Frequency of training for muscle growth. Research Review: How Often Should You Workout to Build Muscle? Key Point: All Strategies Work
Almost everyone who is just starting to conduct their first training in gyms, and experienced athletes often have the question: “Is it possible to train every day?”. It is important to understand that quality is more important than quantity. In addition to such basic components as sleep and proper nutrition, competent alternation of rest and loads is an integral part. Full recovery period muscular system is about 10 days.
To train correctly, you need to think over the program. She, as a rule, involves sleep and directly the amount of time for rest and training. World-class athletes train every day, morning and evening, with only one rest day per week. However, their prep program includes massage, supplements, and pharmacological support. All this is most often in short supply for an ordinary person. Therefore, the program of professionals will not work.
In addition to the number of days per week, an important factor are the hours spent in the gym. General rule for the leading systems, the alternation of cardio and strength exercises remains. The essence of the second type follows from the name, but the first one raises many questions. Cardio exercises are activities that build endurance, such as running or swimming. These are important components of any training that cannot be neglected.
There are various supplements with which the body can restore strength much faster, but the daily use of such substances can be bad for health.
The time for normal, but incomplete muscle rest is usually within 3 days. This figure varies greatly depending on experience. Beginners may need a whole week. A lot also depends on the muscles themselves. So, large ones suggest a long recovery, small ones, respectively, rest faster.
For example, legs, which occupy about 50% of the entire muscle mass bodies, it is often not worth loading. Hands, on the other hand, correspond to 25%, so they need 2 times less time to recover. The biceps, triceps, and shoulders should be trained more often than others, however, they are often used when working on larger ones. Therefore, it is important to take into account the indirect participation of one or another muscle group.
Number of workouts
How many visits should be gym per week for beginners and amateurs? Those who have recently decided to get a pumped-up body should stop at the scheme "1 day of training / 2 days of rest". But provided that the loads correspond to the level, and after the workout you will feel tired. If such a frequency of classes no longer causes any particular difficulties, then it is worth moving to the amateur stage, the number of classes will increase up to 3-4 times.
For those who want to lose weight, the number of workouts can vary greatly. The point is that when resetting excess weight cardio exercises are the priority, and they can be performed daily without harm to health. But you should not exercise through force, since exercising with excess weight is much more difficult, in addition, there is a possibility of a sharp deterioration in the condition. Therefore, before starting intensive weight loss, you should consult your doctor.
If use strength exercises, then the weight may, on the contrary, increase, as muscle mass will increase, which will not contribute to the destruction of fat. Therefore, it is worth moving on to such exercises only after losing a few kilograms thanks to cardio exercises.
If your only goal is to build muscle, then high-intensity interval training(HIIT) not for you. Of course, they burn fat well, but they are not at all suitable for gaining volume. Personal trainer Gregg Brooks recommends HIIT only for the initial stage - to burn fat and bring the body into normal physical shape. To build muscle mass, you will need to move on to weight training and appropriate nutrition.
Solution: “Growing mass is best done gradually,” advises personal trainer Danny Fisher. Therefore, be prepared for the fact that this is not the same rapid process as burning fat. Tighten your muscles more - this will help to increase their volume more quickly.
Mistake two: too long training
When it comes to HIIT, less is more. “In fact, such training should not last more than half an hour, otherwise there will be no result,” says trainer Ben Kamara.
Solution: Obvious but true: HIIT needs to be really intense. 10 sets of one minute in this case is equal in effect to a measured bike ride for seven hours - as stated in studies published in the scientific publication The Journal of Physiology. Thus, you will also save time: there will be time to admire your reflection in the mirror.
Mistake #3: Exercising too often
Since these workouts only take half an hour a day, have you decided to do them every day? But in vain. “If you really train like you should, then doing it every day will take your muscles to shreds, it will be very difficult for them to recover later,” Fischer warns.
Solution: Train four times a week, no more. And give yourself at least one day for complete unloading and rest. You did deserve it.
Mistake four: technically incorrect training
With HIIT, you will be like a Human Torch: your fat will melt before your eyes, but only if you do everything right and in right time. Exercising at the end of the day will certainly increase your metabolic rate, but this will only affect the food that you eat before bed (and we hope that you do not fill up at night).
Solution: The sooner you start training, the better. Exercising early burns your fat stores, as well as the calories you consume throughout the day. Eat an early breakfast an hour and a half before the start - otherwise you will feel sick during class. As you know, early birds get the best worms.
Mistake five: wrong warm-up
Starting HIIT without first stretching is a disaster. “This is the reason most injuries happen,” says Ben Kamara. So slow down and warm up properly.
