Twice per week training

Man I got into this thread late, so many great posts!

I kinda skimmed, but so far O&G's post jumped out at me, take whatever volume you were doing on 3x p/w and put it on 2x p/w.

Some (inc Dan) say 2x per week is better than 3x, some say its better for strength, 3x is better for growth. Who knows?

But I'd definitely recommend more volume if you're only going to do 2x per week.

Make sense, if you say 1x p/w is enough for maintenance, then 2x would grow, and 3x would grow even more! pseudoscience though.
 
general ideas here:

Low loading/ high volume: (15s & 10s for example) 3/week. If the loads are submax, you can do high volume and train very frequently. The damage is superficial and will not affect frequent training

High loading/ low volume: (5s or higher/negatives/etc.) 2/week is better, since more serious damage to tissue is done at higher loads, you will need more time for tendons/ligaments/bones/muscles/cns to recover.
 
Carl

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">High loading/ low volume: (5s or higher/negatives/etc.) 2/week is better, since more serious damage to tissue is done at higher loads, you will need more time for tendons/ligaments/bones/muscles/cns to recover. </div>

Exactly my line of thinking even though it is out of circunstances that I am doing this, nevertheless one must accomodate one's training around life and nottheother way around, I hear you Quad!

Mr. Moore, your expert opinion
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Pretty please!
 
Fausto what are you weights and progression looking like up to this point?

And what will they be once you go to 2 a weak?
 
According to SF, the HST principle doesn't work for the 5's. I don't recall reading anywhere (including HST articles) about any difference in repair time due to higher loading.
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Fausto what are you weights and progression looking like up to this point?</div>

Ok Joe, I'm posting my program, I went over from the holiday program to the current, just on the second week of 5's.

I am doing today the last workout of 5's before I jump into the darker zone, some weights though have been somewhat heavier than the program (this is because I repeated the last week) Deads for instance I lifted 110 instead of 107. But the rest is pretty much as is.

Also I'll have pics soon! Getting there, its really just the belly!
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(Peak_Power @ Feb. 14 2007,22:00)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Some (inc Dan) say 2x per week is better than 3x,</div>
Where have I said this?

I've said there is little difference between 2 or 3X week when looking at the % change of hypertrophy in vivo. This doesn't say 2 is better or 3 is better.

I have said a bi-zillion times now that if your strength is not recovering to where you can complete the same workload or greater then you may want to reduce frequency to 2X week.

So let me spell this out again.

Yes, the Haddad group showed a study (the so called summation study) in which 48 hours re-loading was superior to 24 or 12 hour. But as I've pointed out recently, this study was on rats with NMES, IE 90 fully maximal contractions. Important thing to remember is.....the rats didn't have a choice, they couldn't say.......&quot;hey dudes, I'm just too wiped out to do this again give me another day rest and let's try then&quot;........oh no the scientists just hooked up again and zapped the holy sh*t out of em. When Haddad and others repeated this on humans guess what.......they did the same thing, 90 fully maximal contractions and repeated it at only 24 hours.

So one has to ask.............

Ok, obviously there is something to providing enough &quot;right now&quot; stimulation and if applying this right now stimulation can you successfully re-load with enough &quot;right now&quot; stimulation in 24 hours? 48 hours? 72 hours?

In closing, our &quot;acute&quot; application has a direct relationship to our &quot;chronic&quot; application and how you manage it can vary.

You can reduce load
You can reduce volume
You can reduce frequency

You pick
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(Dan Moore @ Feb. 17 2007,09:34)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Ok, obviously there is something to providing enough &quot;right now&quot; stimulation and if applying this right now stimulation can you successfully re-load with enough &quot;right now&quot; stimulation in 24 hours? 48 hours? 72 hours?

In closing, our &quot;acute&quot; application has a direct relationship to our &quot;chronic&quot; application and how you manage it can vary.

You can reduce load
You can reduce volume
You can reduce frequency

You pick
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</div>
Great point.

Especially for those nuckleheads out there like &quot;myself&quot; who for the love of god I want to lift heavy at no matter what rep range I am in. I also for the love of god want to do 30 to 40 reps workout. (I am not doing that currently).

I am one of those &quot;right now&quot; types people and 3 times a week could be getting me introuble if I continue to not use submaximal weights like the program calls for.
 
I'm the same way. I found myself cheating on the 5x5 and only doing ramps of four sets to get a best lift, instead of ramping 5. I'm not sure if that's good or bad when I do that.
 
Dan

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">You can reduce load
You can reduce volume
You can reduce frequency</div>

Exactly what I Thought, suppose you can only reduce one if you do, right?

In fact I already took out the frequency from the equation, and I guess (because I'm a glutton, sound familiar
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) I'm not sacrificing the load but rather the volume somewhatand only where absolutelly necessary.

