To continue with my “Basics of Muscle Growth” series, the next topic I want to discuss is training frequency. As a natural lifter (or enhanced for that matter), the more often your body is in a state of muscle growth, known as muscle protein synthesis, the more muscle you are going to be able to grow. And what stimulates muscle growth? Weight training! (Obviously I mean weight training following the principles of progressive tension overload that I discussed in my previous blog). And how long does muscle protein synthesis stay elevated? Well, research has shown that muscle protein synthesis stays elevated post workout for up to 48 hours. That’s it.
So basically, the more frequently you train, the more muscle you have the potential to grow. If you can hit a muscle about every two days, you are going to maximize its growth potential. This is the reason that for natural lifters, body-part splits (i.e. chest on Monday, Back on Tuesday, etc.) are the least efficient routines to build muscle, even though they are the most popular routines for people to use. You may wonder where this popularity comes from if they are the least effective method of building muscle. Simply put, they gained popularity through exercise/bodybuilding magazines and steroid using professional bodybuilders. A steroid user’s ability to recover and grow after 30 sets of legs or 18 sets of chest in a single day far outstrips anything a natural bodybuilder could hope to achieve and this is why body part splits are effective for juicers. Old school bodybuilders who built amazing physiques without the massive amount of steroids used today did so by using either full body routines or upper/lower splits. They learned from experience what science has later proven: increased training frequency coupled with moderate volume per muscle group results in optimal muscle growth over time.
There is of course a limit to muscle growth based on the body’s ability to recover from your workouts, so you have to find a good balance between frequency, how often you workout, and training volume, the workload you are applying to your muscles when you workout (i.e. how many sets you do for a particular muscle). For example, if you are doing a full body routine every other day, do one chest exercise each day. That’s it. Do whatever exercise you prefer that day. It could be weighted dips one day or incline dumbbell presses the next (which will both hit your front delts and triceps effectively as well). Pound out 5 sets and move on to your next exercise. You will stimulate adequate muscle growth in your chest, front delts and triceps, will allow your body adequate time and ability to recover (by not beating the shit out of your chest, tris and front delts with 15 sets) and you will be back in the gym within 48 hours to stimulate even more growth.
On an upper/lower split, with say, 3 days of rest before you hit, for example, upper body again, you would want to do at least two sets for each major muscle group. So, using chest as an example (since everyone loves to train chest), you could do flat barbell presses and dumbbell flies.
If you are still dedicated to your body part split, think about it this way. 48 hours after you hit a particular muscle, it is not growing anymore. You are then spending the next 5 days without any stimulus on that muscle and no potential for growth in it. And don’t think that you are necessarily stimulating much more growth in your muscles since you are doing so many more sets on that one day. Each set you do gets you a diminishing return. In other words, you stimulate a lot more growth on your first set than you do on your twelfth of the day.
If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment below or hit me up on my Facebook page!
So basically, the more frequently you train, the more muscle you have the potential to grow. If you can hit a muscle about every two days, you are going to maximize its growth potential. This is the reason that for natural lifters, body-part splits (i.e. chest on Monday, Back on Tuesday, etc.) are the least efficient routines to build muscle, even though they are the most popular routines for people to use. You may wonder where this popularity comes from if they are the least effective method of building muscle. Simply put, they gained popularity through exercise/bodybuilding magazines and steroid using professional bodybuilders. A steroid user’s ability to recover and grow after 30 sets of legs or 18 sets of chest in a single day far outstrips anything a natural bodybuilder could hope to achieve and this is why body part splits are effective for juicers. Old school bodybuilders who built amazing physiques without the massive amount of steroids used today did so by using either full body routines or upper/lower splits. They learned from experience what science has later proven: increased training frequency coupled with moderate volume per muscle group results in optimal muscle growth over time.
There is of course a limit to muscle growth based on the body’s ability to recover from your workouts, so you have to find a good balance between frequency, how often you workout, and training volume, the workload you are applying to your muscles when you workout (i.e. how many sets you do for a particular muscle). For example, if you are doing a full body routine every other day, do one chest exercise each day. That’s it. Do whatever exercise you prefer that day. It could be weighted dips one day or incline dumbbell presses the next (which will both hit your front delts and triceps effectively as well). Pound out 5 sets and move on to your next exercise. You will stimulate adequate muscle growth in your chest, front delts and triceps, will allow your body adequate time and ability to recover (by not beating the shit out of your chest, tris and front delts with 15 sets) and you will be back in the gym within 48 hours to stimulate even more growth.
On an upper/lower split, with say, 3 days of rest before you hit, for example, upper body again, you would want to do at least two sets for each major muscle group. So, using chest as an example (since everyone loves to train chest), you could do flat barbell presses and dumbbell flies.
If you are still dedicated to your body part split, think about it this way. 48 hours after you hit a particular muscle, it is not growing anymore. You are then spending the next 5 days without any stimulus on that muscle and no potential for growth in it. And don’t think that you are necessarily stimulating much more growth in your muscles since you are doing so many more sets on that one day. Each set you do gets you a diminishing return. In other words, you stimulate a lot more growth on your first set than you do on your twelfth of the day.
If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment below or hit me up on my Facebook page!