Is training a muscle group 2 x a week too much?

[Daisy_Girl]

If a body part is still that sore - then I don't think it is a good idea to do a high intensity workout. Growing muscle happens outside the gym, not while lifting. So you have to give the muscles time to recover and repair. if your legs are so sore you can't "walk right", then I would do a light workout with them to get the blood moving but not a high intensity, going to failure workout.

 

[spatts]

Spatts will certainly have an opinion on this when she gets to it.

I train each muscle twice a week, but I never train to muscle failure.

I have been training that way for over a year.

I have added almost 500 pounds to my 3 lift total, put on over 20 pounds of muscle, while dropping about 5-6% body fat.

I actually clocked my 40 the other day as being faster than I ran it in college, and I'm 27.

I never feel over trained/ under recovered.

Works for me.

 

[Seashell]

Daisy Girl: Thanks, exactly what I needed to know. Tried to send you Karma..but I'm not sure if it worked (< 100 posts).

Spatts: Interesting! I'm so in awe of your strength and for some reason I assumed you, and the other powerhouse ladies on here always went to failure each time. I'm always learning on this board.

 

[spatts]

Seashell, twice a week, on one move, I go to a 1 rep max on a partial lift. I go to FORM failure. I lift the most weight I can with proper form, not necessarily muscle failure. My isolated accessory work is done for higher reps, yet not to failure. By not training to failure, I can recover faster and train them again sooner.

Come to think of it, the only time generally reach failure is when sprinting. I have a habit of sprinting until I can't move anymore. That's why I don't do it close to a comp.

 

[wilson6]

It all depends on intensity.

I have to disagree with Body by Fina, I have never heard of working a muscle beyond its ability to recover. Recover in a given period of time, perhaps.

Second 48 hrs is not enough to recover from eccentric damage. We know this to be true in both human and animals. Even when the soreness is gone, there are still force decrements. Anyone that has really hammered out a good workout and is sore for days will tell you that even a day or two after the soreness is gone, X weight still feels "heavy". There is a reason for that.

Recovery is based on the amount of damage that occurs to a muscle. Damage results in the release of growth factors in the muscle such as IGF-I that results in further growth and adaptation.

I only train each bodypart once a week and heavy everyother. Works better than anything I've ever tried.

Funny I just had this discussion with a male client this morning. This guy questioned if this type of workout produced solid gains. I then asked him how many guys in the gym (and we have some big guys in the gym) can knock out several sets of 15 reps with 1650 lbs on the Nebula sled, knees to 90 degrees, and he's not juiced.

Whatever works for you. I just can't stand being in the gym more than I have to, thus I've devised a way to achieve more with a lot less time in the gym, at an age 20 years older than when I used to train each bodypart twice a week and spend more time in the gym.

W6

 

[Deleted member 33117]

I think all the responses to this question need to be tenative. None of us know precisely how Seashell's body reacts to training, we dont know exactly what she eats or how well her body utilizes food she does eat and we dont know how much or how well she sleeps.

The one point I think all of us would agree on, even Mr. Heavy Duty, is that frequency and intensity+volume must be properly balanced. The more freqently you train the less you can completely exhaust the muscle at each workout and still expect maximum gains.

Having been a HIT advocate earlier in my training, I think Menzer would have done well to actually read some excercise physiology books. Even in an evironment of slight overtraining, the body will continue to make adaptations every workout, which is why I advocate more frequint workouts. However, I do agree with him on the volume issue. After the first few really hard sets, one is making little progress in the way of recruiting additional muscle fibers or releasing more anabolic hormones into the bloodstream. One is just beating up their body. Even if one seems to be overtraining though, atheletes have proven time and time again, that the body will still adapt to the higher training frequincy, and make progress at a much faster rate once this happens, than if one simply trained eat body part once a week. Menzer hit the nail on the head regarding volume for optimal gains in lbm, because one recovers faster from a low volume, higher intensity workout and makes gains much faster. However one does recover faster on this type of training, and can benefit from training more frequintly.

Again, we have spatts as a perfect example of a female athelete who trains each body part twice a week, yet isn't overtraining. She is heavily muscled and is pretty damn strong. If she has made continual progress, and improved her numbers that much in one year, she clearly isn't overtraining, and if anything her routine couldn't be very far from being an idea one for her.