It’s not like I created a rule or policy against headphones. In fact I didn’t even realize it was happening until mid-sentence when I was talking about community and the gym. No one at my gym ever wears headphones. I don’t mean generally. I mean it has literally never happened in all the years we have been open, and I think not only does it say a lot about the gym but there’s something you can learn from it.

What do most gym floors look like? A bunch of people all in their own little zone with their headphones on going about their workouts.  I’m not saying there is anything especially wrong about this because there are plenty of lone rangers who have gotten stupid strong or super jacked training this way and enjoy every second of their solitude. But here are a few of the things they’re not doing:

• Taking input and learning from a coach or their peers.
• Throwing out and receiving impromptu challenges: “Hey, can you do this?”
• Asking questions.
• Talking through their day or about what’s on their mind.
• Building relationships with like-minded people.
• Encouraging others or being encouraged.

Believe me there are times when the music selection would drive any reasonable person to want to put in headphones. But they don’t, presumably because they’re getting far more out of the environment than they’d gain by going to their fortress of solitude.

This isn’t meant to be an ad for my gym, especially because I know there are tons of gyms in which you’ll never see headphones, like most Crossfits and hint-hint this is what makes it so popular. That’s not the point. The point is the environment and what it does and does not facilitate.

My question to you is – what do you get out of your gym environment? Is it the best you can do?

 

Volume is the driver of strength training. Not only that, but volume is the driver of all training. You know how I get better at skydiving? Moar skydiving! Want to build more muscle? Moar volume!

Volume is the foundation that you build all the levels above upon, as well as the mortar that goes between the bricks. While certainly not the only important metric in strength training—you can’t increase volume indefinitely, and to do so would be ignoring the other directions you can make progress in—it is immeasurably important to your progress.

The surprising truth about training volume is that most people don’t do enough of it, and most people can handle much, much more than they currently do. Don’t believe me? Add up your daily volume from your past five workouts and find the average. (Don’t have a training log? Shame on you.) My money says the over-under is 8,000 pounds and I’ll take the under.

I’ve been precisely tracking training for myself and every member of The Movement Minneapolis for over four years, and have over 500,000 rows of valuable data. Sifting through this confirms a pattern that experienced coaches will find familiar – the people who make the most progress are moving about 15,000 pounds per workout with an average weekly volume of 50,000 to 60,000 pounds.

At the risk of oversimplifying: want more strength gains and better physique improvements in less time? Do more volume.

Yes, the intensity (the absolute or relative weight you’re lifting) with which you lift matters, as does the density (pounds per minute), but both my data and the body of scientific evidence available points to the same conclusion: neither matters as much as total volume.

Greg Nuckols discussed this phenomenon in his episode of Evil Sugar Radio. The Russians’ blunt tool to solve training problems is more volume. Based on results, this tactic seems to be working for them.

Three years ago, I took on a personal challenge to lift a million pounds of volume over the course of one month. I wrote about that experience here.

My challenge to you is to take on Million Pound November yourself. As a gym, The Movement Minneapolis has created a team challenge. Teams of members from the gym will be attacking this challenge collectively, pooling their volume to reach a total of a million or more by the end of the month.

Accomplishing this task alone is no small feat and is not for beginner or even intermediate lifters. You need both a solid foundation of strength, as well as a keen understanding of your own physiology so that you reap rewards from the challenge instead of it leaving you worse off than before.

For a bit of perspective, if you train three times per week for a total of 12 workouts, you would have to perform 83,333 pounds of volume per workout. Most people average 8,000. Training twenty times still means 50,000 pounds per workout. Training daily with occasional breaks leaves you with a more reasonable per-session volume.

Here are a few suggestions of ways to tackle #MilPndNov:

• By yourself, for the truly daring, and those who are ready for the challenge.
• In a small team of two or three training partners as a realistic and achievable goal, as well as a target on which to focus a month of training together.
• In a larger team of eight to 10 people, be they local or spread across the globe, to stay accountable and chip away together at a mountainous achievement.

No matter how you tackle it, the #MilPndNov will net you several rewards:

• Setting a habit of consistently getting to the gym and putting in the work.
• By and large, more volume equals more results. If you put in the work, your body will respond and adapt. You’ll like what happens.

