How often can, or much more importantly, should I train per week? Optimum recovery time between training sessions is essential if one is going to continue to make progress. Training frequency, which is determined by ones recovery ability, is often a forgotten part of most training protocols. It never ceases to amaze me, how many people train for months and years experiencing little or no success, and never consider the fact they maybe doing too much.
You can never train too hard, but you can train too much. Training ?too much? can actually be described in two ways. The first and probably the most common way, is training too often. If you are training with 100% intensity, you should not be able to train a body part any more frequently than once every 6-8 days. Everyone should realize that if you are still feeling it from the previous workout of the same body part, then it is best to take a few more days of rest. I have actually heard people say that they train even if they are sore because it is harder on the muscles. True, it is harder on the muscles, but not in a positive way. Ask yourself, ?Where is the logic in training a muscle before it is recovered?? The muscle hasn?t had a chance to adapt to a previous training session and you tear it down with another. Training may stimulate your muscles to grow, but they don’t grow during training. Proper nutrition and enough rest between sessions is what facilitates recovery and allows the muscles to grow. If you train before the muscle is recovered, you not only slow or put a halt to your progress, you increase your risk of injury.
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Tags: Building strength, gain more strength, gaining strength, high intensity weight training, muscle building, muscle building programs, muscle building routines, muscle building tips, muscle building tips advice, overtraining, recovery, recovery ability, Strength, tips to gain strength, Training frequency, ways to gain strength, Weight training, weight training programs, weight training routines, weight training workouts
On the topic of overtraining. While it is important to allow your muscles time to recouperate, it may not take 6 to 8 days to fully recover. Muscle soreness may not always be an accurate measure of overtraining, since we know it is also caused by a build up of lactic acid in the muscle tissue. Therefore training the muscle again while its sore would actually be beneficial because it would flush out the waste and allow new blood flow and nutrients to enter the muscle tissues. Ideally, with adequate nutrition and hydration you should be able to train a muscle group at 100% on 2 days rest (i.e. train monday rest tuesday wednesday train again thursday).
Muscle soreness is one small piece of the puzzle when determining how frequently you should train a muscle group. Progression is ultimately the determining factor. If you?re not making progress, and you?re training with 100% intensity, you?re not recovering. I have yet to find somebody who I?ve trained, and I?ve trained many clients from professional athletes to regular Joes, that can train the same body part more often than once per week, unless we are performing sports related training sessions.
Ideally, unless you are only performing 1 exercise per body part, there is no way one will recover from a workout in 2 days. TJ, maybe you need to train with me to see what training intensity is. By the way, training a muscle while it is sore is just ludicrous.
TJ-soreness in the muscles the days after a workout are not a result of there being left over lactic acid. That is an old and disproven theory, LA is buffered out of the system within hours of the workout. DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness) is a result of micro tears in the actual muscle fibers.
Mike-I agree that training at %100 percent while still sore is silly-but, you should make mention of active recovery(training previously trained muscles at submax effort), because as TJ said it does flush the muscle with extra blood flow allowing nutrients to enter and aid in recovery. Active recovery is in my opinion a very effective method to continue progress in the gym.
Thank you, Clif
It is amazing that not one person, ever mentions that recovery also varies greatly depending on the particular exercise being done and the amount of weight being used. This is considering that you are using high intensity at all times. For example: it may take RP 2 weeks to recover from a deadlifting session with 205 lbs. However, it will take RP 24 days to recover from a deadlifting session with 310 lbs.
It can also take RP 7 days to recover from a squatting session with 185 lbs, but it will take him 14 days to recover from a squatting session with 230 lbs.
Furthermore, it can take this individual 7 days to recover from a hard session of supinated pulldowns with 180 lbs, but it will take him more than 12 days to recover from a session of pulldowns with 235 lbs.
The point is that the time needed for recovery will vary greatly in the same exercise, depending on what stage of the cycle you are in (the begginning or near the end of the cycle), and how much weight you are using.
It’s recovery period. Everything matters including sleep, nutrition, stress, etc. when it comes to monitoring recovery. You make a good point Ricardo, exercises do matter, but that goes without saying. There is no need to plan around exercises. If you’re not making gains you’re over training; it’s as simple as that. There are so many factors involved you need to adjust as you go.
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