Questions About Stimulating a Muscle

Hey CT,

I had some questions on your approach to stimulating muscles and your thoughts on certain things which I’ll outline below.

Statement 1.
You stated in the latest podcast that you took part in that the best way to bring up a lagging muscle is to train it more frequently and that the most common mistake a natural trainee makes is trying to increase the volume for that muscle.

Question 1:
What is the optimal frequency and volume to bring up a lagging muscle? For example in the program you recently released the frequency is 3x a week and the volume is 9 sets, 3 being truly difficult.

Is this the optimal frequency and volume? If not should one add more volume to one or more days or should frequency be increased further or both?

Statement 2.
I know you are generally a low rep guy and for hypertrophy you prefer 6-8 reps. You’ve stated that higher reps and volumes lead to higher amounts of glycogen being used up for energy and higher cortisol responses to training.

Question 2:
Do you think high rep training is detrimental to a natural trainee because of the above statements? If overall sets are controlled could higher rep sets serve a purpose for hypertrophy (i.e. 3x15 leg press on one workout day for quads).

Essentially I’m wondering if this is a principle that should be applied to all exercise or if perhaps certain muscles or exercises could and should be preformed for higher reps if overall volume can be controlled.

Once again your thoughts are always appreciated,

JLH