New Research - Training a muscle 2x per week superior to 1x per week for size gains

Hey guys,

Thought I would share this newly published meta-analysis for you all that demonstrates that, from a purely hypertrophy standpoint, training each muscle group 2x per week is superior to only hitting it 1x per week.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27102172/

All my best!

TheShadow

Thats oldschool...
Just sayin.

Oldschool said:

Thats oldschool...
Just sayin.

Click to expand...

The old school full body 3x per week routines definitely have merit. We went wrong somewhere along the way by converting to body part splits!

They used human participants without disease or injury - translation: untrained

No surprise that newbies do better training more frequently. We tell newbies to train their whole body three times a week. Once you are spending an hour and a half just hitting your quads and hamstrings, intensely, does that advice still apply?

I am not paying to read the whole study, but I see no information about using advanced resistance trained athletes in the study, and nothing about volume, except a mention at the end that the results were "volume equated," which sounds like they manipulated the volume so that the multiple times per week were on a lower volume to equal the same weekly volume as the once a week.

Anyway, without more information, I do not think this meta analysis of ten studies is useful to most of the forum members. I certainly won't be switching to whole body three times a week workouts.

malfeasance said:

They used human participants without disease or injury - translation: untrained

No surprise that newbies do better training more frequently. We tell newbies to train their whole body three times a week. Once you are spending an hour and a half just hitting your quads and hamstrings, intensely, does that advice still apply?

I am not paying to read the whole study, but I see no information about using advanced resistance trained athletes in the study, and nothing about volume, except a mention at the end that the results were "volume equated," which sounds like they manipulated the volume so that the multiple times per week were on a lower volume to equal the same weekly volume as the once a week.

Anyway, without more information, I do not think this meta analysis of ten studies is useful to most of the forum members. I certainly won't be switching to whole body three times a week workouts.

Click to expand...

Is your definition of without disease or injury really untrained?

Seriously, that's all you got from what I wrote? There is no indication in the link or the other link in the link that this has any application to advanced resistance trainees who already have size. There is also that "volume equated" mention.

Given the little information presented, the conclusion drawn is worthless for us, that is, me, you, and most of the others here.

Caveat - I have not read the whole study (not going to pay for it). If you have, and these things are accounted for, then post up what you read (or better yet the whole study if you can do so without violating a copyright).

I have read plenty of similar studies, however, and therefore I feel pretty confident that the study did not account for the criticisms I made. In other words, it is useless for us while perhaps being very useful to newbies.

That does not mean the conclusion is wrong, just that there is no support for the conclusion applying to you and me in this particular study.