Andy Toth
If you’ve spent any time in the gym—or around calisthenics parks—you’ve probably heard some version of this:
“If you want to build muscle, you have to increase intensity.”
More weight. Harder exercises. Tougher progressions.
And while that advice isn’t wrong, it’s incomplete.
Over the years—training myself, coaching others, and building programs for Calisthenics.com—I’ve seen something very consistent:
👉 You absolutely can build muscle with high-volume training, even without increasing intensity
👉 But not all muscles respond the same way, and not forever
In calisthenics, we are taught that progressive overload means decreasing leverage. We make the move mechanically harder. A push-up becomes a pseudo-planche push-up. A pull-up becomes an archer pull-up.
This is excellent for neural adaptation—teaching your nervous system to fire more muscle units efficiently. It’s how you get the strength to hold a human flag. But here is the nuance we often miss: Neural strength does not always equal muscular hypertrophy.
The reigning godfather of hypertrophy research, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, has spent years studying what actually makes muscles grow. His meta-analyses have consistently shown that while mechanical tension (heavy load) is crucial, it is not the only pathway. You can achieve similar levels of hypertrophy using lighter loads, provided the volume is high and the effort is near maximal.
If we ignore the volume pathway, we are leaving half our potential gains on the table.
I already covered the fundamentals of calisthenics hypertrophy—exercise selection, progressive overload, and programming—in my article on how to build muscle with calisthenics. In this post, I want to go one level deeper and focus specifically on high-volume training: when it works, who it works best for, and how to use it without stalling.
What Do We Actually Mean by “High-Volume Training”?
Before we go further, we need to break a mental barrier. When I say "high volume without high intensity," I need to clarify what "intensity" means in this context.
In sports science, "intensity" usually refers to the percentage of your one-rep max (1RM). So, a one-arm push-up is "high intensity" (high load), and a regular kneeling push-up is "low intensity" (low load).
You can build muscle by lowering the load intensity. But—and this is the most critical "but" in this entire article—you absolutely cannot lower the effort intensity.
This is where most people fail with volume training. They confuse "high volume" with "junk volume." Doing 50 reps of something that is easy for you, nowhere near failure, is just cardio. It won’t build muscle.
To make high volume work for hypertrophy, you have to be willing to enter the "pain cave."
If you are doing sets of 20, 30, or even 40 reps, the last five reps of those sets need to be excruciating. Your rep speed should involuntarily slow down. Your muscles should be burning with the fire of a thousand suns due to metabolite accumulation. You should be questioning your life choices by rep 25.
So in summary, when I talk about high-volume training, I mean:
- More total reps
- More sets
- More time under tension
- Sometimes higher frequency
Why the "Pump" Actually Grows Muscle
Why does this work? Why would doing 25 reps with just my bodyweight make my chest grow as well as doing 6 reps with a 45lb vest?
It comes down to the three primary mechanisms of hypertrophy identified by researchers like Schoenfeld in his seminal 2010 paper, "The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training."
- Mechanical Tension: (Still present in volume training, especially in those final grinding reps).
- Muscle Damage: (Micro-tears that repair bigger and stronger).
- Metabolic Stress.
High-volume training is the king of Metabolic Stress.
When you perform high repetitions with relatively short rest periods, your muscles are under constant tension. This occlusion (blockage) of blood flow prevents the veins from clearing out metabolic byproducts like lactate, hydrogen ions, and inorganic phosphate. This is what causes that deep, burning sensation and the "pump" (cell swelling).
For a long time, people thought the "pump" was just temporary vanity. We now know that the cell swelling and the accumulation of these metabolites act as powerful signaling mechanisms for anabolism (muscle growth). The stress on the cell walls forces the muscle to reinforce its structure, increasing protein synthesis.
Furthermore, this type of training taps into a different kind of growth: Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy.
While heavy, low-rep training focuses on myofibrillar hypertrophy (increasing the density of the contractile fibers themselves), high-volume training increases the volume of the sarcoplasm—the fluid and energy stores (glycogen) within the muscle cell.
Some elite strength athletes dismiss this as "non-functional" muscle. I disagree. A muscle with larger glycogen stores has better endurance, recovers faster between sets, and yes, looks physically bigger and fuller. In the context of calisthenics, where we often need to hold positions for time or perform high-rep dynamic movements, this "endurance muscle" is highly functional.
The "Volume Responders": Muscles That Crave Reps
Not all muscles are created equal. This is something I learned the hard way after years of trying to build my calves with heavy, low-rep raises and getting nowhere.
Your muscles are made up of a blend of fibers: Type I (slow-twitch, endurance-focused) and Type II (fast-twitch, power-focused).
While all muscles grow from a mix of stimuli, muscles with a higher proportion of Type I fibers often respond stubbornly to low-rep heavy work. They are designed to resist fatigue. To force them to adapt, you need to exhaust them thoroughly, and that requires volume.
In calisthenics, we rely heavily on several muscle groups that fall into this category, yet we often train them like powerlifters.
