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Integrative Bodybuilding: Are You Training Enough to Build
Muscle?
Whats Missing?
Elitef ts was born of Dave Tates recognition that spo rts t raining misinformation abounds. You can
read about this in the elitef ts company story in the About Us section. When it comes to resistance
exercise programming, basic principles o f training like intensity (relative load), vo lume, progression (o r
progress ive overload), and periodizat ion are the letters of a strength and conditioning coachs alphabet.
However, mos t of these coaches are programming fo r a sport , and the outcomes are concrete, quantif iable,
and performance based, especially when it comes to lif ting spo rts like powerlif ting or Olympic weightlif ting.
Training logs and meet perf ormance tell a so lid story.
Def initions of a sport aside, it seems to me that bodybuilders may not be as f ocused on f ine-tuning training
as other athletes in the iron game. Muscle size, as an outcome measure, is more dif f icult to track than a one-
rep maximum, f or instance. How you look is what matters most in bodybuilding, of course, but mos t
bodybuilders will even tell you that t he mirror can play tricks on the mind, especially when dieting down for a
show.
As f ar as the science of tracking muscle growth goes, the muscle biopsy technique was f irst employed just
shortly before Arnold Schwarzeneggers heyday (1), and thus f ar, you cant pick up a home biopsy kit at t he
local drugstore. Only in the past f ew years have I noticed bodybuilders taking advantage of now readily
available technology such as DEXA (dual-emission x-ray abso rptiometry) f or quantif ying muscle mass (2). In
depth, scientific case s tudies o f bodybuilders growing in the of f -season o r prepping f or competition are very
rare (3, 4) as well.
In short, directly applicable training studies of advanced bodybuilders s imply arent rolling of f the press es(unless you cons ider the hundreds o f university st udies published only in supplement advertisements
science). At this point , I think its s imply not a typical or rout ine part of the bodybuilding culture, such as eatin
f requently or gett ing a base tan befo re stepping on s tage, to endure the expense of sophist icated body
composit ion test ing to evaluate of f -season or pre-contest progress. Similarly, bodybuilders dont regularly
train in teams (although this is a growing trend in the o ther competitive physique categories) where they can
exchange training info rmation with both each other and coaches, who can then synthesize results and
formulate training strategies.
The Missing Principle
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My content ion is that f requency of training is a highly overlooked training principle, and even nearly f orgo tt en
when it comes to building muscle. In my experience, bodybuilders are very f ocused on the set finding the
right rep range, adding negatives, doing forced reps, doing drop sets , and doing various f orms of cluster sets
(5) like rest-pause sets (6) or muscle rounds (7). Secondarily, were fo cused on the workout per seto tal set
and exercisesand mos t bodybuilders would be cons idered high volume trainers (8) f ollowing a split rout ine
that hits a muscle group one time per week (9). I understand ent irely and trained this way myself f or many
years. This training approach is what you most of ten see, read, and hear as the pref erred method of training
f or muscle growth and the approach that probably (my best guess here) has produced the mos t IFBB
prof essionals. High volume, once a week body part split t raining works, no doubt, at least f or many people.However, theres more than one way to skin a cat, and thosein the knowmight now be thinking about the
rout ines of successf ul IFBB pros like Dave Henry and Ronnie Coleman, whose tried and true rout ine included
training each muscle group twice per week (10).
Put the Science Aside for a Moment
If you wanted to get bett er at just about anything, would you practice it just once weekly? Cons ider most any
sport. How typical is t raining one t ime per week? Naturally, the stress o f weight t raining is a bit dif f erent than
playing table tennis, baseball, or even foo tball, so there are substantial programming dif f erences to beaccounted f or. Max ef f ort squatting f ive t imes per week might be a tad much, but Olympic weightlif ters are
renowned f or very high f requency training (11). Heck, one could even wage the argument that our bodies
should be able to withs tand one to two hours of kick ass t raining a day, even if training the same muscle
groups. On the ot her hand, as Ive noted previously, lif ting and lowering the same load again and again might
not f all within the def inition of a natural act.
Back to the Science
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When it comes to deriving a resistance training f requency that opt imizes muscle growth, what does modern
exercise science point t o? In other words, if we compare a workout that engages the molecular mechanisms o
muscle growth to taking a drug (with a given duration of action), how of ten should we dose our t raining
sessions to ensure that were perpetually growing? How long does the protein synthetic response to a trainin
session last? Bodybuilders are renowned f or eating f requently. Should the same logic be applied to training?
Beyond the single session, do training studies suggest a dose-response relationship for training frequency a
it af f ects muscle growth?
Keep Your Mojo Working: Protein Synthesis
Probably the most common approach to bringing up a weak muscle group that Ive seen (and used) over the
years has been to train it more f requently. Daily calf training isnt considered ludicrous, and Doggcrapp Trainin
(Dante Trudels popular and ef f ective invention) prescribes training the entire body three times every nine day
Beginners of ten t rain with f ull body splits, but t his is quite rare f or more advanced trainees nowadays (9).