Solution: As a pioneer, you must always be ready. Your body should be ready to immediately go to a fierce load after warming up. So while stretching, mimic the movements of your core workout, Brooks advises. This is how you protect yourself from injury.
Mistake #6: Too Much Equipment
Although you are preparing a superhero out of yourself, you are unlikely to need all his equipment. “It's a bonus, but you don't need a whole bunch of equipment,” Kamara assures. - If you do not calm down, then all this ammunition will quickly ruin you. Do you need it?"
Solution: HIITs are good because they are fairly loose-fitting - that is, you can buy dumbbells in packs, but you can achieve the same results without emptying your wallet. There are a million exercises that you can do without equipment. The main condition is that they make your heart work at 90% of its capacity.
Many athletes devote a lot of time to making a nutrition plan, training programs etc., but not everyone asks questions about the frequency of training and the duration of training, although these points are also very important for the effective progression of an athlete. The right training frequency allows you to progress faster in your athletic performance and avoid overtraining. In this article, we will talk about the optimal training frequency for bodybuilding.
Optimal frequency training is such a frequency of classes at which each next lesson falls on the peak of supercompensation. Supercompensation is a period when the trained parameter has a higher value compared to the initial value. Simply put, this is the period of time in which training will be most effective. Supercompensation is one of the recovery phases after training, there are 3 phases in total:
For each athlete, the period of supercompensation occurs at different times, depending on his individual characteristics and training regimen. As you can see, in order for training to bring the greatest effect, you need to know how often to train in order to get into the right phase.
If training is carried out very often, then the muscles will not have time to recover. This will only aggravate your situation, and each subsequent session will gradually lead to overtraining and stagnation. Also, frequent exercise can be part of training plan(as with split training), at this time the muscles will be tired more than usual and take a longer time to recover. For example, some professional athletes they train 6 days a week, but according to a split program, that is, in any case, each muscle group will have enough time to recover. Therefore, frequent training can be both beneficial and harmful, depending on what program you train (full body, split, top-bottom, etc.).
Infrequent exercise
If the frequency of training is low, then you will not be able to train in the supercompensation phase and the effectiveness of your training will decrease. Today, there are many different opinions about how often to exercise. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in his books that he trained every day 2 times, and Mike Mentzer wrote in his works that it is better to train no more than 2 times a week.
Modern experts believe that both of these options are extremely wrong and you need to look for a middle ground.
conclusions
Scientific studies have shown that muscle recovery takes an average of two days, and the peak of the supercompensation period occurs only on the 6-7th day after a good workout. Based on this information, we can say that the optimal frequency of training is 1 time per week for each individual muscle group. Since most athletes train 2-3 muscle groups per workout, it is best to do 3-4 workouts per week.
You spend several hours in the gym every day, you know all the equipment and feel at home among the tons of “iron”. But do you know how often you really need to? The answer may surprise you! Find out your optimal training frequency to make new growth.
You probably already guessed that the main mistake is with the wrong frequency. The most common variant of the training schedule is "three days a week": you work out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If this is your case, the good news is that you can do much, much better!
Even if everything is going great for you - the number of repetitions and approaches, optimal weight, rest between sets, and doing the exercises properly can all be useless if you're not training at the right frequency.
The right frequency of strength training
Here's a little secret to success. A fixed workout schedule, like three days a week, is absurd. He may fail you in the end. And here's why: as you progress, your workouts will be more exhausting and take longer to recover.
Recovery after physical activity demands a lot from most organs of the body, such as the liver, kidneys, and pancreas. If you are doing light workout it's unlikely to affect you in any way. Your recovery will be swift. But when you do grueling workouts with heavy weights and high intensity overload, it can take several days to fully recover.
An essential key to increasing the effectiveness of strength training is, therefore, to find a way to train properly. This will increase the intensity of each workout and give your body more time to recover.
The effectiveness of split training
Why "split" workouts won't help you avoid overtraining? There is a practice of "separating" workouts, for example: Monday - top part bodies, environment - Bottom part body. And while this is a reliable tactic, it alone will not solve the problem of a fixed training schedule. The reason is that every day is kidney day.
It doesn’t matter if you are working on your chest, arms, or today, there is not the slightest difference for the kidneys. They still need to filter all the metabolic waste coming from the blood so you can fully recover. And remember - until your body has fully recovered, you will not grow new muscles. This is the law of physiology. Thus, separation reduces the amount of work that the kidneys and other organs have to do, but as you get stronger and lift more weight, it will take the kidneys even longer to do their job.
The most correct training frequency
Once you truly understand how often you need to train, your results will increase. Here is an example from life.
