What schedule have all of you seen the most progress on?
Personally, I have found the most success on four days per week weight training.
Anyone else?
I have also found that a four day per week schedule works well for me. I recently started Chad’s BBB, and it is working well for me.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
What schedule have all of you seen the most progress on?
Personally, I have found the most success on four days per week weight training.
Anyone else? [/quote]
3 or 4 days, depending on what I am doing in those workouts. When I was in my early twenties, I could do a 5 day schedule. I know think I would have made much more progress if my naturally heightened recovery ability had not masked such gross over training!
In terms of Frequency, I am normally hitting a body part twice a week, but may go down to 1(if i am using a lot of volume) or up to 3. It really depends on the rep range. Heavy exercises with a lot of negative focus, only once a week. If I am submaximal on my lifts, I can go 2 or 3. Both have been effective, I think it is more a matter of using them in a periodization schedule that keeps your body guessing.
[quote]CRisenhoover wrote:
3 or 4 days, depending on what I am doing in those workouts. When I was in my early twenties, I could do a 5 day schedule. I know think I would have made much more progress if my naturally heightened recovery ability had not masked such gross over training!
In terms of Frequency, I am normally hitting a body part twice a week, but may go down to 1(if i am using a lot of volume) or up to 3. It really depends on the rep range. Heavy exercises with a lot of negative focus, only once a week. If I am submaximal on my lifts, I can go 2 or 3. Both have been effective, I think it is more a matter of using them in a periodization schedule that keeps your body guessing.[/quote]
Very wise words!
[quote]ZEB wrote:
What schedule have all of you seen the most progress on?
Personally, I have found the most success on four days per week weight training.
Anyone else? [/quote]
I think the 4 day split is a good one. I think that mentally it is important for some people to have more days per week that they lift vs. days that they don’t.
I use the 4 day split with sometimes an assistance day thrown in, depending on how well rested and recovered I am. I might work traps or biceps, or another bodypart that might be lagging. Usually ~45 mins.
RIT Jared
Sounds like one hell of a training schedule!
How do you handle doing deadlifts and squats on back to back days? Do you normally go light on deads so that you can still go heavy on Squats? I’ve always struggled with including both squats and deadlifts within the same training week, as both put a good beating on my lower back. So I tend to just alternate between the two on heavy lower body days.
To answer the original topic question, Ive tried a ton of different schedules (most of which I wont mention since I didnt have much success).
-The one that worked the worst for me was training each muscle once a week.
-a majority of my years training have been on a 3 day split:
day 1 - chest/shoulders/tris
day 2 - legs
day 3 - back & bi’s
I normally rotated between the 3 workouts with a 2 on, 1 off schdule. This worked pretty good for me, but I wasn’t too smary about varying the the volume/intensity and exercises enough, so I didn’t make nearly as much progress as I could have.
I also spent several years training 4 days a week, training each muscle twice a week, alternating heavy/light. it was a push/pull split, with legs on pull day.
The last couple years, Ive been going at it generally every other day, going two days in a row on occasion as schedule permits. I’m alternating upper body and lower body. As far as sets and reps, it’s actually very similar to what CW called out in the quattro dynamo program, except I’m doing it spread out over 2 weeks instead of just one, and as I said, I have upper and lower body split up. I actually made some of my best strength gains ever on that schedule, despite the fact that I rotated between 4 exercises for each muscle, so each exercise was only done about once every 2 weeks.
I throw in some light cardio to get warmed up before lifting. I pretty much follow Ian King’s “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Stretching” prior to most of my workouts.
My most progress was also 4x a week, but only when it’s a mesocycle.It would extend for a maximum of six weeks, but I had two times where it was cut short at 3weeks due to my own incompetence.
The most successful is when I had two relatively intense days, but with a small enough volume to not overtrain. The other two days were high volume, high reps schemes. The very important aspect to me was never having the same rep/set/weights in any two workouts of the week. That way I could do the same four workouts for two weeks and then only make minor alterations on the next two. All of this ofcourse without ever going to failure. If you want to productivly hit every muscle group 4x/week then hit it, but don’t HIT it.
[quote]w2097 wrote:
My most progress was also 4x a week, but only when it’s a mesocycle.It would extend for a maximum of six weeks, but I had two times where it was cut short at 3weeks due to my own incompetence.
The most successful is when I had two relatively intense days, but with a small enough volume to not overtrain. The other two days were high volume, high reps schemes. The very important aspect to me was never having the same rep/set/weights in any two workouts of the week. That way I could do the same four workouts for two weeks and then only make minor alterations on the next two. All of this ofcourse without ever going to failure. If you want to productivly hit every muscle group 4x/week then hit it, but don’t HIT it. [/quote]
What do think of going to failure once in a while?
I’ll go to failure before a break just to piss the system off. Other than that I may sometimes hit failure by accident.
Another thing is how close to come near failure. I come pretty darn close at times, but as a rule of thumb about 2 reps away. I don’t think failure is a sound method because of how it kills recovery rates. Think about it - if you refrain from those last two reps you can do another workout, that’s major. Not to mention preparedness and CNS. If you need to do something strength-wise the next day or so you’ll be at a loss. I want to have energy for the rest of the week instead of feeling sluggish.
And we also have to realize that failure is a novelty, a deviation of sorts. Before Arthur Jones(who was obsessed with getting through the workout ASAP) the only ones who performed sets to failure were kids who thought more is better. And now we actually have to think about stopping a few reps short! It’s pretty conventional: you’re getting tired - take a rest, eat and continue. As opposed to going all out and then be a half-vegetable for a day or two.
Just typing fever, ignore.
Actually. “going to failure” on the final set of each movement once per week has worked well for me in the past.
That worked for me too for a period of time, but what I really don’t like is the recovery rates. After I noticed that I can stop just before going all out and make great gains while training more frequently… I was instantly hooked. I will not trade the fresh feeling in the post-workout days for anything. I’d much rather train to live and not live for training.
It’s funny as up until recently I thought that it’s the only way to train with failure - last set and last rep. I only read a few articles in the past months where it was mentioned that people actually go to failure on several sets of the same exercise in a workout. There has to be some health factor involved with continous training in this manner.