When I talk about frequency I’m talking to you about how often do you train your specific body part per week.
How often are you training legs, upper body, abs etc.
How do you do it?
Do you pick one muscle group and hammer it for 25 sets in a single session?
e.g 5 sets of squats, 5 sets of leg press, 5 sets of lunges, 5 sets of goblet squats and 5 sets of leg extension?
or
10 sets of bench, 5 sets of push ups, 5 sets of dips, 5 sets of cable fly?
Or do you hit that specific body part more than once a week?
If you are doing the same muscle group for 20 + reps then you are following a very popular but nowadays ‘old school’ way of training, called ‘split training’.
Here’s an example.
Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Off
Thursday Shoulders
Friday: Abs and Calfs
Saturday: Chest
Sunday: Off
Repeat!
This above example would involve 20-25 working sets smashing that same muscle to the point where it takes a week to recovery – ouch!
The frequency is fairly low here – once a week.
As you can tell by the email subject, I am a fan of frequency over intensity (opposite to the above example)
Nearly 12 months ago researchers at the University of Alabama looked at the effect of two different training frequencies in guys with several years of lifting experience.
Both routines involved three sets of nine different exercises working the whole body. The only difference was in how frequently each muscle group was trained.
The 3-day group (frequency) performed one set of each exercise three times a week. The 1-day group (intensity) performed three sets of each exercise once per week.
Even though the total weekly training volume was the same, it was the guys training each muscle group three times (frequency group) a week who saw the greatest gains in both size and strength.
The cool part of this study is that it controlled for subjects with training experience.
Sometimes training studies are skewed because they used untrained subjects and don’t take into account newbie gains!
So how do I recommend you do it?
Frequency obviously!
Instead of trying to hit your legs for 25 sets in one session break it up over 3 days and be smart with your exercise selection.
Go for big muscle movements such as squats, deadlifts, leg press and lunges.
Do 5 sets of squats and 3 sets of lunges on monday (8 sets).
Then perform 4 sets of deadlifts and 4 sets of hip thrusts on wednesday (8 sets).
Then hit 5 sets of leg press and 4 sets of leg extension on saturday (9 sets).
The beauty here is you can then allocate other training protocols into those sessions as well such as skill based training, other focus areas such as your upper body for example also.
Naturally, there’s no universally correct training frequency that works equally well for all people all of the time. But the vast majority of research, as well as the real-world experience of drug-free bodybuilders and strength athletes, shows that you’ll get better results training a muscle group more often than once per week.