After the coach and the bodybuilder discussed training and the lack of progress - in particular, in - it was decided to take a break from training for three weeks. The bodybuilder said that he could not give up going to the gym for such a long period of time. This a common problem all serious bodybuilders. Psychologically, if you want to make progress, it is very difficult to do what seems to be "doing nothing". After all, in the absence of training, you seem to admit defeat. But in fact, your body needs time to recover. And this is the most ideal time to consider how often to train further and make a new training plan. Time without training is not wasted, it is critical to the growth process. It took a lot of arguments to convince him, and he took a three-week break.
Two months later, he called the coach and told about the results, which shocked everyone. His strength increased in all parts of the body, and the strength of his shoulders increased. The first workout after the break was his personal record. Now he trains once every nine days: between workouts of the same part of the body, 9 days pass. This schedule is used when separating upper/lower body workouts. Prior to this adjustment in training frequency, the bodybuilder only trained four times in nine days. Look at the numbers, they clearly illustrate the example.
The bodybuilder did not include the time in which he benches, so his factor or power index is not known, but total weight in bench press went from 6940 kg per workout to 11460 kg after he did nothing for three weeks. When you have last time was such a productive three-week break?
Think about it. Three weeks without training at all! Our hero has only been at home for three weeks, but his progress is ahead of everyone he has trained with! His companions couldn't believe their eyes. The same person who found 180kg 20 reps “very difficult” is now lifting 230kg in 16 reps - after doing the exercise with 200kg and 20 reps! The next time he presses in the gym is already 270 kg. And let his goon buddies be concerned that he "missed" the last 20 workouts! There is something to think about, right? Maybe it's time to rethink your training frequency?
How to properly and often exercise for weight loss
The frequency of training when burning fat mass obeys a slightly different law than the frequency for muscle growth. To lose fat and train every day, the main thing is to prevent the development of overtraining. The high frequency of training dictates the need for the use of anti-catabolics for protection. muscle tissue from destruction. In this case, bodybuilders are advised to reduce the number strength training up to 2 per week, and devote the rest of the time to aerobic training.
How to avoid overtraining
To avoid overtraining and find your optimal training frequency, you need to carefully monitor the progress that you make with each exercise of the program. Look for any signs of slowing or stopping progress. Lack of change in one exercise is a warning sign. And the lack of progress in two or more exercises is a danger signal, which means you need to take a break.
3 signs of overtraining and how to deal with them
- The weight used in each exercise does not increase
- Strength training is primarily associated with progressive loading. This means that you should return to the gym in a fully recovered state and lift the weight slightly heavier than you lifted during your last workout.
- The number of repetitions or static hold time in each exercise does not increase
If your weight in the exercise has not increased (see above), then the number of repetitions or the time of the static hold should increase. Recent studies show that increasing the duration of a static hold to 12 seconds is less beneficial than increasing weight with more short time retention.
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Supplements for Proper Workouts
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It took you longer to complete the same workout.
Progress is determined by the intensity of muscle output. The intensity is a function of time. So, even if you are doing the same workout today that you did three days ago, but you managed to do it in less time, then your intensity has increased. But the opposite is also true, so keep an eye on the extra time it takes to complete the same workout. Low intensity will not help build new muscles, keep this factor in mind when deciding how often and how to train correctly.
Try it on your next workout
For each exercise, multiply the number of reps by the weight you're doing those reps with. For example, in you lift 80 kg 12 times, in the end you will get the number 960. The next time you bench press, see if this number has increased. If not, then you haven't fully recovered, which means you need more rest between workouts.
How long have you been exercising at the same frequency? Look for warning signs indicating that your training frequency is not optimal. Throw in an extra one and you can turn stale and boring workouts into fantastic mass gains and bursts of strength.
The program was provided by Alexei Hernandez Ortega, an instructor at the Ant Gym (World Junior Powerlifting Champion 2005, European and World Champion 2006, Russian Men's Champion 2008)
Longer or more often?
Today we have a huge selection of a variety of programs, including mass recruitment. However, many of them do not build muscle faster than the protocols that were used back in the 60s of the last century. Of course, in our time, bodybuilders are much more massive, but thanks to innovations not in training, but in pharmacology.
Why is that? Have we reached our physiological limit and it is simply impossible to gain muscle faster? Or are there other, more advanced methods that we have yet to discover?
Let's move from philosophical questions to practical solutions - we can stimulate muscles more in two ways:
1. Load them longer with each workout.
2. By exercising more often.
Following the first path, we will quickly run into a dead end. Why am I sure of this? I think if 100 sets of curls in two hours added a centimeter or two to the biceps, then we would all do just that. But anyone who has tried extending a workout to two, three, or even four hours knows how unpromising this path is. Of course, increasing the volume to some extent brings more mass, but you cannot endlessly stimulate the muscles without damaging the joints and the immune system.
