Tom,
I did some more research into this matter - defaulting back to charles poliquin of T-nation who has worked with many olympians and elite bodybuilders...
Progressive overload is still the most important factor in muscular hypertrophy, and always trying to beat your last workout performance is good advice. But the research is very clear of the positive correlation between volume and growth. Simply put, the routine you're doing may not have enough volume for you.
............
So you need volume and you need progressive overload, but you also have to be mindful of not overtaxing the body's recuperative abilities. The way to achieve this is to have an effective volume reduction strategy.
This is pretty consistent with what we have been saying the whole time.
I guess the difference is that I am putting more emphasis on the progressive overload for the novice where you are putting more on the increased volume. Poliquin points out that overtraining becomes a big factor -- overtraining the novice is hard because of their readiness to recover but, at the same time, very easy because mosts novices don't know wtf they are doing.
I still think that my generalized recommendation will remain to be SS for the novice who is new and just got under a barbell the first time. Maybe for a client that I am coaching, if their goal is mass gain, I will have much more of a focus on higher volume isolations in conjunction with progressive overloading.
Even Poliquin says that you need both. I think that squatting for 10 as a novice would be a waste of time and ignoring the importance of progressive overload on the highly stressful core lifts -- I am of the camp that progressive overloading should be done on the core lifts (squat, DL, Bench, OH Press) and that the isolations should be done on isolationist workouts.
