Here’s a little background about my upbringing: I came from a family where if a job needed to be done, you did it no questions asked, no matter what the circumstances. My father is and has been in construction management for his whole life. Similarly, I worked construction every summer for years. If you are anything like me then you do what it takes to get the job done no matter what. This applies to any aspect of life, every home project, every event that needs to be planned, every request from family/friends, and every workout.
I’ve been weightlifting for 15+ years. I started out in 8th grade just doing all the cool stuff the strong guys were doing. By sophomore year in high school, I started really getting into the research and articles. Until about a year and a half ago, I was doing bodybuilding style regimen focused on hypertrophy. My girlfriend at the time (now fiancée) turned me onto powerlifting, and I have never looked back. My first meet was Feb 2015 where I went 505/335/565 at 198 lbs. My last meet was Oct 2015 where I went 500/370/600 at 198. My next meet is April 2016 and I am shooting for 600/400/700 at 198. All of these accomplishments were made possible by hard work and a lot of research. Juggernaut training systems has been a huge resource with a TON of very high quality information. I purchased and read their “Scientific Principles of Strength Training” eBook. This laid the foundation for all of my programming, and in the book CWS and Mike Israetel talk about MRV, or maximum recoverable volume. In the book, determining MRV is outlined:
“The best way to determine the MRV is to keep climbing in volume until the next training phase (whether session, microcycle, or mesocycle) is reduced in performance due to high fatigue. If you’ve been squatting sets of 10 at 315lbs and adding sets of 10 each week, when you can’t hit a set of 10 and fail at 7 or 8 reps at 315lbs is just past your MRV at that weight. The second best way to find out is to administer a fatigue checklist. Is the bar feeling disproportionately heavy? Is the desire to train way too low? Is sleep off track and is hunger decreased? If no, then more volume can be experimented with. But for the most part, performance itself is the best metric. If you’re still handling higher volumes and intensities, you’re likely still at or below your MRV, which is where you want to be.”
When I read this, I said to myself, “What does that mean?!?! Are you telling my you look at your workout sheet and it said squat 10x5 @ 60% followed by 2 variations at 5-7 sets each plus accessory movements and are excited about it?” Until about 2 weeks ago I still didn’t understand the concept of figuring out your personal MRV. I am on the 3s wave of the inverted juggernaut program and 3s accumulation microcycle went great. The 3s intensification and realization, however, are a different story. Workout mornings when my alarm clock goes off at 5:45am and I have to get up to do 5x3@82.5% with AMRAP on the last set, I just think to myself FML. So, check off a yes “low desire to train.” Is my sleep off track - I’ve felt kind of tired the past couple weeks, but hey I’m doing 80%+ at 6am mon/wed/fri. During my intensification week, on my AMARAP sets for bench/squat/deadlift days I projected around 9-10 reps; well, I got 6/4/3 and started to think something was wrong. Through my realization week and I was projecting 8 bench reps/ 7 squat reps/ 8 deadlift reps; well, as you could guess I got 4/3/1. Now I finally know that I exceeded my MRV somewhere in the 3s wave, and it consequently set me up for failure on the home stretch of the program.
There you have it, my personal recollection of when I finally realized I exceeded my personal MRV. I hope this helps anyone trying to figure out their MRV for their own programs.
References
Israetel, M., Hoffman, J., & Smith, C. W. Scientific principles of strength training. Unpublished manuscript.