HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU TRAIN

The incredible eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman trained each body part twice per week. Many bodybuilders will often train a lagging body part twice a week, but the problem is that scientists can’t validate that greater training frequencies are going to result in greater gains in muscle mass. When muscles undergo intense exercise, there’s trauma to the muscle fibers, new proteins are used to repair muscle tissue, and muscle growth occurs.

When you train a muscle group directly only once a week, protein synthesis is raised for a day or two after the workout— but it’s back to normal 36–48 hours later. And simply creating more muscle damage doesn’t appear to make the rise in protein synthesis last any longer. One study examined quadriceps and biceps growth from different training frequencies either two or three times a week; it found there was no difference between training two or three days a week—both groups grew equally.

Mike Mentzer advocated once-a week training for each body part. A previous study reported a 50% decrease in biceps strength immediately after maximal eccentric training, and a recovery to only 80% of that prior to training after two weeks! All this research seems to suggest that recovery from hard training takes days, and in some cases up to several weeks.