New German Volume Training

About ten years ago one of the most popular strength coaches, Charles Poliquin, wrote about a revolutionary muscle building program known as German Volume Training. Coach Poliquin based the program off of the off-season training program of German Olympic Lifters that took the off-season as a time to put on functional muscle mass. The program was relatively simple on paper. Ten sets of ten repetitions with a weight you could do 20 repetitions with. Although simple on paper, this was a brutal training program.

Coach Poliquin had a split of:

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Chest & Back Legs & Abs Off Arms & Shoulders Off

This program would definitely put some mass on, but had two main issues.

1. It was great for bodybuilding, but how about those that wanted to have more athletic based training and focused on compound lifts?

2. The recovery from these workouts was brutal and often hard to accomplish.

I had been thinking thought this program could potentially be modified to have some solutions. What I did was create several options that would work for those that were interested in using this style of program with just kettlebells and The Ultimate Sandbag.

1. Still use the 20 repetition weight option as your determination of the correct weight. Alternate sets of kettlebell lifts with the Ultimate Sandbag. For example, if you are alternating Clean and Press and Front Squats perform first series with kettlebells and the second series with the Ultimate Sandbag and Zercher squats.

2. Only perform this GVT once a week and focus on those big lifts that give you the most bang for your buck.

3. Only do 10 sets of 5, where the first 3 sets are with the 20 repetition weight, then move the weight to 15 repetition weight for 3 sets, then four sets of a 10 repetition maximum weight.

I recently used this program with the Ultimate Sandbag rotating the following:

Clean and Press for 5

Shoulder Squat Right for 5

Bent-over Row for 5

Shoulder Squat Left for 5

I used the third option for my program and gave about 60 seconds in between sets. You will find this is perfect for building functional muscle mass, and yep, burning some serious calories! Try it out and send us your results!

Josh Henkin, CSCS