My take is that because I have the extra rest, I may as well go ape
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where I can.

With reservations of course, we HST apes are carefull apes right?
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Dan can you clarify something for me.

in your opinion if twin A works out 3x a week
and twin B works out 2x a week

and with all things being equal including same amount of load + volume(work) overall, and strength is increasing in both equally.

do you feel 3x a week would be better than 2 due to increased potein synthesis? or do the studies that show not much difference simply make you not care about this.

also in another thread you mentioned baldwin studies and the right now effect, can you elaborate on what this is, and your thoughts on it, as this could effect 2 or 3 x week recommendations surely?

as if total reps per muscle for both twins for the week is say 30. with the 3x a week doing 10 reps m-w-f and 2x a week doing 15 reps m-t, the 3x a week might not produce enough right now effect with only 10reps?

thankyou.
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thats what i would have thought, but with this right now idea, this might not be the case, and hence 2x a week may in fact be better due to more work being done per workout than 3x a week. although i'm just guessing as i have never heard of this effect/belief before. but dan mentioned studies that show this to be an accurate belief. i need more info on this as i couldn't find an info.
 
No scientist here (news flash..hehe)

here is my thinking.

A: if you can increase the load just as much on twice a week as you can on 3 times a week yet you can do more volume on 2 a week due to recovery...more volume (to a degree equals more growth) so I would think 2 a week would be better.

But then you have to look at hitting a muscle 3 times a week vs 2 a week???

So human nature would have you to believe that 12 times a month training per muscle vs 8 would be better?

But you have to take into the effect of 2 a week training which give you the Right NOW training effect.

So when its all said and done the answer is who knows? What is best.

Sometimes you are better to not worry with the science and try it out for yourself.
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But here we go with the summation effect thingy again.

Please understand that the study that mentions this was extreme in the acute sense, 90 maximal contractions (that's like 9 sets of 10 with your maximum force output each contraction) and humans would be very hard pressed to repeat this extreme acute loading without adequate rest. Secondly the results show that for the highest molecular markers at least 24 hours passed and even better 48. They did not look at anything passed 48 hours to see.

So how would the summation effect change if you weren't working maximally? and does that even make a difference when looking at molecular markers that are shown to be in relationship to hypertrophy signalling? my bet is yes it changes it.

Why do I think so? As I've mentioned elsewhere Baldwin and his group (Baldwin, Haddad and Adams) are looking at this now and are seeing a relationship between acute volume of force and molecular markers. With the highest response going to the higher volume of force.

So yes, increasing frequency may cause an additive effect on PS duration but when sacrificing load and volume the overall acute response may be diminished. Overall this may simply be a wash and is perhaps the reason why studies done show little difference in hypertrophy between working out 2X or 3X week because generally the 2X week groups are using more work (either higher % of 1 RM or more volume) whereas the 3X week groups are applying a slightly less amount of work but more often.

In either case it doesn't justify, IMOO, extremities in either direction, going nuts with load and volume and reducing to 1X week or severely sacrificing load and volume to go 6X week, just my opinion though.
 
That makes it a lot clearer; this thread didnt' really establish that we were always talking about one load spread over 2 or 3 sessions.
One thing I'm sure of though, is that X-load over 2 sessions vs. X + 33%, or 3 sessions at the same load per session would result in less gains.
 
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(DRAGON @ Feb. 17 2007,15:33)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">thats what i would have thought, but with this right now idea, this might not be the case, and hence 2x a week may in fact be better due to more work being done per workout than 3x a week. although i'm just guessing as i have never heard of this effect/belief before. but dan mentioned studies that show this to be an accurate belief. i need more info on this as i couldn't find an info.</div>
Just be careful as I don't want you or anyone else to think that more is better, it's really a matter of enough is best.
 
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(Dan Moore @ Feb. 17 2007,17:42)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">it's really a matter of enough is best.</div>
Good point.

And not to get off topic...but I see a lot of guys posting on 6 times a week or 12 times a week training.

I could be wrong but I don't know of anytime when Bryan had advecated this.

The only 6 time HST split he has advecated to my knowledge is an upper / lower split. He has even gave this advice to myself do to me being conditioned at 12 years of lifting.

So not to misquote him b/c I am not quoting him, but I think you would have to be somewhat advanced to even consider 6 times a week and it be more benefical than standard 3 times a week.
 
Thanks Dan

Clear as water now
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I'mon the right trackand willplay along the lines of effort vs. volume to get my training to work well, above all, I'll listen to my body's response so far it is going rather well.

Remember I did this out of necessity but want it to be beneficial and so far it is, about the opinions and poll?

Well, they simply help me being on top of my game
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The only quizzical thing, I feel quite strong but have run out of creatine whereas before I felt the lack terribly, what's happening? .....Dan?
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