at a young age.
I get this also, I think everyone does to some degree after training a good while we start to realise it when we learn more about our own individual muscle groups and their requirements through trial and error over time. I can pretty much hammer my shoulders every other day with high volume and heavy load (if I wanted) and they'll recover just fine where as my back will often require more than a week to recover even at low volume .
Your shirts seem to get progressively more tighter with each video.
Is this progressive overload yootoobers talk about?
Are probably the same shirts 😂😂😂
Geoff I can't wait to start watching you in 2023, its my last year as an intermediate. Near the end of the year I'll start doing deadlifts in the late 400s, 230 lb bent-over rows etc.
0:44 Kinda ironic I see you doing rows with 220 lbs total weight. You know what advanced lifter stuff feels like
This confused me at first 😆Because racehorses (English thoroughbreds, standardbreds, especially Arabians) can run quite long distances and therefore do more volume, where as workhorses (draft horses) actually have the more of the explosive type of strength (they can pull very heavy things but aren’t that great for endurance). For non-horsey people the analogy makes a lot of sense though. I also think you can be a workhorse for certain muscles/muscle groups and a racehorse for others. Great video again 👍
Saw your answer on Quora and was impressed with your self-awareness, especially when it came to BF. Checked out the youtube and was not disappointed, sensible analysis - subscribed.
Glad I subscribed to this channel, I think the content is great but the way he gets concepts across is really interesting. Especially being in the gym this long, I know this to be the truth.
Been waiting all week for this 🙌🏻
I'm more of a workhorse when it comes to my upper body muscle groups but more of a racehorse when it comes to my legs and core. Because of this I typically do more upper body work per week.
I've found that out to, upper body especially arms recovery fast and are good body parts in but I'm legs take ages to recover
That's like a super interesting concept. I'm a coach myself for many years and even tho I have definitely observed the phenomenon I haven't been able to put it down and analyse it the way u did here plus theres not much stuff in the literature realated to this(maybe only through stimulus to fatigue ratio) so it easily gets forgotten. Amazing job!
..this might be one of your best videos, geoff, just simply because of how insanely easy it is to understand, even for the layest of laypersons, while still being relevant to fairly advanced lifters, maybe even more so. Love it, keep up the superb education!
Interestingly, I’ve known more unicorns than donkeys. Love the analogy here. Also, I’m digging the new tunes !
Thanks for the video Geoff. In my fitness career i struggled a bit with lowering my volume while advancing, because i learned how to train to failure. Everyone was telling me that i needed more volume because i got better, but the opposite was the case and now i can understand better why that was the case. Keep going!
good editing brother , post more working out type of videos
I used to be somewhere in the middle of work and race horse. Had to completely switch up my diet(carnivore) and sleeping routine, now a lot closer to the race horse. Life is good. Your videos are great.
You deserve 100k my guy, it’s right around the corner
6:01 that dumbbell must be having the time of its life 😏
Just thought of an idea and thought it would be really cool if you could cover it in a video, Regular vs Deficit movements, in all kinds of categories, ex: Deadlifts, Rows, Pushups, split squats, hip thrust and anything else you could think of.
Think about it!
Thanks, and didnt really notice the music till the end!
I’m definitely a work horse when it comes to lifting 💪🏽the transformation that took place with your Body is phenomenal!Great video!
I feel like this is so individual and can also heavily depend on programming. Personally the longer I workout I always find ways to improve my stimulus to fatigue ratio through form tweaks and better exercise selection so I think this is something that can actually improve over time. How to get more out of less weight kind of thing which I think is smart for bodybuilders to learn. Also wondering how many sets per week for a given muscle would constitute being a "workhorse" or a "racehorse"? Would be nice to get into some specifics.
very informative, thank you.
I went from having a 350 lb total to a 925 pound total over the course of this year. I had previously been a distance runner throughout middle school and the first two years of high school, but started lifting when I decided to try the throwing events on a whim, started at 135lbs and now at 165lbs almost a year later.
I’ve realized that my lower body is most definitely the racehorse archetype, I can improve my strength and size with relatively low volume. But my upper body is more “workhorsey ”. Although, this could be caused by the strength disparity between my lifts 340 squat, 205 bench, and 380 deadlift. Since my upper body is proportionally weaker it may require more volume since there’s less systemic stress and absolute load. I’ve also wondered if my running background gave me disproportionately developed legs and a lagging upper body.
