Introduction
In this week’s health article we look at the interesting question of how many times per week do we need to train muscles. Bear in mind here that we are not talking about how many total training sessions per week, just about how often a muscle group needs to be stressed to keep improving at the optimal rate. The study below took into account 7 different studies that compared training muscles once per week versus twice per week. To ensure apples were compared with apples, training volumes were equated, which is the scientific way of saying that the same amounts of weights, sets and repetitions were compared, just that the twice per week group broke their exercise into two halves on different days.
Article Title
Effects of resistance training frequency on measures of muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Schoenfeld, Ogborn & Krieger, in Sports Medicine (2016)
Background
Training frequency is a complicated and contentious issue. It is often discussed in two totally different situations. Firstly, it is debated by bodybuilders in relation to how many times per week a muscle should be trained for optimal development, although this may be substantially affected by training status and other factors. Split routines can be built up of a similar number of workouts (e.g. 6 training sessions per week) but actually involve training a muscle once, twice, or even three times over those same workouts. Secondly, training frequency is often discussed in the context of athletic performance, where the number of training sessions overall is the key factor. This is more relevant for improving strength as a skill (as is key in powerlifting) or for sports.
Conclusion
The researchers concluded that training muscle groups twice per week seems superior to training muscle groups once per week, where volumes are equated. So the take home message is no matter how many total training sessions you do per week, try to arrange your training so that each muscle group gets a challenge twice per week.