is it more effective to do each muscle group once per week or multiple times? I read somewhere that the muscle recovers after 72 hours and thus you should do each muscle group twice a week, i also read that although that may be true the nervous system takes longer to recover and you should wait a whole week to exercise it again?
Which is most effective for growth in people’s experience or knowledge. i’m natural and don’t use any steroids and am ectomorphic. i weigh 154lbs and am 5 foot 10 inches tall body fat approx 13%.
Most beginners can probably get away with doing body parts twice a week, I trained biceps 3 times a week as a newb…which may be why they hit 18 so quickly.
There are no blanket rules for all people. Your food intake and weight lifted have more to do with how much you train a certain muscle group.
I prefer multiple. However, I think the thing most people overlook is that they do get stimulation on most muscle multiple times a week.
Even on a 5 way split there is typically a lot of overlap.
for instance: If you do shoulder presses and bench on separate days, you just hit tris/front delts twice.
If you do deads and upper back separately, you’ve hit upper back twice.
if you do upper back and biceps separately, you are hitting biceps twice.
Most people hit most muscle more than once a week.
One big factor in structuring you program should be finding out what kind of frequency you can handle. And remember, different muscle can handle more than others.
From my own experience, i just feel like i’m not doing enough when i only hit each muscle group once a week. By the time i get to that bodypart again it feels like its been forever since i hit it last. Just try out twice a week and see how it feels, if you feel overloaded move to once a week. If you’re like me and once a week seems like years, find somewhere in the middle like twice every nine or ten days.
I mix shit up, I have had great results from training everything once a week high volume and I am experiencing great results now training everything twice every 8 days with lower volume, higher frequency.
I’m nobody important, but I think it’s really an individual thing.
Also, there’s a good thread in T-Cell about this called, “Body Part Once Weekly?” Or something like that. Should be on the first page.
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
I mix shit up, I have had great results from training everything once a week high volume and I am experiencing great results now training everything twice every 8 days with lower volume, higher frequency.[/quote]
x2
Actually just finished reading that whole thread, very good thread. I have been using a program where I am hitting a body part twice per week or more (depending on the volume), Lately I have stalled, I have been using this routine for about 3 months, I am planning on going on Back/Bi Chest/tri Legs/Shoulders type split.
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
Truth, I may only work certain muscle groups once per week, but that one session is all work. But I do agree that different focuses work for different people, so just experiment and keep what works, ditch the waste.
[quote]JaseHxC wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
Truth, I may only work certain muscle groups once per week, but that one session is all work. But I do agree that different focuses work for different people, so just experiment and keep what works, ditch the waste.[/quote]
I agree with this…
But during my 5/3/1 cycles I do 100 chins 2x a week and that has really, really helped by back…
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
Yeah…unless you are the beginner asking questions like this. I train body parts NOW once a week on average with whatever group I am trying to bring up trained twice. Right now that usually means either biceps or shoulders.
There are no blanket rules for everyone…and most people who made the most progress as beginners were training muscle groups more often than just once a week even if they were on a 5 day rotating cycle where maybe only 1 or 2 of those days get repeated.
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
I mix shit up, I have had great results from training everything once a week high volume and I am experiencing great results now training everything twice every 8 days with lower volume, higher frequency.[/quote]
Good post. I hope most here are making the type of progress you have if they are giving advice.
There’s at least 2 things about training that make questions like this fundamentally difficult:
- Unequal comparisons – where not all else is held equal – can give invalid answers due to being unequal.
So we might have it that for our comparison to make sense, we should hold all else equal.
Then I might say, If you are training the same total number of hours per week, with the same rest period between sets (therefore, same total work) then training bodyparts once per week vs twice per week is not a question of training them with any greater amount of work or any less, but of training them either less frequently and a greater amount at a time, or twice as frequently but only half as much at a time.
And some will find advantage in the greater amount being done at one time; some will find advantage in the more days available for recovery/healing; some will find that entirely enough was done with the smaller amount; and some will find advantage in the greater frequency.
- On the other hand, holding all else equal may very well have one of the protocols not being used at its best.
So the most valid comparison may NOT be the above.
- My point is, both approaches can be valid and the thing to do is to see what works, and for the same individual it might be that one approach remains the better one for years on end, while for another individual switching it up may at some times be better than staying on the same protocol.
And as mentioned, for the same individual some bodyparts might do better one of these ways, and other bodyparts the other way.
There is no one answer to this and that’s why after all these years there is no cut-and-dried answer to it.
I used to make progress training a muscle once a week and stalled out after a while. Once I bumped it up to every 5 days I immediately saw regular progress again. I’m wondering if getting older (lower t-levels) means your muscles decompensate sooner than when you’re young. Do any of you think the “window of opportunity” between having just recovered and grown, to detraining gets shorter over time?
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
What criteria are you using to KNOW if you’ve damaged the muscle enough?
Nice new avatar bonez haha!
/end hijack
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
Name me a split with exercise selection that accomplishes that.
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
What criteria are you using to KNOW if you’ve damaged the muscle enough? [/quote]
The only one that matters I’d wager - visible progress.
I mean, you can’t just say it’s because of how sore you feel - that’s not an accurate indicator of growth. However, if you train each bodypart once every 5 - 7 days and you’re getting bigger and stronger every week - or at least getting bigger and stronger on a reasonably consistent basis - then I would think that would be your criteria for measuring success.
I’ve done it both ways, more frequency, less volume. Less frequency, more volume…but personally once a week per bodypart seems to work for me…
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
99% of successful bodybuilders train each muscle once every five to seven days.
Besides, if you damage a muscle enough, you will NEED five to seven days. [/quote]
99%? that’s a lofty number, that’s damn near all of em’, you sure about that?