Just for the sake of argument, Ed Coan and Kirk Karwoski both benched twice a week. In his book, Ed Coan says that he trained shoulders the day after heavy bench and then another light bench day a couple days later.
I hear what you are saying with multiple exercises and pre-fatigue and all that, but if you split the volume in half and did two sessions you really don’t think it could work? It just seems to me that certain training styles (such as what you described) might not work with higher frequency because of the workload per session, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the same person wouldn’t be able to directly train each muscle group twice a week if their workouts were structured differently.
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating for one frequency over another and I see no reason to believe that more than 2x/week frequency is superior for hypertrophy. For powerlifting it’s a slightly different story because you have to be able to develop your technique in the competition lifts, if I don’t squat twice a week then my squat doesn’t feel right and my numbers go down. That still doesn’t mean that you need to squat 5 or 6 times a week, although it works for some people and is actually a good way for someone with shitty technique to make some fast improvements. Personally, I’m doing well with squatting and benching twice a week and deadlifting once.
That’s pretty much it right there. It look like a variety of frequencies can work and frequency is only one variable to consider when designing a training program. Whether increased frequency would be better when the main objective is hypertrophy is questionable, and the main argument in favor of high frequency for powerlifting is that it allows more opportunities to practice and develop technique. But at the same time, there is no sound argument in favor of daily training for beginners, as in the case of the clown who started this thread.
In my case, the number one reason that I don’t like high frequency full body training (for PL) is that high frequency squatting makes my arms hurt like hell. The last time I tried that I did most of it either high bar or with a safety squat bar, it was so bad that even with the SSB my arms hurt. Bench can be trained more frequently without any significant recovery issues as long as volume is in check, but I have made my best gains benching 2 or 3 times a week. Not exactly low frequency, but not excessively high. Deadlifting more than twice a week just doesn’t work well for most people, and I haven’t had better results with 2x/week frequency over 1x. Even the Norwegians, who squat and bench 5-6 days a week, have found that 2-3x/week deadlifting provides the best results in their system of training. Also, they train each muscle only twice a week during offseason hypertrophy blocks. Possibly to give themselves a break from training nearly every day, and another possible reason is that there is evidence to suggest that satellite cell proliferation is best stimulated through higher volumes in a single session.
As I’ve said before, if you accept MPS peaks at 24 hours then you have rational cause to claim frequency is king. From that point, its simply about determining volume and intensity. Sound easy but harder to implement.
Borge Fagerli actually mentioned that there was a study that found MPS to peak in 17 hours in advanced lifters, but even still it’s not so straightforward. You can trigger MPS every day, but volume per session is obviously going to have to be lower than if you were training 1-2x/week per muscle group. That means that your actual peak level of MPS per MPS cycle is going to be lower with more frequent training. Also, due the repeated bout effect the actual anabolic stimulus from each workout is going to be lower over time, so even if MPS if reduced by 50% due to lower volume you still don’t get 3x the gains from training 6x/weeks rather than 2x. The more you look into it, the more complicated it is and I won’t even pretend to fully understand it.
I’m not advocating either way, all I can say for sure is that beginners definitely don’t need more than 3x/week frequency and that those who only train each muscle directly once a week could potentially be missing out on some gains. But even that is not certain and will depend on goals (hypertrophy, strength, both), recovery ability, and just personal enjoyment of your program. I trained 6x/week (upper/lower split) for a while and made progress but there were many times that I just didn’t feel like training and I had to drag myself through my workout and performance was mediocre. Now that I’m training 4 times a week, I feel anxious to train again. I just had a good bench workout, tomorrow is light squat and heavy deadlift and I just can’t wait.
Not sure how valid that is. According to what I have read, it is possible to trigger MPS through exercise with as little as one set at 30% RM. In other words, the MPS threshold is very low.
The whole idea around HFT is that you are using periodization in weekly blocks, employing various intensity techniques and volume, to hit that muscle group 2-3 times a week. So a properly constructed programme should be giving you maximal, or near maximal, stimulus over that week without need to do, for example, 18 work sets on a body part on any given day.
That’s true, Menno Henselmans actually says to do one or two sets per bodypart. As for 30% though, with light weights like that you actually have to go to failure to get much out of it. I don’t have the scientific data available to quote for you, but MPS isn’t either “on” or “off”, it’s not always at the same rate. For example, having more than a few drinks will reduce MPS but it won’t stop completely, unless maybe you really have way too much to drink.
What you are saying there about training a muscle group 2-3x/week makes perfect sense, when I’m talking about HFT I mean training the same muscles 4-5-6 times a week. I don’t really consider 2-3x to be high frequency at all, but that’s probably because I am a powerlifter and that is pretty much average in PL.
That’s fair enough, and shows the fine lines around such a debate. For example, CT’s Best Damn Workout is HFT - for me. I do have a few ideas around adding eccentric-less and occlusion movements to up the frequency even more but given the original template is still working well I’ve resisted the temptation to tinker.
Yeah, that’s the opposite end of the frequency spectrum and is what Borge Fagerli and Menno Henselmans are advocating for advanced lifters/bodybuilders. Like I said, I’m not convinced that one is really better than the other because there are many other factors to consider and if you are making steady progress at 2-3x frequency then most likely any benefits were you to go beyond that would be marginal at best.
What’s the logic with eccentric-less movements? From what I understand, the eccentric movement and stretch at the bottom provides a large portion of the hypertrophic stimulus. Is there something I’m missing? I know that Borge and Menno have done some research/experiments with occlusion but other people (Mike Israetel, for example) are saying that there is no benefit over standard training with heavier weights than you would use with occlusion training, unless of course you are injured. Just thought I would mention that.
Eccentric-less training is less stressful and damaging to muscle fibres, and hence should be easier to recover from. Similar story for occlusion training. Now, this is just me thinking aloud, you could potentially set up a week where you rotate intensities so your starting, say, with deadlifts, low intensity day 2, medium day 3, etc, so your hitting hamstrings 6 times a week. Set up correctly, you should be able to recover from this, which chimes in with the repeated bout effect you hear a lot about.
There’s an old article on EliteFTS by Borge Fagerli that will probably interest you, the title is "Reignite Progress with New Science ". He talks about high frequency training and occlusion, among other things.