So we are left with the second way: to train more often. Obviously, twenty workouts will give more mass than four. But here the question arises of accumulated fatigue and full recovery, how to adjust everything?
I have been experimenting with frequent training (4 or more per week) for various purposes since 2001, and here is my new version for hypertrophy.
How to train
Choose one exercise that you can do daily, such as push-ups or pull-ups.
Continue to go to the gym and train according to your usual program, but work out this exercise according to special rules.
Rule 1: Start small
This is the most important point. You can ignore the rest, but be sure to remember this one: in the first few weeks, you should feel that training is too easy.
I started my six-month pull-up experiment on January 5, 2011, doing just 5 reps. And the next day he added a whole one. I could easily do 20 pull-ups, but I already knew how important it is not to go overboard with the volume at the very beginning. The results are as follows: I did 182 pull-ups all day on July 1, 181 the day before, and 180 the previous day. And no joint pain because I progressed very slowly over six months, accustoming my body to increased volume.
Everyone wants fast results, and you, too, may decide to start harder. No need.
Grab an exercise where you can do 12-22 reps without much effort. For example, you are doing 13 pull-ups - divide them into two sets, 1x7 and 1x6. This is where you should start. The next day, add only one rep and do two sets of 7. Spread them as far apart as possible, one set in the morning, the other in the evening. At the very beginning, while the total volume is small, you do not need to rest for a long time, but gradually you will reach several dozen pull-ups that need to be spread farther.
Rule 2: Choose useful exercise and do all reps cleanly
First, every repetition must be perfect. There is no excuse for poor technique when you are only doing half of your maximum.
Secondly, here is a list of exercises that I recommend for the frequent training method. Choose any and, of course, exclude it from your regular program, according to which you continue to work in the gym.
Pull up: the best option is on the rings. If they are not, then on the handles with a neutral grip (palms facing each other).
Push-up: choose an option for your purposes, for example, to focus on triceps - with narrow arms; for the development of everything shoulder girdle- yoga push-ups or handstand push-ups.
Push-ups on the uneven bars: also better not on bars, but on rings. If there are no rings, then parallel bars and very neat. Immediately eliminate bench / chair push-ups when you lean your hands behind your back. And in general, if you have problems with your shoulders, vertical push-ups are not for you.
Lunge: any option. I prefer back lunges or with the back foot on a sliding platform.
Squat on one leg: whatever option suits you. It is difficult for most people to do it with their free leg extended forward, so it is better to stand with the working leg on a raised platform.
Standing on one leg: take a dumbbell in each hand or one dumbbell in the hand of the non-working side. When in doubt about the choice of weight, always lean towards the lower side.
Rule 3: stretch more than you intended
Although frequent training leads to rapid muscle growth, any growth takes time. Tune in for months, not weeks.
I, too - like everyone else - would like a 30-day program for maximum mass, but this does not happen in life. In my six-month experiment, most of the muscles have increased in the last two months. Of course, it's not easy to find time for a hundred pull-ups every day, but the results were worth it.
So how long can you stay on this frequent training pattern? Until you gain as much muscle as you want. Maybe eight weeks will be enough, maybe it will take four months. Continue to gradually increase the volume and help the muscles recover. Switch to another variation of the exercise if necessary.
It happens that you have reached a certain maximum of pull-ups and can no longer add - stupidly there is not enough time. For example, they trained for several months and stopped at 80 repetitions per day. In this case, continue to pull up 80 times daily, but try to gain this volume in fewer sets. You still have a couple of months of growth ahead of you.
What to watch
Of course, I will not be able to describe all the nuances in this article, but here are a couple of important points.
Thoracic spine
When you start a program that has a lot of pull-ups, you need to remember to stretch the thoracic spine as well. If this area becomes enslaved, problems arise in the cervical region, and in the lumbar region, and in the shoulders. Every time a client comes to me with a complaint of shoulder pain, I first check his chest.
Here's how to check what you have: press the dumbbells while standing, palms facing forward. If the body does not change position, then you have passed the test. If the bottom chest rises, that is, there are problems. Do yoga - downward facing dog pose.
It has been practiced for thousands of years, and for good reason. In my opinion this is best exercise to restore the normal state of the thoracic region.
With arms and legs straight, lift your pelvis as high as you can by pulling in your belly and tucking your chin into your chest. Hold this position for one minute, inhaling slowly and deeply through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.
Then do the dumbbell test again. If thoracic region the spine is not so tight, you can already squeeze the dumbbells over your head without lifting the lower ribs.
knee movement
Let me remind you that I recommend only unilateral movements for frequent leg training. But in any exercise for the lower body, you must ensure that the knees do not come down. This usually happens when you are trying to get up from a heavy squat. Always make sure that the knee does not bend inward in any part of the amplitude.
