How to Do German Volume Training (GVT)

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What Is German Volume Training?

German Volume Training, often called the "10x10 method," is a high-volume resistance training protocol designed to build muscle mass and strength. The premise is simple: perform 10 sets of 10 reps for a single exercise using the same weight throughout the workout. Originating in Germany and popularized by strength coach Charles Poliquin, GVT is known for its ability to deliver serious results.

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Why Choose GVT?

When GVT Works Best

• Muscle Growth (Hypertrophy): GVT is ideal for those prioritizing muscle size, with strength gains as a secondary benefit.
• Simplicity: If you're tired of overcomplicated programming and endless accessory exercises, GVT provides a structured and effective alternative.

When to Avoid GVT

• Beginners: If you're new to lifting, GVT may be too taxing and could lead to burnout.
• High-Stress Periods: GVT is demanding on the body, so avoid it during periods of high stress or when recovery time is limited.

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How to Implement German Volume Training

The Basics

1. Sets and Reps: Perform 10 sets of 10 reps of a single exercise.
2. Weight Selection: Use 60-70% of your one-rep max (1RM). A weight you can lift for 20-25 reps in one set is a good starting point.
3. Rest Periods: Rest for 60-90 seconds between sets to maximize hypertrophy.
4. Exercise Selection: Focus on compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and pull-ups for maximum effectiveness.

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Tempo Training for GVT

Adding tempo to your repetitions increases time under tension, enhancing muscle growth. For example:

• 4-0-2-0 Tempo:
  • 4 seconds lowering the weight (eccentric phase)
  • No pause at the bottom
  • 2 seconds lifting the weight (concentric phase)
  • No pause at the top

If tempo feels too complicated, stick with controlled movements: lower the weight slowly, explode on the way up, and avoid pausing between reps.

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Structuring a GVT Workout

Strength-Focused GVT

For a pure strength training session:

1. Perform two compound exercises (e.g., squats and deadlifts, or bench press and pull-ups).
2. Complete 10x10 for each exercise.
3. Add 2-3 accessory exercises at lower volume (e.g., 3 sets of 10-12 reps).

Hybrid Training with GVT

For athletes balancing strength and conditioning:

1. Focus on one GVT exercise per session (e.g., bench press or pull-ups).
2. Follow the GVT set with a conditioning element, such as running intervals or cycling.
3. Keep sessions concise to maintain recovery and performance.

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Benefits and Challenges of GVT

Why It Works

• High Volume: GVT provides enough workload to stimulate muscle growth.
• Mental Toughness: Completing 100 reps of a single movement builds both physical and mental resilience.

Challenges

• Time Commitment: GVT can take up to an hour for just two exercises.
• Cumulative Fatigue: The volume builds quickly, especially in later sets.

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GVT Programming Tips

• Progression: Cycle GVT into your programming for 4-6 weeks, then switch to a different method to avoid overtraining.
• Recovery: Ensure adequate sleep, nutrition, and active recovery to handle the program's demands.
• Variation: While barbells are the go-to, GVT works well with kettlebells and bodyweight exercises like pull-ups.

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Take Your Training to the Next Level

German Volume Training is one of the most straightforward yet effective ways to build muscle and strength. Whether you're looking to shake up your routine or focus on hypertrophy, GVT can help you achieve your goals.

If you'd like to see how GVT fits into a comprehensive training program, check out Garage Gym Athlete's programming. Sign up for a free trial at garagegymathlete.com and experience the benefits of simple and effective methodologies like GVT.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: All right, let's talk about a no nonsense way to gain strength and muscle. This is one of my favorite programming methodologies, primarily because of its simplicity. Today, we're going to talk about how to utilize and implement German volume training or GVT. This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast. I'm Jerred Moon and German volume training is something I've seen throughout the years.

I've seen people program it. I've also seen a lot of people program it incorrectly. It's also something I've utilized a lot in my own programming. And we've programmed a lot at Garage Gym Athlete in our programming for our athletes. It is a super simple methodology, but the reason I love it is because it can kind of take your brain out of, you know, strength and muscle growth.

And sometimes that can be the biggest challenge, right? It's like just doing a bunch of different exercises or, you know, having to focus a lot on accessory work, and then also working sets and all these different things, it can get a little bit convoluted and that's where GVT really steps up. And it's also incredibly effective, and I can just tell you that from my years of experience in using it and programming it. This programming methodology is just super effective, but it's almost effective from a standpoint of like, if you do enough of anything, it's going to work, right?

