I was doing each muscle once per week. I thought I would get better results if I did each twice per week now that I have built some stamina. I was thinking of splitting upper and lower body workouts now. I showed my new routine to the trainer at the gym (the good trainer) and he’s going to do a session with me to see how I train and then recommend a routine (not charging for it).
It seems he’s leaning toward doing each body part once per week which is what I had been doing. I’m so confused. I want to build muscle as quickly as possible. It seems most people work each muscle more than once per week except for the huge pros that need more time for muscles to recuperate.
I think this is an excellent point. I was an avid follower of Mike Mentzer’s HIT, only working out every 4-7 days. Not each bodypart, but each workout. A body part would be trained once every two weeks. I was afraid of overtraining, instead I misapplied the theory. What was I saying? /rant
I’m not advanced and you’re not advanced enough to need that much recovery. At this point I say the more the merrier. You will know quickly whether it will work for you or not. I don’t believe once/week taxes the muscles enough.
I am currently doing Rippetoe. Squat 3x/week, everything else is either once or twice. I have gone up or stayed the same every week on every lift. You can see the results in my log. Yes I have gained a lot of strength, but size as well.[If I’m rambling just bear with me, this ride will be over soon.]
Try it for 4-6 weeks and then compare your results to having only trained 1/week. Our bodies have amazing recovery abilities. Put it to the test.
Twice a week minimum. I would go 3x/week for sure. Since you’re a beginner, I would say as long as you have a day off between training a specific muscle group, you should be fine.
I think that people do once a week because it’s easier. They just think, “it’s back day, I’ll just do back.” and so on. When doing more frequent training, you need to get more bang for the buck so you need to rely on the big movements. These are hard. From a presonal trainers point of view, they are afraid of giving people “hard” workouts so they play it safe. (That’s my rant).
In your case, where you use big movements now, it’s not a problem.
I recommend you do 2 lower body workouts, 1 centered on back squats, 1 centered on deadlifts. 2 upper body, one mainly horizontal movements and one mainly vertical movements. This will allow you to hit most body parts twice a week with enough variety to allow you to go heavy each time.
[quote]stuward wrote:
I think that people do once a week because it’s easier. They just think, “it’s back day, I’ll just do back.” and so on. When doing more frequent training, you need to get more bang for the buck so you need to rely on the big movements. These are hard. From a presonal trainers point of view, they are afraid of giving people “hard” workouts so they play it safe. (That’s my rant).
[/quote]
Are you seriously implying that people do body part splits because they are ‘easier’? From my experience they can be MUCH more ‘powerful’ (for lack of a better word) than full body workouts. I am not talking about the stamina part, rather the ‘intensity’. High rep leg workouts are particularly brutal.
You also sound like you are saying that people who do splits don’t do the big movements. This is not true. The cornerstone of ANY program is the bread and butter lifts. The auxilary stuff comes afterwards.
You probably weren’t meaning to be so biast in your point though, as I know you are a knowledgable guy.
Many will work hard on a split program, and for a lot of people it’s the right program for them, but I think a lot of people who go to a gym, not people on the forum of course, do not want to work out hard. They want to “do the routine” and go home. These are not the type of people to squat or deadlift. This is the market that personal trainers in public gyms cater too.
I’m not trying to put down people who do splits, it’s just the PT attitude I was talking about.
I had slow recovery, but once a week per bodypart/movement was NOT enough for me.
For a relative beginner doing upper/lower split, I would do 2 upper and 2 lower workouts per week. Maybe even a third workout for one of them, but that might not be enough recovery for lower body.
Since iv been eating more once a week is not enough.
I have some freaky genetics so i guess im lucky but i usually lift two body parts in one day seperated though of course.
i lift about 4 days a week and i cound HIIT cardio as a leg day so i lift legs once a week and HIIT twice.