Either way, would be interesting to hear if other people are in one camp for a certain body part and another camp for a different part.
I legit made this EXACT comment, as I'm the same way. Legs grow EASILY, but fatigue easily, yet upper body growth is much harder, but they recover much easier as well. It took me forever to get my bench above 225, but it was EASY for me to squat and deadlift over 300.
This was an amazing outlook on lifting,. I never would have thought about it in this manner. The content you put out is always outstanding. Thank you.
I would consider myself a pterodactyl tbh
Rick Boogz was into to something when he said we want to get like thicc striated horses. Your video explains exactly which horse we are lmao.
This channel is amazing man! Keep up the work
I feel like I'm blessed with mild unicorny-ish traits, I remember when I started just exercising in general and was doing like 10 pull ups from time to time, after having done that for 2 months, I started getting compliments on my biceps almost instantly from family members even though I never even mentioned exercising to them
Being half racist horse isn't a good thing, regardless of the other kinds of horse you are.
Bro this is an incredible video, and an awesome concept.
Great video bro 🙏🏼
Now I'm realizing why I strongly prefer doing multi-hour whole body routines a couple times a week and hated trying to do multiple one hour sessions spread across the week. I always felt like I was just finally getting into the groove after the first 30 minutes, like I need time to build up momentum.
I noticed that I recover really fast with my upper back. I did Wide Grip Pullups, trap bias weighted Inverted Rows and dumbbell rows for cluster sets beyond failure. A day later my back was not that sore at all.
Being a unicorn does not equate directly to seeing results.
Knowledge is way more important than you're genetics, which is why I'm on RUclips watching your videos (I'm a unicorn)! We're all on our own journey, and I believe we should strive to maximize our potential regardless of our starting point. 'Good genetics' are great to have, but they're overrated compared to discipline, ambition and knowledge about nutrition, lifting technique and so on. I don't think anyone walks into a gym and gets big/strong just like that or by accident, they just get bored or injured more likely. Sure you could probably do fine with a generic program and no 'real' effort, but why not reach higher? If you do indeed have the potential and of course the time to put in the effort.
Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. Great video as always Geoffrey! You're one of the few authentic natty RUclipsrs and I love your content!
6:20 dont smell that dumbbell afterwards lmao :)
A very interesting topic. I'm one of the racehorses myself, I'm not world class, but I have the same characteristics. I've been training for 40 years now, and every workout makes my muscles ache. I mainly train a muscle group only once a week because it takes time to recover, I train hard, but little in quantity. I have to be really careful not to overload myself, especially when I'm 53 years old. If I do a set to failure and maybe do a drop set, one set per movement is fine for me.
7:15 so THATS why the dumbells at my gym smell funny!
I am very much a racehorse. Early on in my lifting, I found myself constantly getting injured from overworking. And then, I realized that during the recovery process of those injuries (I still lifted with half the volume), I was stronger than I was before the injury. I realized that low volume/high frequency is the way to go for me, and I never looked back
Will you do a 100k qna?😊
Ya, as well as a special project I'm putting together at the moment.
@@GVS excite
@@GVS niceeee, I also have a burning question:
Do you think it is absolutely necessary to train your back as much as your chest? Would it be a problem if I do 1 or 2 sets more for my back than my chest, in terms of ruining my posture and causing injuries?
Thanks and congrats on 100k
@@cglnarcissist5700 it will not cause injury or bad posture at all, and there's no correlation im volume between chest and back. Train your back (or any muscle) according to your goals, recovery, work capacity, enjoyment.
@@cglnarcissist5700 what suboptimalgains said, they don't have to have a specific ratio. back might be higher but only if that's what is needed for you.
this is one of the things that the Stronger by Science podcast has definitely done some great coverage about: the fact that the research on volume/intensity/hypertrophy relationships produces averages, but the actual data show that different people respond very differently to the same amounts of volume/intensity. which is also why guys like mike israetel make don't give specific volume recommendations, instead giving instructions for how to figure out your own MEV/MRV by continuous experimentation, so one person's program should probably look a little bit (or a lot) different from someone else's program, even during the beginner stages
loved this - I'm a racehorse and this makes so much sense.
Not sure if you said any of this but I’m more of a racehorse and I’ve noticed that correlates with more fast Twitch muscle fibers on average. They tire faster and also my recovery between sets has to be at least 3+ minutes because I get so fatigued off of just one set to failure. I’ve been tested genetically for the double actN3 fast Twitch gene so I’m pretty sure it correlates with the race horse analogy. Great video I really liked it, keep it up!