Some of you reading have probably tried John McCallums squat s and milk program, better known as Randal
Strossens amended formulation Super Squats (12). I cant recall anyone who t ried these high f requency
whole body routines and said that they werent both ef f ective and absolutely brutal. The latter quality may
explain why they arent more commonplace.
If the purpose of training is to s timulate growth (you dont grow in the gym), high f requency training makessense biologically. The resistance exercise- induced increase in muscle protein synthesis only lasts between
approximately 24 and 48 hours (13-15), perhaps as long as 72 hours if youre a newbie to training (16). On the
other hand, this glorious enhancement o f muscle metabolism is actually shortened (17) and/or dampened in
overall magnitude af ter youve been training f or a while (18, 19). This may be one reason why newbies gain
muscle so well, but more advanced trainees f eel they need more voluminous sessions to evoke a growth
response. Being advanced may simply mean that you need to buck up and train harder andmore f requently if
you want to maintain round the clock elevation o f protein synthesis. The obvious t rick to training more
f requently, however, is to temper the volume of training per sess ion.
Is There a Dose-Response f or Training Frequency and Muscle Growth?
A multitude o f st udies have been do ne that examine strengt h and/or muscle gain and training vo lume (number
of sets), but so me meta-analyses on the topic have barely addressed the not ion of training f requency (20-22
Other meta-analyses have f ound that training two to three times a week with f our to eight sets per movement
seems ideal for st rength (23, 24). An excellent review by Wernborn (25) suggests that same relationship holds
with regard to training f requency and muscle enlargement: two to three sessions per week are ideal when it
comes to making muscle grow. Interest ingly, in his review, the highest rates of muscle growth f or the elbow
f lexors (26) and quads (27) came f rom training f our t imes and twelve times per week (using blood f low
occluded walk training), respectively. Although these st udies were very short, t hey support the logic that regula
dos ing with a protein synthet ic stimulus results in rapid increases in muscle size.
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Comparison o f one, two or three sessions per week in both beginners and advanced trainees tells us, once
again, that twice or thrice per week can be up to twice as ef f ective for gaining muscle mass as once weekly
workouts. When to tal t raining volume is equateda veryimportant training parameter to control f orthree
weekly sessions are better than one (28) and twice daily training wins out over one daily sess ion (29) f or
gaining both size and strength.
The picture painted here isnt that t raining splits that directly target a muscle (group) only once per week dont
work. There are thousands of examples of large bodybuilders who got t hat way using that approach. Howeve
ust like taking an aspirin in the morning may not treat a headache in the evening, the anabolic ef f ects o f a
Monday training session may only last half the week, so why not train more o f ten to keep your muscle growin
mojo workin?
Dude, Youre Off Your Rocker
You might be thinking that Im a bit crazy here: Scott, I cant possibly train a muscle groupreally train ittwic
or three t imes per week and not end up in an overtraining hole lickety split. For those who havent done a highf requency program like DC Training, Super Squats, o r so mething even more out rageous like one o f Leo
Costas inventions (e.g. Big Beyond Belief (30) or Titan Training (7)), I can understand your concerns. Howeve
keep the f ollowing in mind:
Very low training loads (even 30 percent o f a 1RM) if taken to f ailure (3135) can create a powerful
growth s timulus. As mentioned above, high rep squat training has a good reputat ion in this regard. Also ,
employing lower load t raining is a great way to balance the wear and tear that heavy loads can have on
your joints .
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Only three to f our set s can create a signif icant protein synthetic response and ultimately growth (31,
3638). You dont have to vo lume train yourself into o blivion with multiple maximum ef f ort sets to create
a growth response. Again, the key to making high f requency training work is adjusting the number of sets
for each muscle group in a workout . Practically speaking, this is also necessary to avoid marathon
sess ions in the gym.
Sets that f ocus on metabolic stress , epitomized by blood f low restriction (i.e. occlusion or Kaatsu
training) can generate impressive muscle growth with minimal muscle damage and soreness (27, 39, 40).
Daily training sessions (six or seven days per week) for the same muscle group arent uncommon with
this style of training (27, 4143). If f ormally occluding bloo d f low isnt your cup of tea, maintaining
muscle tension above about 5060 percent of maximal eff ort , especially if using slow rep tempos (44),
will substantially limit bloo d f low (4547). Anyone who has intentionally trained with a continuous
tension style, avoiding muscle relaxation between reps (e.g. not pausing at the to p of the range of
mot ion of a preacher curl or locking the knees at the top o f a squat), knows that this is a sure f ire way
to accumulate painful metabolites.
If you trus t in the strategy that t raining a weak muscle group more f requently will f os ter growth, what is
keeping you f rom applying this strategy to elicit muscle growth overall? If you havent trained with high
f requencies in the past but have tried just about every training intensif ication technique and dietary suppleme
known to bodybuilders since the days o f Eugen Sandow, you may have some exciting newfound muscle growtto look forward to. Whether youre a newbie who has o r plans to t ry this approach, a weathered warrior of hig
f requency training, or a doubting Thomas, Id love to hear your f eedback here at elitef ts in the comments
section below.
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