Lifting Twice a Day

As I've stated a few times before, training split usually doesn't matter that much. But lately I've seen people asking if they could do two full body workouts on a single day, or if they could work legs in the morning, back in the evening using the volumes Scooby recommends for an advanced lifter. The answer to both is no. It's not as simple as saying "I won't be using my legs in the evening so it's fine!". We have a recovery capacity and you'll quickly burn out if you use that much volume twice a day, regardless what part of your body you're working out. But it is entirely possible to lift twice a day if you don't forget a few keys to consider and can design countless splits which include AM-PM sessions. I've done it for a pretty long time now and am satisfied with results.

First thing to consider is that, volume and intensity of each workout should be high enough for adequate fatigue, low enough to let your CNS recover until the next session. If you manage CNS fatigue, you'll pass the biggest obstacle. To do this, workout sessions shouldn't last very long. Half hour is sufficient.Remember, it is not about working out more, it is about spreading it into more sessions.

Splitting up full body routines
This is the suggestion I want to make whenever I see someone who has only 2 days a week to work out. For someone who trains twice a week (Or three, for that matter), full body workouts are arguably the best way to train. But training only 2DAW, you may not reach the weekly volume required per muscle group. And when you try, it gets too hard to do 8-9 exercises in one session. So the question: Can you train twice a day on those two days a week? If so, you can reach the required volume easier while keeping the intensity high for each exercise. Train lower body in the morning, and upper in the evening (With 6 hours or more in between). Each sessions should take about half hour. If you keep it intense and dense enough, you'll get sufficient stimulation until the each session. Or you can make it more fun, and try something like this:

Workout A
AM Session
Lower body (Squat-based)

PM Session
Chest & Upper back

Workout B
AM
Lower body (Deadlift-based)

PM
Shoulders & Arms

Well definitely shoulders & arms are less demanding than upper body workout of the session A, so I placed the deadlifts in morning session of the workout B, as deadlifts also work the upper body pretty brutally so it evens out. This can work pretty much for those who work out 2 days a week, or it can be done in AXBXAXX-BXAXBXX fashion. In both cases, don't keep the workout sessions too long. This actually has advantages over completing the full body all at once, because if you're advanced enough to use serious weights, it gets really hard to do anything right after squats or deadlifts. But when you have 6 hours or more until you work your upper body, you can go intense on every exercise, besides you can throw in more additional exercises. There are countless options though, for instance, you can do the workout A and workout B only once a week (So training twice on these days) but make another full body session that has no AM-PM separations and do it in between A and B. So you'd train 3 days a week but you'd have 5 training sessions. I also enjoyed this split:

Workout A
AM Session
Squat

PM Session
Upper body pull

Workout B
AM Session
Deadlift

PM Session
Upper body push

Splitting up full body workouts also work very well when you want to increase a lower body exercise. The more often you do it, the faster it increases, so many programs require you to squat/deadlift three times a week. Of course, you can't do the other big during this cycle, but it works very well when you work on your lower body lift in the morning, and upper body in the evening (That's what I'm currently doing). You don't want to lose upper body mass or strength on a squat cycle - even though PO may say just doing squats will increase your upper body strength so you don't need anything for the upper body. Well, you do need.

Splitting up splits
You know, the classical "Chest&Triceps, Back&Biceps, Legs&Shoulders" split. Well, many people complain that they can't hit triceps hard after working the chest, same goes to back and biceps, even though this may not be a problem for those who have genetically well-responding arms, nobody I know of can train legs and shoulders in the same session once they are able to move serious weights in a leg workout. So, still training 3DAW, but Chest in the morning, triceps in the evening, back in the morning, biceps in the evening, legs in the morning and shoulders in the evening. But my personal preferance in that case would be splitting shoulders into two sessions, work front delts with triceps in the evening, medial and posterior heads with biceps, and don't do anything else on the leg day.

