13/09/2022
Some of you might ask ‘Oh and what about by split routine where I train every muscle just once a week?’. This is indeed a valid question & at least worth to re-evaluate whether your routine is as efficient as it could be if you have the goal of hypertrophy.
Studies suggest that training muscle groups at least twice a week promotes more growth than training them just once a week.
What has not been determined yet is whether training a muscle three times a week is superior to twice a week.
So if you do three sets of a chest exercise on Monday & on Thursday, you will likely grow bigger muscles compared to doing six sets on Monday only.
The theory behind this is that lifting weights opens a window of about 48 hours for muscle growth. After that, your muscles no longer grow (or just minimally).
Remember that not only the frequency determines how efficient your muscles grow. There are more factors to take into consideration such as training volume per week, load (weights), resting periods and exercise selection.
I will post about those in detail soon. To get an idea how those factors play a role here, check out below:
Load (weights):
Weights should be challenging to complete the set CLOSE to failure with correct form
Volume:
The more volume you do, without exceeding your capacity to recover, the more you grow.
Volume for beginners: ~ 10 sets per week, close to failure
Volume for experienced lifters: ~ 15 - 20 sets per week, close to failure
Resting periods:
Depends on intensity and goal of the session, between 1 - 3 minutes
Exercise selection:
Good mix of isolated & compound as well as as machine and free weight exercises
Check out the research if you want to dive deeper into this topic:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102172/
https://journal.iusca.org/index.php/Journal/article/view/81/140