Like, if you suck at shooting a gun and you take five shots, you're only going to get a little bit better. If you take 5,000 shots, you're going to get a lot better. There's no way. Like you don't even need an instruction, right? You just need to do more of it and you will get better.

And that's where German volume training comes in. So let's dive into it first. Like, why would you want to do this? And why maybe not. The main reason you'd want to look at German volume training is again, if you're looking for something super simple yet effective, and then at the same time you want hypertrophy is probably your main focus.

And then secondary, you're looking to gain some strength. So it's definitely more of a muscle building program, but it has enough volume in there and at the right loads to where you will also gain some strength as well. So that's why you'd want to use it. Why you may not want to use German volume training before I get into exactly how to do it.

If you really just are a beginner, I would say that's the only reason I can really think of, or if you are just kind of super taxed, maybe like, you know, you have a super stressful life or job and right now is not a good time to tax your body. It is very taxing. So if you're not looking for a very taxing program, probably stay away from German volume training.

And then if you are just a straight beginner, I would probably stay away from German volume training, but if you've got one, two, three years of training under your belt, or even if you have way more than that and you're more advanced, this is a phenomenal thing to cycle in and out of your toolbox for programming. Like I said, one of my favorite programming methodologies.

So German volume training, it is often referred to as the 10 by 10 method. And that is how it is so simple. It's just a high volume resistance training protocol, and it will build muscle mass and strength. And it originated in Germany and it became popularized by Charles Poliquin, who is, you know, big in the strength world in all honesty.

So anyway, it is, as it says, you do 10 sets of 10 reps and it is of a single exercise. So if you think about squats, you'd be doing 10 sets of 10 reps. Pretty brutal, right? Anytime we've programmed this at Garage Gym Athlete, the people were like, oh my gosh. And the goal is to not increase weight throughout. It's to select the weight and use that same weight for the entire 100 repetitions and you're gonna want to go moderate weight. The mistakes I see a lot of times when people program it is they either go too heavy.

That's more often than not. They're going too heavy, or they're going too light. Too light, you know, I would rather be too light than too heavy, especially over time, but you're going to want to be around 60 percent of your one rep max. If you are more advanced and you're lifting a lot of barbells.

And you can do this with other exercises, not just barbells. You could go up to 70, but I would typically recommend most people hit 60%. And really, a good gauge is if you were completely fresh, what is a weight you could lift for probably 20 reps, near it. Not necessarily a 20 rep max, but like you could lift for 20, 25 reps, something like that.

That's normally a good indicator of what around 60 percent is going to be. And also when getting into this, it shouldn't be super hard, like on your first set. If your first set of 10 reps is like, you're like, oh my gosh, this is going to be so brutal. Your first set of 10 shouldn't feel that bad. In all honesty, it shouldn't feel that bad.

Your first three to four sets shouldn't feel that bad. It's the cumulative fatigue over time that makes this really challenging. It's when you get to set seven, set eight, set nine, especially if you're sticking to strict rest periods, which I'll get into. But so far, what have I covered? Okay. 10 sets, 10 reps, single exercise.

And you can get into more than one exercise per session, but 10 by 10, 60%, if you're wondering, at max. Now I do recommend, and this comes with the original method, that you are going to be doing a tempo. Okay. So each repetition should be performed with a deliberate tempo. This is, again, the technical how to do it, but if you are more advanced,

I recommend the tempo. If you're just looking to try GVT for the first time, maybe forget the whole tempo thing, because tempo can be super annoying. So tempo is just where, if you're like, what are you talking about? Tempo is just where a single repetition is broken down into, you know, a different time domain for each part of the rep.

So let's just give an example of like a four zero two zero, which is typically how these things are written. It'd be four dash zero dash two dash zero. So that'd be four seconds lowering on the squat, no pause at the bottom. So four zero would be no pause, two seconds on the way up, and then no pause at the top.

So that would be a four zero two zero. And so if you don't want to stick to any kind of tempo, the best way to do it, and cause I kind of get annoyed with tempo too, like exactly how many seconds down and up, is just controlled on the way down, explode out of the bottom, you know, but controlled on the way up, so don't sit in the bottom, slow and control on the way down, explode kind of out of the top, just like getting out of the hole and then controlled on the way up.