I like this topic. With weights, bag work, mitt work, sparring i can go all day. Increasing weight but still have to get high volume to feel anything. With that said i can sprint like a fart in the wind but can't run long distances to save my life. Genetics are something we'll never truly understand.
i think there has to be more to it than this - from what i understood from this video, this implies that muscle is built differently from person to person. imo that can't be true. what he says about starting as a racehorse then progressing to a workhorse - to me that just seems like you're progressively overloading total tension stimulus over time and more is needed as you get more advanced. so what is actually happening is that as a beginner you don't need much, so do enough to get growth, then when that's not enough, do more - eventually you'll be advanced and doing quite a bit. even advanced guys who are still doing low volume are still doing more total tension stimulus than when they were beginners. to me that's what makes this work - not that we have an underlying archetype that we're predestined to be
For me I have one PR day per week and the rest "practice" days of the moves lighter weights. The practice days will ramp up from 2-4 depending on how good I'm feel that week. When the PR days hit a plateaus after 3-4 weeks then I change the PR exercises and repeat. This has worked for me the best
oh hell yeah... for a hecking looooonggggg time I've been struggling with increasing my volume / work capacity. Volume seems to be one of the biggest factor determining hypertrophy (it still is IMO). Did a program with medium intensity for around 3+ months and it was hell throughout that period, it was weird because everyone else around me made a phenomenal gain with the program I was following but I was feeling overtraining all throughout. I did make good gain, the gain i made was during the resting period after that program. And made steady gain after i switch to low volume, high intensity program.
I do believe after certain threshold, i do need to increase the volume a bit to continuously make gains but just wanna say that low volume high intensity do more for me in term of hypertrophy. My built is far more suitable to be a sprinter and jumper (long jump and high jump in high school), more of the explosive kind of built, as you've said, a racehorse indeed..
I'm sure there's genetic predisposition to be more inclined to being a work horse or a race horse, but as someone who used to be able to do 300 burpees in a row and now gets tired doing 20 burpees in a row, above all, one gets accostumed to the type of training one does. You plow what you sow
Will watch in bit. Right now I'm watching a really toxic yugioh deck player shred people in an unbanned card style tournament. My god is it so good😹
Free algo boost from me, happy holidays Geoff🎉🎊🥰
Happy holidays!
i think that when u do a certain amount of volume for a prolonged amount of time, you get less sore. eventually you are not sore at all.
Great content! Deff a mixture but more workhorse but its kinda changed on some body part as ive hit 40’s and having a physical job plays a big part in it . Imo
I think I’m the unicorn because I’ve tried it all different ways and it all works. It even seemed at one point like the elliptical trainer was growing my legs
This is do true. I've cut my vole down massively and am doing better than ever. More of a racehorse thsna workhorse
This is quite an interesting topic, great analogy! I do have a question though:
Would it be possible for each muscle group to differ on the same person? Example: My upper legs (Hams, Quads, Glutes & Hips) seem to be racehorses, they're VERY sensitive to stimulus but also VERY sensitive to fatigue. It's not uncommon for moderately heavy leg training to sideline me for a week, yet they grow SO EASILY. Yet my upper body isn't as sensitive to fatigue, recovers fairly quickly, but doesn't grow as quickly either. It's not uncommon for me to hit upper body 2-3x a week, because it just recovers that rapidly. Calves however, unsurprisingly, are absolute donkeys 😭😭😭.
Yep, absolutely possible.
Interesting! Started off as a racehorse, but definitely a workhorse now. If I just did one set to failure I literally wouldn't even grow 😂
That "why, why bother" towards the 12 minute mark sounded exactly like the one from that famous Tom Platz Squat video xD.
I definitely am on the side where I really have to focus on managing fatigue... doesn't take that much to take me out. But I don't really gain that easily, either. 😂 am finding the right balance is to just do a heap of sets (like 40 per week per muscle group) with very low RPE rather than do the HIT method and hit few sets with high RPE.
I’ve been a work horse in the past. It worked well. Until it didn’t. Been a race horse the last year or so and gains have returned. Ultimate race horse. Jeff Alberts. Ultimate work horse. GvS. At 53 I think I’ll follow the Jeff Alberts low volume approach seeing it’s working. That said I’m doing a stint of high frequency training over the holiday period and loving it. Your comments about phasing both is good but you can definitely transition from one to the other over time.