A few guidelines are in order, but this isn’t a strict challenge and you’re welcome to interpret as you see fit:

• The main drivers of training volume are the big, compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, ballistics such as swings, rows, pull-ups, and pressing. Heavy partials can massively inflate your training volume, and certainly have your place, but would skew the data. Stick to whatever variations test best for you, but don’t try to game the system by just doing partials just to rack up volume. You’re just cheating yourself. Or do, I don’t really care.
• Be reasonable with how you count your bodyweight exercises. Unless it’s in a handstand, you’re not pushing full bodyweight in a pushup, so estimate and adjust accordingly.
• You are the only one who stands to gain or lose here, so keep it easy and stay in a eustress state (i.e., don’t push through lifts that feel awful). Pushing to hit an external number might feed your ego, but it’ll break your body.

Throughout the month, I will provide resources to help you stay on track, keep you inspired and motivated, and also throw out the occasional door prize to keep it fun. And possibly a million pound meme or two.

 

Several years ago in late October I decided to undertake a personal challenge – the Million Pound November Challenge. I was already planning to participate in Movember the following month, but that wasn’t the real challenge. I figured as long as I am growing a mustache I might as well attempt a heroic feat of strength that can be accomplished only by someone growing a wicked ‘stache.

I failed at one of those tasks, but I succeeded spectacularly at the other. On a cold, dark night in mid-November, I had to cut short (pun intended) my goal of growing a wild and wooly mustache because of a photo shoot that came up.

But, I did lift a lot of weight.  In fact I lifted:

399,280 lbs of Sumo Deadlifts in 1550 reps
152,989 lbs of Kettlebell Rows in 2513 reps
97,539 lbs of Push Presses in 2694 reps
51,483 lbs of Chin-Ups in 272 reps
59,220 lbs of Push-Ups in 329 reps
14,580 lbs of Pull-Ups in 81 reps

Those lifts and the many others I did added up to a grand total of 1,066,554 pounds in 22 workouts from November 1st to November 30th.  In fact, I hit the one million mark on the 27th.

I will discuss the role of volume in training a bit more in a blog post announcing something exciting tomorrow, but suffice to say that volume is one of the main drivers of strength training. If there’s one thing you can do to see better results, it’s just simply do more work.

What did this do to my body?  From November 3rd to December 5th I gained 5 inches from head to toe:

Bodyweight: +5lbs

Waist: .75″
Neck: .1″
Shoulders: .8″
Hip: 1.25″
Thigh: 1.25″
Arm (Bicep): .63″
Forearm: .5″
Chest: .25″

During this period I maintained a body fat of around 7-8%.

What did it do to my strength? I didn’t specifically test any strength quantities directly before and after, but I can tell you that a few months later I hit my best-ever triple-bodyweight deadlift of 603 at 195. In addition to that, I was over all probably the strongest I have ever been.

What did I eat?  Pretty much whatever I felt like.  A couple times we went to Axel’s Bonfire and crushed bull bites, a half a chicken, sides, and the epic chocolate chip cookie with ice cream dessert.  I probably drank 4-5 quarts of chocolate milk during the month, usually a quart at a time.

Other times I just wasn’t all that hungry, so I ate when I got hungry.  That’s it.

Supplements?  Just creatine.  Jack3d on occasion.  I don’t think I had a protein shake all month.  Maybe a couple.  Nothing worth writing home about.

Did I feel crushed all month: no.

Did I feel tired all the time: no.

Was I sore: no.

Did I get hurt? No.  (In fact, I resolved a shoulder issue that crept up beforehand.)

Every movement I did tested well and I stopped all sets before the elements of effort set in.

Would I recommend to everyone that you set an external goal: NO.  It is too easy to get focused on the goal, and break your body when you stop listening to it. (But if you do tune in, it just might be possible.)

One more thing to consider is what was going on in the rest of my life at the time that I did this. In short, very little. I was able to direct much of my ability to resolve stress towards my training because I had much less stress in other parts of my life. While none of the training was distressful, it is likely that it wasn’t because of how much extra stress I could handle. I’ve attempted this amount of volume in a month one other time and I had to shut it down because I just couldn’t handle it, so context matters.