When attempting to lift one million pounds in one workout volume is king.  Therefore, which muscle group has the greatest capacity to lift the most volume of the body’s major muscle groups of chest, back, shoulders and legs?  Answer: legs.   Since they have the  largest muscles then that would be the muscle group that is used as the foundation of, and the main contributor to, the goal.

Since we are talking about legs, here we review what we can call Extreme High Volume or the Million Pound Workout (MPW) method and German Volume Training (GVT) which I was not aware of until only about 2 weeks ago.  I based my training on several decades bodybuilding experience in the gym and the study of various types of training methods.

Million Pound Workout Training (MPW)

Here is my last workout.

• Quads: 53 sets 2,820 reps
• Hamstrings: 9 sets 240 reps
• Calfs: 31 sets 343 reps

Total Sets: 93

Total reps: 3,403

I have charted below my volume progression of total pounds by workout over the last six months.  This includes all muscle groups of the legs, quads, hamstrings, and calfs.  My hamstrings don’t have the training intensity of the quads since they receive a huge amount of work from quad training already.  The decrease at the green bar is when I joined a new gym and was learning the capabilities and design characteristics of new equipment.

This invites comparison to a an older systematized training method that uses “high volume” to achieve increases in strength and size.

German Volume Training (GVT)

You can find more details on this type of training elsewhere, but essentially the goal of the German Volume Training method is to complete ten sets of ten reps with the same weight for each exercise. You want to begin with a weight you could lift for 20 reps to failure if you had to. For most people, on most exercises, that would represent 60% of their 1RM load. Therefore, if you can bench press 300 pounds for 1 rep, you would use 180 pounds for this exercise.  This is the routine that Kris uses in the video below.

• Squats: 10 sets x 10 reps = 100 Reps
• Leg Extension: 5 sets  x 15 reps = 75 Reps
• Hamstring Curl: 5 sets x 15 reps= 75 Reps
• Seated Calf Raise: 10x 10 reps = 100 Reps
• Cardio 15 minutes

Total Sets: 30

Total Reps: 350

Here is one of the better videos on training legs with GVT.

Kris Gethin: “I’m getting really nervous just thinking about this workout”.

Summary

As we can see both total sets and reps are significantly higher using the MPW method than the “high volume” GVT method.  We must keep in mind that Kris’ main focus here, and probably most users of this type of training,  is exclusively on muscular hypertrophy or increasing muscle size.  His use of GVT is only one method that he is using to achieve that.  Size is not my main concern as it was when I was strictly bodybuilding, although, that certainly is a result in addition to burning huge amounts of calories.  What I do know is that my training method is working for me and keeping the train moving along the track I want to go, no changes necessary.

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