So making that about a two second repetition. And then at the top, you're not standing with the bar at the top for a long period of time. You just immediately come back down. In all honesty, when someone programs zero at the end of a tempo, meaning no rest at the top, most people look at that and they're like, oh yeah, zero.

Yeah. Don't rest at the top. But a lot of people rest at the top of repetitions and they don't realize it. So when there's a zero tempo, you realize like, oh, wow, this is work. Like I'm going straight from, as soon as I stand up, I'm supposed to be coming back down. So really just note, like when you're going through a controlled tempo, if you're going to do the tempo version of GVT, like you're going to add this tempo, just do it.

How I said, slow and control on the way down, explode up, then control the rest of the repetition, and then just immediately back down. Once you stand all the way up, your rest periods, you're going to want to keep to around 60 to 90 seconds, mainly just to emphasize hypertrophy. And then this is most effective with compound movements.

So things like squats, deadlift, bench press, pull ups, those kinds of things is where this is going to get the biggest bang for your buck, mainly because of how long a GVT training session can take. So you do want to focus on big compound movements. I had done it with kettlebells before as well. It really becomes more of a conditioning element with kettlebells when you're doing those.

So I do like it a lot with pull ups. I think it's phenomenal for pull ups. Kind of hit on some body weight stuff recently here on the podcast. It's great with squats, deadlifts. So again, super simple, great for building muscle, great for building mental toughness, and in all honesty, it can be really time consuming and produce a lot of fatigue.

And it's not the best program, in my opinion, to just do for months on end. It's like a quick, I would do a quick four weeks of this, maybe six weeks, back off, do something else. But how it looks when you're actually getting into the programming, before we wrap this up, is you're typically going to do like two-ish exercises if you're just doing strength training.

So two exercises. So think about if I want to do push pull, I could do bench press today and I could do pull up. Right. Or I could do squats and I could do deadlifts, which would be a really brutal day. Or you could do like deadlift and overhead press, something like that. And that's about all you're realistically going to have time for.

If you're following that tempo, you're resting 90 seconds between sets. Each exercise is now going to take you about 20 plus minutes. Right. And so now you have two exercises, that's 40 minutes. And that's if you don't rest longer in between the two different exercises.

So you see, it's very time consuming, and then you could add a little accessory in there. And that's how you would do this. If you were just like, hey, this is my strength day, that's what I'm doing. I also think it's great for people doing hybrid athlete training, concurrent training, but then I change my programming recommendation from doing like bench and pull ups to just doing one of these, and this is where I love the simplicity of GVT and also throwing it into concurrent training, because I love simple programming.

Simple programming for me is just effective. I should say simple and effective. I love simple and effective programming because I don't have to think about a lot. I'm doing this thing, I'm doing that thing, I'm done. But it's also very demanding and it's going to be very effective. So if I was to do this like in a single day trying to do concurrent training, I might do something like 10x10 pull ups and then run a couple miles.

Or run some intervals. Or do bench press 10x10. And then, yeah, run or bike or ski or whatever your other modality is. Or maybe you want to do some sort of metabolic conditioning or mixed motor activity, something like that. And so if you're combining things, I would do just one exercise, you know, each day, so like bench press one day, pull ups the next day, you know, squat the next day and just do that 10 by 10 and then do your conditioning element after the fact.

And it's just super effective. I've done this over and over again. It's very effective. We programmed it that way, but if you just want to follow like standard, like I just want to be on a strength program, then do GVT, you would do two exercises like bench, pull up, and then you could do some additional accessory work that doesn't follow the 10 by 10 protocol.

So if we did like bench press 10 by 10, pull ups 10 by 10, then you do accessory work, dumbbell flies, face pulls, something like that. Three sets of 10, 12, anything like that. So anyway, that is German volume training. Absolutely one of my favorite programming methodologies. If you want to see what this looks like, we program it periodically throughout our programming at Garage Gym Athlete.

We use a lot of different, simple and effective methodologies like this one. So you can go to garagegymathlete.com, sign up for a free trial and check it out. For all of our athletes who are sticking around doing the training, we really appreciate you. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Thanks for being a part of the community, but that's it for this one.

Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.