Training Volume and Progression for Aesthetics
This post is part of The Ultimate Bikini Prep Guide – check out the full guide for more!
Your goal and training style should have a MAJOR influence on the parameters of how you approach your time in the gym. On this website, and heck – my entire life – I focus on training for aesthetics. Building muscle when calories are higher, and keeping it when calories are lower. This aligns with competitive bodybuilders and anyone chasing an aesthetic anyone near that ballpark, whether your goals involve getting on stage or not.
So let’s talk broad strokes here and cover some things that people often get wrong, and how we can think about things differently.
Volume Is a Tool, Not a Badge of Honor
I’ll say to start off that before I start working with a new client I always like to get some details on their current diet and training programs, such as they are.
For experienced lifters (including plenty of people who have already competed), their training volume is almost ALWAYS too high. There are plenty of reasons for this.
First, “more is more” – which, it can be. But also, there’s nuance to that and it skips are very important step (which we’ll come back to).
Second, when you do more volume (more sets, more exercises, fewer days off, etc), it’s easier to get fatigued and for things to “feel productive”. It’s hard to be in the gym for 2+ hours and not feel like you did some work, ya know?
The issue is that no one can go HARD consistently for 2 hours, so there’s a drop-off in quality.
This is the step that people miss.
Your training QUALITY matters way more than any other variable in your program.
And that training quality needs to be fixed at “high” – we need HIGH STANDARDS for what movements should look like and feel like. And those high standards need to be hit on every exercise of every workout.
This involves having a good understanding of what specific muscle(s) an exercise is targeting, and whether or not it feels like you’re hitting that muscle effectively with how you perform the movement. This is what I spend a lot of my time as a coach doing – feedback on training footage that clients send in for review.
When your ‘per set’ quality is high, you need less volume. And with high quality and low volume, you have better results over time.
The biggest mistake people make is in overestimating the quality of their lifts, or thinking it’s “good enough” and then throwing more volume into the mix when really they can still significantly improve their workout quality.
What Progression Actually Looks Like in Aesthetic Training
So let’s take all of that as our baked-in formula that can’t change. We need high quality, and whatever adjustments we make or progression we realize, it has to be done within that framework on high quality lifting. If you progress on a movement and your form suffers or your rep quality drops, it’s not progression – it’s you now performing a new (worse) version of the exercise.
The forms of progression that matter
If you increase reps, weight, or rep quality, or decrease your rep tempo (slow down), those are all forms of progression. So is range of motion, but that should be fixed (if you were doing partial reps, and are now doing full reps at the same weight, that’s progress).
Only the first 2 can really be tracked from a practical sense so that’s what we focus on. Again we assume the quality is high (always continue thinking about this), and we assume tempo to be fixed (always “slow and controlled” it not explicitly listed in your workout program).
So an extra rep or an extra 2.5-5 lbs here and there are great progression metrics. Depending on your level of experience, you shouldn’t necessarily expect increases on either front every week. As of the time of this writing, I’ve been doing the same workouts more or less for 7 months and nothing is really progressing on my numbers. But my performance is high and visual progress is being made, and ultimately that’s the only thing any of us care about. Not if we hit a PR on the leg press but are our legs growing?
How progression differs by phase
During a growth phase, being a bit more fixated on those quantifiable performance metrics can make a lot of sense. You still need to be able to zoom out and see the bigger picture though. With a greater training age (more experience), you’re going to need to expect slower increases likely over several weeks, not necessarily on consecutive weeks back to back.
During prep it becomes much more about maintaining performance as best you can while managing fatigue. Watch for previous weight/rep combos that now feel completely unhittable, lagging motivation, reduced sleep quality while being more tired – those are all signs of fatigue accumulation and overtraining, signaling some action may be needed. Whether a deload week, a few added rest days, a short diet break, or something else entirely.
How Much Volume Is Actually Enough
Here we’ve got 2 key phrases that I want to focus on, one for each main phase. This is going to help guide our decision making.
In prep/deficit: minimum effective volume
What’s the lowest amount of volume you need in order to stimulate a muscle sufficiently to encourage retention? This can be as low as 4-6 sets per week, understanding that this means GOOD, HARD, WORKING sets. Not warmup sets, not “hey that was decent” sets. Sets that are hard as shit that scare you. Four sets like that can be enough
In a growth phase: maximum recoverable volume
This is more variable but I generally find it in the 15-20 HARD sets per week range. Same rules apply here, there are real sets that should have you feeling a bit intimidated or nervous before starting them.
Now of course another consideration is what your competitive category calls for – going UNDER the minimum effective volume threshold for certain muscle groups can be very effective in some cases where a group simply isn’t important or your current level of development is adequate.
Consider also your training split and how that breaks up over a week – if you follow a simple 7 day rotation this is easy, otherwise if your split takes 10 days to get there (6 workouts plus 4 rest days, possibly), the “per week” volume numbers won’t match precisely what’s programmed in your split and you may need to round up/down a bit and go over/under slightly.
Keep in mind also that if you train legs 3x/wk, you’re going to blow way past 15-20 working sets for legs. But “legs” isn’t a muscle group – it’s quads, hams, glutes, and adductors – all of which likely need attention. Some exercises (squat, leg press) can certainly count for more than 1 group – so when you add things up correctly, a well constructed leg training split may LOOK fairly low volume but if it’s loaded up with compound movements, there’s a lot of back for the buck in those.
Adjusting Volume Over Time
In a deficit, the prep mindset kicks in and the natural tendency is to GO GO GO and increase volume as the show gets closer even as you’re more tired each week. The opposite of that is the correct move.
Why?
Check the first section again – quality above all else. Do LESS volume with higher quality. As fatigue builds over prep, this is the proper strategy. Reduce your volume, pull a couple punches, and let your quality stay high.
In a growth phase, you can escalate volume slowly over time based on your performance, how recovered you feel, how amped you are for training, and – most importantly – how well you’re actually growing.
If things FEEL amazing on all fronts and you’re seeing progress, you can be content with that and leave volume as-is OR you can start to scale slightly – and slowly, over time – and see how that feels. I’d start with simply adding a working set to your favorite exercise on a given day, that’s it. Keep the moves small and simple and you’ll have additional moves you can scale in over time.
If you are feeling good and then say “I’m gonna add 6 working sets this week!” you’re likely going to see either a drop in quality, a drop in progress, or both.
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