1. The Calves
Calves are one of the clearest examples of a muscle group that thrives on high-volume training. The main reason is simple: they’re built for endurance. The soleus in particular is heavily slow-twitch and already works all day just from walking, standing, and stabilizing the ankle.
Because of that, low-volume calf training often doesn’t register as a strong enough signal for growth. What I see in practice is that low volume makes calves more efficient and resilient, but not noticeably bigger.
This becomes even more obvious if you look at endurance athletes. Cyclists, for example, already load their calves with thousands of repetitive contractions every ride, which raises the bar for what the muscle considers “new” stimulus. I talk about this in more detail in my article on calisthenics for cyclists, where I explain why strength training has to meaningfully change either volume or contraction type to improve performance. For someone with a strong aerobic base, short, low-volume calf work often just blends into their existing workload instead of triggering adaptation.
2. The Scapular Stabilizers (Mid/Lower Traps, Rhomboids)
These are the unsung heroes of the front lever, the planche, and the handstand. They are postural muscles designed to hold tension for long periods.
I used to try to strengthen my front lever retractors by doing heavy, low-rep weighted pull-ups. It helped my vertical pulling strength, but my static holds stalled. It wasn't until I started finishing my back workouts with ultra-high-rep (20-30 reps) bodyweight rows, scapular pulls, and band pull-aparts, focusing on the squeeze and the burn, that my upper back finally thickened up and my static hold times increased. I needed to exhaust those endurance fibers to trigger growth.
3. The Core and Abs
Your abs are meant to keep you upright all day. They have immense endurance capabilities. Doing sets of 8 hanging leg raises is great for strength, but if you want blocky, developed abs, you need to subject them to high-rep torture. Think 60-second hollow body holds, or sets of 30 lying leg raises with controlled tempos.
4. The Forearms
Like the calves, the forearms are under constant tension in daily life. They are stubborn. To make them grow, you need time under tension. Hanging for time until your grip utterly fails, or doing high-rep wrist curls/extensions, often works better for pure size than just doing heavy deadhangs.
I’ve come to view "Volume Tolerance" not just as a means to an end, but as a trainable athletic metric in itself. Just as you train to increase your 1RM, you should train to increase the amount of high-quality volume your body can handle and recover from in a single session. This "work capacity" is a vital component of overall athleticism that pure strength training often neglects.
Implementing High Volume in Calisthenics
Okay, so you’re convinced. You want to integrate high volume into your routine without just spending three hours at the park doing endless sets of five. How do we do this smartly?
We have to get creative with how we accumulate fatigue. Since we aren't adding external weight, we need other ways to ensure those high reps are high effort.
The Mechanical Drop-Set
This is my favorite way to induce high-volume hypertrophy in a short amount of time. In the weight room, a drop-set means stripping weight off the bar when you hit failure. In calisthenics, we "strip" mechanical disadvantage.
You start with the hardest variation of a move, hit near-failure, and immediately transition to an easier variation to keep the set going.
- The Push Example: Start with feet-elevated push-ups. Do as many as you can until your form breaks (say, 12 reps). Immediately drop your feet to the floor and continue doing regular push-ups until failure (maybe another 8 reps). Immediately put your hands on a bench (incline push-ups) and grind out the last few reps until your chest is on fire. That’s one "set." Do three of those, resting 90 seconds between them. Your chest will be decimated.
Density Training (AMRAPs)
This approach fixes the time and tries to increase the volume within that timeframe. It’s incredible for driving metabolic stress because the rest periods naturally shorten as you get tired.
Set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes. Pick two antagonistic exercises (e.g., dips and rows). Perform 5 reps of dips, then immediately 5 reps of rows. Keep cycling back and forth, resting only as much as you absolutely need to keep your form clean. Your goal is to get as many total rounds as possible in the time limit.
The first few rounds feel easy. The last few minutes are pure lactic acid hell. This is fantastic for overall upper body mass.
The "Death Set" Finisher
If you love your strength work and don't want to give it up, this is the easiest implementation. Do your normal strength-focused routine (your heavy weighted pull-ups, your planche progressions).
Then, at the very end of the workout, pick one exercise for that muscle group and do one single set to absolute, total failure, aiming for the 25-50 rep range.
If you did a heavy push day, finish with a set of push-ups on your knees, just pumping them out until you cannot push yourself off the floor. If it was a pull day, grab a low bar, put your feet on the ground to assist, and do assisted pull-ups until your lats seize up.
This ensures you have fully exhausted every muscle fiber and maxed out the metabolic stress signaling, without interfering with the energy needed for your primary strength work earlier in the session.
Conclusion
I am not telling you to abandon heavy training or high-leverage skill work. That is the soul of calisthenics.
But if you have been banging your head against a wall, unable to gain size, or if your joints are screaming for a break from the heavy loads, it is time to respect the power of volume.
Don't look down on the high-rep work as "easy." When done with sufficient effort—pushing into that uncomfortable burning zone where growth happens—high-volume bodyweight training is brutally hard and incredibly effective.
Stop fearing the pump. Embrace the burn. And watch your physique finally catch up to your strength.
