more frequency
- Thread starter butcher
- Start date
Frequency is your best friend, subject to your ability to recover.
Like O&G says, if you can recover well and not get beaten into the ground, high frequency training (ie. hitting your muscle groups four or more times a week) could give you some really good results (also assuming you get your nutrition dialled in too).
However, I think this is most likely to be true when you are in the early stages of your lifting career. What tends to happen as you get stronger and more conditioned to exercise (even with SD) is that you need to do more work per session to elicit a decent growth response. That, in turn, takes a greater toll on your recovery ability (ie. it increases your fatigue build up). Eventually you'll reach a point where in order to hit your target reps each session you'll have to cut back the number of times you hit a muscle group each week. If you don't you'll end up burning out.
At this point you still might want to train four or more times a week but using a body-split routine so that you hit each body part at least twice a week.
Before going overboard with high frequency training, it's always a good idea to see how far you can take a 3 x weekly full-body routine. I made some really excellent progress doing this for over a year.
A bit of musing: To reduce overall fatigue I have wondered what the effect might be of high frequency on just one body part at a time. So one cycle you might specialise on legs where you would do a compound leg movement each day for six days and then have a day off. Volume each day would be reduced and failure would be avoided even on RM days to try to keep fatigue as low as possible. For loads I would use a standard HST progression but use each increment twice. The rest of your body would be trained using a standard three-times-a-week schedule.
I think for a leg specialisation cycle I might try something like this (just a rough idea for a routine):
Mon: Front Squats (10-20 reps), Bench (15-30 reps), BB Rows (15-30 reps), Upright Rows (15-30 reps)
Tue: Front Squats/Lunges (10-20 reps), SLDLs (10-20 reps), calves
Wed: Deads/Squat Cleans (10-20 reps), Dips (15-30 reps), Chins (15-30 reps), Presses (15-30 reps)
Thu: Deads (10-20 reps), RDLs (10-20 reps), calves
Fri: Low-bar Back Squats (10-20 reps), Flyes (15-30 reps) SA DB Rows (15-30 reps), Shrugs (15-30 reps), Pullovers (15-30 reps)
Sat: Low-bar Back Squats/Box Squat/Leg Press (10-20 reps), SLDLs/RDLs/GMs (10-20 reps), calves
Sun: off
I'm really not sure how something like this would work out but it will be fun to try. A slash indicates alternative exercise choices. If you had access to leg extension and leg curl machines you could add these in instead of repeating the same exercises. The rep range for each exercise indicates how reps might vary over a cycle: higher reps at the start when the loads are light, dropping to the lower total towards the heavy end of the cycle.
However, I think this is most likely to be true when you are in the early stages of your lifting career. What tends to happen as you get stronger and more conditioned to exercise (even with SD) is that you need to do more work per session to elicit a decent growth response. That, in turn, takes a greater toll on your recovery ability (ie. it increases your fatigue build up). Eventually you'll reach a point where in order to hit your target reps each session you'll have to cut back the number of times you hit a muscle group each week. If you don't you'll end up burning out.
At this point you still might want to train four or more times a week but using a body-split routine so that you hit each body part at least twice a week.
Before going overboard with high frequency training, it's always a good idea to see how far you can take a 3 x weekly full-body routine. I made some really excellent progress doing this for over a year.
A bit of musing: To reduce overall fatigue I have wondered what the effect might be of high frequency on just one body part at a time. So one cycle you might specialise on legs where you would do a compound leg movement each day for six days and then have a day off. Volume each day would be reduced and failure would be avoided even on RM days to try to keep fatigue as low as possible. For loads I would use a standard HST progression but use each increment twice. The rest of your body would be trained using a standard three-times-a-week schedule.
I think for a leg specialisation cycle I might try something like this (just a rough idea for a routine):
Mon: Front Squats (10-20 reps), Bench (15-30 reps), BB Rows (15-30 reps), Upright Rows (15-30 reps)
Tue: Front Squats/Lunges (10-20 reps), SLDLs (10-20 reps), calves
Wed: Deads/Squat Cleans (10-20 reps), Dips (15-30 reps), Chins (15-30 reps), Presses (15-30 reps)
Thu: Deads (10-20 reps), RDLs (10-20 reps), calves
Fri: Low-bar Back Squats (10-20 reps), Flyes (15-30 reps) SA DB Rows (15-30 reps), Shrugs (15-30 reps), Pullovers (15-30 reps)
Sat: Low-bar Back Squats/Box Squat/Leg Press (10-20 reps), SLDLs/RDLs/GMs (10-20 reps), calves
Sun: off
I'm really not sure how something like this would work out but it will be fun to try. A slash indicates alternative exercise choices. If you had access to leg extension and leg curl machines you could add these in instead of repeating the same exercises. The rep range for each exercise indicates how reps might vary over a cycle: higher reps at the start when the loads are light, dropping to the lower total towards the heavy end of the cycle.