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Author Topic: Hitting a muscle once a week vs. Twice a week  (Read 1652 times)
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« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2010, 04:35:27 AM »

We should also keep in mind that there is a lot more to it than just doing full body, splits or how many times a week you work a muscle group. People are biased against full body regimes, once their progress slows down, they go for splits. However, there are a hundred things you can do in a full body workout. Changing sets/reps, using techniques such as rest & pause, priming CNS, ramping the weight up, changing the volume pairing different exercises, etc. Anything you can think of in a split. It's all about what you need. In fact if you have a weak point, you can train there on a day as if you're doing a split, and do this more than once a week if your recovering abilities are good, while you keep doing full body workouts 3 times a week (excluding exercises which work that specific bodypart). So that would be a combination of splits & full body workouts.
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« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2010, 08:40:29 AM »

I prefer working each muscle twice per week as I found I reached a plateau doing a 5 day split.  Also when you split so many muscles over 5 days it is difficult to incorporate the big compund lifts without overtraining.  My routine is to do chest triceps and shoulders (excluding rear delts & traps), then following day the back biceps traps and rear delts, then legs, lower back and abs on third day and I then repeat this.  So I work out 6 days per week and work all muscles twice and they all get 3 days of rest, which is perfectly adequate when your body gets used to it.  Also working the muscles out this way gives you less doms than when you give them a week to recover because a week for a muscle to recover is too long and is in a very untrained state the next time it is worked so will of course hurt more and longer.  Of couse it is all a matter of opinion but from articles I have read it seems in the pre steroid days people didn't give each muscle a week to recover.
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« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2010, 09:20:36 AM »

i.m.o , its better to decide on your own...it takes a while for anyone to get to a level where u can really exhaust a muscle group and bring it to a level where the recuperation time goes to five to 7 days... on the other hand once u r already training for more than a year, u r supposed to be able to hit your muscles to a real hight intensity and/or volume at one training session.. the problem is more of psychological.. after 2-3 days of such training u notice a swelling and feel kind of tight inside your skin... and then u don't want to let it go..u feel like hitting them again...
the fact is whatever works..the important thing is to be coherent.. as someone claimed here..he has noticed considerable gains in training twice a week..after more than 2 years..the factor is actually doing it continuously for 2 years... moreover its not a crime to have a fav muscle group and concentrate on it more..its very normal ... i have a similar problem with my arms ..kind of bigorexic about them... but thats my motivation of training as well.. its not a good idea prevent people by telling its wrong...its more important to listen to  your body..and note your progress..
if u see in the next lifting session you r feeling stronger .then why not. But i.m.o, its better to try different types of exercises if u r training twice a week... for me if one day a direct isolation, the other day is compound ones..
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