This is also like a very broad outline, it's all on a spectrum. I'd say the biggest thing to take from this is the simple statement "if you are progressing with what your doing, keep doing that." It's not like you'd be progressing 3x faster doing another method.
I'd also say this is why while PTs are very good at a certain point you gotta go it on your own for a bit. Make your own mistakes, learn about your own body. Try everything, if your in it for the long haul then a few months of not 100% perfect optimisation isn't going to hurt you.
Sure, on a grid these are just the four extreme corners.
Great video.
Absolute truth about donkeys and low activity. I have a low activity life(working at PC), and I do trainings, and lately running 1km after the training to balance it out. I'm not obese/overweight but after I started running I started recovering much faster between the workout sets and I can do bigger volume with less fatigue.
It's actually amazing how much of a difference running makes: if before I had to rest for 8-10 minutes between 2 sets of pull ups(first set until failure, as in I can't do the 13th pull up even if you poke me with a hot fire iron), after I started running I can recover in 4-6 minutes now.
In my case, i can't handle so much volume. I always go to failure every single set, except things like squats and deadlifts. And i tried to stay in the 3x a week stimuli frequency, but it crushed me so much, and i started not being able to progress and plateaud. I scaled down to 2x a week, and the training started to work again. Total weight and reps started to rise again, and muscle eventually started to grow again. But still, time from time i get back a little bit on higher volume/frequency, just to get crushed again and make sure its not for me lol. Also, i happen to have kind of a struggle in "resistence exercises" like running. Its funny that me and my sister (she also trains for some years now), have more or less the same volume thereshold. She built some very thicc ass and legs doing less than doing more. We both are more like a meso/endomorph cross type of body, just to put It in perspective. I never thought about this types of diferences between "Racehorse" or "work horse", but It makes Sense.
I realize I'm a donkey after watching this video, and probably need to do some more cardio. Haven't had a very active childhood, struggling with fatigue and putting on strength and size. Good wake up call!
You become a lot more resistant to fatigue over time, the first time I was doing high volume pull up sets to failure that made me sore for like a week, but now I'm just al little sore for one or two days from pull up sets to failure
I’ve found that I’ve changed over time in terms of my archetype. I used to be much more of a work horse when I was using lighter loads and the same rep ranges as a less advanced trainee but as I’ve gotten stronger I find myself being totally beat after less sets than I’ve previously seen as a normal amount of training. For back and chest it used to be 9-12 sets minimum per workout and now I find myself doing 6 way more often simply because my fatigue builds up way quicker with my developed strength
I think I am definitely a race horse 3x3 kinda stuff and I built about 15lbs of muscle in 4 months
I think a "change of paradigm" of this kind is very needed in the fitness world because until now there was always this deterministic approach where; mesomorph=lucky, enjoy the gains; endomorph= focus on diet and then enjoy the gains; ectomorph= youre fucked :), go cry or take steroids. This new approach atleast provides some drive to people who has trouble seeing gains with their current training plan whereas with the mainstream pov everything tends to be because of genetics and theres not much one can do against that. Regardless of it is completely true or not I think people rllly need to hear more things like this.
With this in mind i woukd say that ive benefitted alot from racehorse type training recently and workhorse training in the past. However, ive npticed that by mixing and matching certain types of training to certain musclegroups i am able to better progress overall. Arms and calves recover fast -> workhorse. Upper and legs recovers slower ->racehorse. Thats what has been working for me so far, i think. Im only about 8 months into serious lifting for a better physique and strength so i could be wrong about alot of things.
I am 100% a workhorse. Everyone I lift with complains about my volume and intensity. I tried low volume with high intensity, it doesn't work for me. Now that I do higher volume with 1rir-failure and I am getting gains like never before and getting stronger than ever. It feels like newbie gains all over again.
Been train for 2.5 years consistently with decent results. I never get sore. I think I’m a work horse .
If you aren't getting sore, you can work harder. I can up my lifting from being perfectly fine the next day to being almost crippled for 24 hours.
@@bobjohnson1633 What does it mean to work hard then? Increase volume? My volume is already pretty damn high, if it was higher I don’t think I could complete a full workout.
"Workhorse" from day 1, having been lifting hard and consistently for 6 months now. Been seeing fantastic results, a lot to do with beginner gains, but it's also more satisfying in the long run.
I feel elated for the entire day after a workout from just emptying the tank completely.
Very good video. Thank you