How Many Lifting Days for Bulking?

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

On a bulk how many days should we aim to train?
I currently follow a PPL and workout 6 times a week

Heres the problem.
I did a new exercise sled pulls on wednesday aka leg day and the DOMS wasnt bad but when I went to deadlift yesterday, my hamstrings and glutes were killing me and I couldnt even lift my working sets for 1 set. Highly dissapoointed.

I have leg day today so should I still go or should I take a day off leg and workout tomorrow aka my normal rest day or should I just take 2 rest days?

2

Days per week is immaterial. Look at volume overall. You can train 7 days a week with low volume and you can train 1 day a week with enough volume to trigger Rhabdomyolysis.

I have seen my best growth with 4 days of lifting and 1 day of conditioning.

2 Likes
3

Everything @T3hPwnisher says. You have to balance weekly volume and intensity in such a way that you can recover from it.

Remember that recovery is a trainable quality.

4

So i should skip today?

5

Wut…

EDIT: If you deadlifted yesterday, what was that? A “pull” day? Back/biceps? Just curious.

If you cannot lift today, don’t lift. If you are able to, go ahead and do it.

6

When I get sore like that I prefer to have a working rest day. Depending on what’s sore, I’ll do pump work for that area. Your legs hurt I would go in and do leg extensions and leg curls, light weight, just to pump blood and nutrients into the sore area. I follow that with foam rolling and stretching.

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7

What bcrowe said is good. I don’t usually get much soreness in my upper body, besides some occasional stuff in the chest. I just do some pushups, and when my legs are sore I squat (no weight) and stretch.

8

Pull day and what do you mean if I’m able to go? I have time to go but I’m talking recovery, doms etc… sounds confusing honestly. Sorry

9

I’m surprised I haven’t seen concern threads about this yet.

10

I just meant that if you are physically unable to lift, due to extreme DOMS or whatever you want to call soreness, than don’t lift. Otherwise, just suck it up and go lift.

I was slightly confused by your original post, so I’m not even exactly sure what happened, but sled work (sled pulls?) typically is seen to help recovery, not hinder it, so I imagine there may be other areas lacking with your recovery system.

If you think you usually don’t find this to be an issue, was there any difference between that one workout? Less sleep the night before? Stressful day/event? Less water, protein, overall calories consumed? I doubt one exercise drained you so much that your deadlift strength was gone a day later.

Seconding what Pwnisher said, I would say my best growth has happened with (3 to) 4 days of lifting. If you want to “bulk” give your body time to rest. Take a day or two off just to eat and rest (as much as you can with work/school/etc).

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