Train Less & Develop Bigger Muscles
Frequency refers to the number of days per week you perform weightlifting workouts. The most common training frequency is "3 days per week," often performed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If this is your training frequency, I've got some great news for you. With Precision Training, you can do far, far better!
Knowing the proper amount of time off between workouts is the single most misunderstood concept in strength training. The truth is, even if you do everything in the gym perfectly — number of reps, number of sets, optimum weight, proper rest between sets, and proper exercise form — all of it can be worthless if you aren't training with the right frequency.
dirty little secretFixed training schedules are insane. Every fixed training schedule, such as 3 days per week, will ultimately fail you. Here's why: As your strength increases, your workouts are more demanding and require more time from which to recover.
The average guy sitting in front of a computer has the capacity to increase his muscular strength by 300% to 400%. However, recovering from physical activity puts demands on many of the body's organs, such as the liver, kidneys and pancreas, to name three. These organs do not have the capacity to increase their metabolic functioning by the same 300% to 400% your muscles can.
When you think about it, this is something you already know from experience. If you do a light workout, it hardly takes anything out of you. Your recovery is swift. But when you do a grueling workout involving heavy weights and a high intensity of overload, it can take days to feel fully recovered.
And since the indispensable key to strength training gains is progressive overload, you must find a way to increase the intensity of every workout and allow more time to recover from that workout.
don't "split" up your routineTo keep workouts less demanding, it is common practice to "split" workouts, in a manner such as the following: Monday — upper body, Wednesday — lower body. While this is a sound tactic (one I recommend), this strategy will not solve the problems of a fixed training schedule. The reason why is stated in Sisco's Adage: "Every day is kidney day."
The fact is that whatever part of the body you work out, be it your chest, arms or legs, doesn't make the slightest difference to your kidneys. They still have to filter all the metabolic waste products out of your blood so you can fully recover. And remember this: until you are fully recovered, you will not grow new muscle. That's a physiological law. So a split routine helps reduce the amount of work your kidneys and other organs have to perform, but as you get stronger and hoist heavier iron, your kidneys will need more time to perform their job.
Do nothing and watch yourself get stronger...