1 times every 5,6,7 days Vs 3 times a week

[staticguard]

I see a huge difference between all the training principles available on this site.

One of them is the rest required between workouts after training a muscle group.

Some pretend you can train the same muscle 3 times a week, others go with one workout every 5-7 days.

Who is right? Who is wrong?
Maybe they are both right, it's just a matter of goal.

I've been training for over 10 years now, it might sounds stupid, but I got good results using both types of rest.

It's always about "stimulating" the muscle, maybe to alterne both would be good?

There is not much information on rest between workout on this site, or maybe I just looked at the wrong place.

[FrankMcKeever]

AMEN! I do the same muscle group every other day....and everyone tells me I'm a retard. I've put on 17 lbs so far though, so I can't be THAT 'retarded.'

However, knowing which way is technically better would be nice...

[slippy]

Current consensus is that, in most normal training circumstances, protein synthesis stays elevated for no more than about 2 days. The hard-to-find McDougall study, used to support HST's scheme, suggests about 36-48 hours. But it's difficult to ascertain with the McDougall study whether it's heavy weightlifting or merely anaerobic activity in the muscle that creates this timetable. The Haddad studies seem to suggest roughly the same timetable, though this has been a source of significant debate among us geeks.

But some muscle gaining can continue through the rest of the week as long as the sarcolemma hasn't finished remodelling. CSA can continue to improve due to glycogen replenishment. But, most of the real myofibrillar hypertrophy will be done within 72 hours, if not much shorter than that.

Mainstream studies have shown that CSA increases were significantly better with 2x-a-week training over once-a-week training. However, differences between 2x-a-week and 3x-a-week training seemed negligible.

So, consensus from both mainstream and space-age academics goes that muscles *should* be hit at least twice a week with anaerobic exercise. Maybe more. We're not sure whether that actually means lifting heavy at least twice a week. But it sure wouldn't hurt if the trainee did.

In summary, it appears with the current science that *adequate* (i.e. at least twice a week) frequency is THE most important variable for hypertrophy. THEN, it's progressive resistance.

[Madcow2]

Here is Poliquin's Frequency article on this site: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/charles3.htm. He tends not to take strong stances for bodybuilding related sites.

It's also important not to take frequency in isolation. If you are pushing hard 1x per week, you don't suddenly take that and start doing it 2x or 3x per week as this effectively doubles or triples your weekly workload. That's just too much unless you were really sandbagging your 1x. You'd start by distributing that workload evenly so 6 sets of squats is 3 sets for 2x per week and 2 sets for 3x per week. Soon you'll likely find you can handle quite a bit more but you don't go making 100% jumps all at once.

[staticguard]

Hi slipply thx for the info, you answered very well for Hypertrophy training. My readings also specifies that supercompensation is at his best after 36-48h of rest. Which means that you can "hit" a muscle group every 2 days.

But now I get the following problem : is the CNS (central nervous system) ready to go to train an other group of muscle on the following day? If not, that would mean that training upper body one day and lower body the next day is not the way to go, because CNS is not ready.

I wish I had 50 subject to do that experiment.

[staticguard]

thx for the info madcow.

It's funny that you talk about Charles Poliquin, because his book on training principles is on my wish list... but it's quite expensive.

[Madcow2]

CNS is a matter of fatigue, fatigue is a function of workload and the ability of the body to tolerate it - this is mainly why you don't double your volume suddenly by taking your 1x per week workout and doing it 2x per week. Fatigue is also cummulative - meaning what might be very stimulative for 3 weeks might bury you in 6.

Probably a bit more than you are looking for but overtraining/overreaching/fatigue is all about the nervous system: http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/...rtraining.html

[slippy]

But now I get the following problem : is the CNS (central nervous system) ready to go to train an other group of muscle on the following day? If not, that would mean that training upper body one day and lower body the next day is not the way to go, because CNS is not ready.

Actually, it can, but it depends on many variables. When people usually talk about CNS fatigue, they're really talking about a thing called neural drive, and neural drive's relationship with adrenal and cortisol response (i.e. systemic overtraining.) However, peripheral fatigue, anaerobic and aerobic conditioning, long-term adaptations with cortisol levels, and above all, FOOD intake, will play. As you can see, this is a complex subject. The simple answer is it varies from individual to individual, and that the Dual Factor model is designed to handle this.

As Madcow2 says, it's about adjusting your workload, usually making conservative estimates, in order to facilitate a higher frequency routine. Full-body routines is usually the most conservative scheduling scheme, because they force a pretty clear separation between activity and non-activity, what specialization is essential/necessary and what bodyparts can wait later, and also how high the metabolic response exercise imposes on you, thereby making bulk-diet issues easy.

It should be also noted that, the more strength-oriented the goals are, the more leeway and unique one's response becomes. Strength-specific training is perhaps more complex than hypertrophy training, because it involves so many functional variables. BUT the systems for such are also far more robust.

Personally, while I do use splits sometimes, I'm just not a big fan of the MWF split, once-a-week for muscle split. It's one thing to come down from higher frequency to MWF; it's another for especially a beginniner to start out this way and then wonder why they're getting pretty strong, but gaining a lot of fat rather than muscle during their bulk.