Of course, you have countless options. The key is, do the more demanding workout in the morning and leave the smaller to the evening, because they won't be taxing on your body. You can also go for something like:

Monday
AM: Back (Break the rule of training chest on monday)
PM: Front delts + Triceps

Wednesday
AM: Chest
PM: Rear & Lateral delts + Biceps

Friday
Leg


Specialization
What do you do when you have a weak bodypart? Some people say work it for longer by adding sets, while others say keep doing what you're doing and it will catch up. Well I don't agree with either. I normally have proportional build but there have been times when I lost muscle due to not being able to work out for some reason, and I hadn't lost equally. Going back to regular training didn't let me catch up. I personally believe that if one body part is lagging behind, you should train it more frequently. Not working "more" or "longer", but more frequently. Let's say I have a lagging chest, and I normally do 12 sets for it weekly. Increasing it to only 15 (Not that much at all), but training it 3 times a week (5 sets per session) will give me better results. The volume is not considerably higher, but as I start fresh each time, I'm able to go heavier, it definitely helps better with strength but it has helped me with catching up in terms of size as well. The rest of bodyparts are to be trained regularly (Preferably a bit of less volume than regular hypertrophy training to avoid burnout), they could be worked through splits or full body routines, or both at the same time. Let's say I train my chest 3 times a week, I could either spend other days on training other bodyparts, or just train them in the evening and take 4 days off. The latter is lately what I'd prefer, as I've been getting better results by increasing my off days for anaerobic training. So a split could look like this:

Monday-Wednesday-Friday: AM:Chest (Flat press on monday, incline on wednesday, dips on friday) PM: Full body

Or:

Monday
AM-Chest (Flat press) +Arms (Only 3 sets for biceps and triceps each)
PM-Leg (Half of regular weekly volume)

Wednesday
AM-Chest (Incline work)+ Shoulders (1 or 2 exercises)
PM-Back (Half of regular weekly volume)

Friday
AM-Chest (Dips)
PM-Full body

There are countless options. But keep in mind that this last kind of workouts is totally advanced and will not be needed for most people. Simply don't question which bodypart is disproportional unless you have put 40 pounds of muscle since you started training. And even when you do it, this is supposed to be a cycle and usually 4-6 weeks is enough.

Conclusion
There are countless ways of lifting twice a day (You can even have 4DAW split but adjust it in a way that you complete it in 3 days by lifting twice on one of the training days). Old school bodybuilders did it, olympic weightlifters do it. As I say often, training split is not what your workout is, all splits work if you train smart each session and one workout session doesn't affect the next one too badly. Keep your volume low enough to recover until evening, do the larger group in the morning (Unless you're doing specialization), you can still make gains just as much and in some cases there are even advantages of working out twice a day. Some steroid freaks can do 30 sets in the morning and another 30 in the evening, this is what you should avoid. Also, working a muscle group twice a day doesn't work. It can work for pure strength, where fatigue and volume is very low but if you want some size along with it, you need some fatigue and recovery time. If you don't want joint overuse, excess fatigue and burn out, don't do same movements in hypertrophy ranges more than once a day. Also note that it works better when you at least work half of your body in a session, since the session is supposed to be short, you should get the best anabolic response possible.

Another great guide, dodo!

For my daily schedule, working out twice a day is a bad idea: I have completely flexible working hours, and I prefer to work out at home after work. But for many people who might want to concentrate their workouts on two days only, this makes a lot of sense. Even if it is not optimal (I don't know), it's definitely better following your tips than randomly splitting exercises among the time slots.

After reading this, I now know I remotely know what I'm talking about

So for doing chest/triceps more frequently, say chest twice and triceps three times, what would be an appropriate reduction in sets?  And is the change smaller for triceps since some of it is isolation work and causes less fatigue?

Discussion continues in Excellent Postings:

http://www.askscooby.com/excellent-postings/lifting-twice-a-day-31818/

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