Should You Train Each Muscle Twice a Week? What The Data Says & Why | Mind Pump 2895

There's often a lot of debate on how often you should train a body part or a muscle group. Well, guess what? The data shows clearly there is a superior way. We're going to talk about why you should train each muscle group twice a week. Let's go. This is a cool conversation. Something I've actually mean to ask you because I know what the data says or what we talk about when we compare this one time, two time or three times a week that you would train a muscle group. Is there good studies on four and five? How are the controls on a lot of these? What comes to mind for me is when I think about today and the amount of stress and busy and poor sleep and technology and things like that, variables like that have to play a role too, right? Somebody might think that, my body would do better training the muscle group three times a week. And maybe that's true. If you're very well rested, you're very well hydrated, you're well fed, you're in a calorie surplus, all these great, you know what I'm saying? Like you're just focused on bodybuilding, then it may make sense that you can train at that high of volume. But like, how does that factor in these studies? So they've actually done some pretty good studies on training frequency. So there were early studies that made comparisons and the more frequent training style produced better gains in the early studies. But the criticism was that the early studies didn't control completely for volume. So let me give you an example. And we'll get more into this as the episode goes on, but let's say you did 10 sets of bench press on Monday versus five sets on Monday on Thursday, let's say. Same exercise. You're going to be doing, you're going to do naturally more volume if you do it Monday and Thursday, because you're going to be stronger. So even though you're doing the same amount of sets, because you've split it up, you're able to lift more on Thursday for those last five sets. And if you did those last five sets after the first five sets on Monday. So what they've done under their studies is they've controlled totally the volume. I've always thought of that as like, it's just more effective because like you'll perform it better at the same time. Okay. So, so there's, there's, there's two parts here. One is in perfectly controlled studies. And then the second one is how does this actually work out in the real world, which is what I'm interested in. Right. So the well-controlled studies still show that training a body part about twice a week is going to produce more gains than once a week. Every additional workout, subsequent workout, you see, uh, diminishing returns or maybe no additional gains and hypertrophy. Now there's, there's a case, uh, that the data will make on strength, but that has more to do with skill. When we're talking about just building muscle, the, the, the, the large body of evidence that we have points to two days a week, all, all things being controlled, same exercise, same weights, same reps when they control everything two days a week or hitting a body part twice a week builds more muscle. I thought three was superior, but it was barely superior. And so that was the argument was like, you know, so three, you don't see a huge difference in hypertrophy, but you see a difference in strength. And that has more to do with skill acquisition. But yeah, that makes sense. You're practicing. I mean, in a month's time, you get four extra practices that lift. So that logically that makes sense. You're getting better at these compound lifts and you'll get more. That's right. But I actually thought that it showed more muscle, not a lot, and that's why two tends to be the more favorable amount. Cause it's like, once you do, once you hit two, you're getting 80, 90% of the results a whole other day or a whole other workout for 10% more. It's like, I guess if you have the time and you have the dedication, it also depends on like what people like a two days a week, you know, hitting like, for example, doing an upper lower split, which would be a good example of, of this, right. Where you do like, let's say upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, you take Wednesday off. And then Thursday, upper body Friday, lower body. So like a traditional bodybuilding split split, people like that kind of a split. Cause you get the value of the additional frequency that builds more muscle, but you also get the kind of bodybuilding feel the pump within the workout. Whereas full body workouts, which are typically the, the, what you're talking about, the three day week, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, full body. You don't get the pump. You don't get to really hyper-focus on a body part. And so people who are more interested in hypertrophy and building and the pump, they tend to favor this twice a week. And the data supports like this, this is, this is pretty much where you're going to build the most amount of muscle, all things being equal. So again, the data on this is clear. So that's one reason why you should train this way. The second reason is that fatigue becomes less of a hindrance. So when it comes to exercise or working out people view fatigue is a good thing. And in some cases it is right. In other words, if I'm training for endurance, uh, I have to train. I have to press fatigue because I'm trying to get stamina and endurance with strength. Fatigue is a problem. You can't train strength. If you're fatigued, if you're fatigued in your training, you're training endurance. If you want to train power or strength, the less fatigue there is, the more you can train power or strength. So this is why sprinters, when they're practice, when they're like Olympic sprinters, they don't run to fatigue. They sprint explosively and then they come back and you notice that they kind of wait for a while. I mean, this is our biggest, this is our biggest qualm with jump boxes. You hear us talking about on the podcast all the time is people do plyos the wrong way. If you're training for power, which is what plyos are for, it should look like this explode. And then this long rest period explode and this long rest period, not this rep after retro. Now you're training stamina. That's right. And this is why, you know, they've done data to compare like rep ranges and which one builds more muscle. And previous studies showed that the lower rep ranges, like eight reps, 10 reps, let's say six reps, even built more muscle than let's say 15 to 20 reps. But then there were later studies that compared the two. And so long as the rep ranges or the training is close to failure, they build the same amount of muscle. So then everybody's like, oh, cool. 15 reps or 20 reps builds as much muscle as eight reps. This is true. So long as fatigue doesn't get in the way. So give an example. If I go and train one rep close to failure of barbell squats for eight reps versus 20 reps for most people that night, that 20th rep what's stopping you is your endurance. You're breathing hard, man. It is not the muscular failure. Yes. And so it gets in the way. So my lower reps, so fatigue is not what you want when you're trying to build muscle. You're trying to do is train strength and power. And so when you split up your volume over two workouts, rather than doing them all in one workout, for example, if I'm doing chest and I'm doing, you know, 16 sets on one day versus eight sets on one day, eight sets on another day, same total sets, but they feel very different because fatigue is not so, so much of a, you know, this didn't make your list. I also like this because I like this type of a split. One of the things that I make a point of saying with the full body routine that I like is that you're hitting the full body. And so even if you have a bad week and you don't hit, you only get a workout in or with that, you at least hit every muscle group. I find the commitment to one or two days a week. And then like, even if you only got two days out of the week and you can pick right back up on that upper, lower split, it's easier to do that versus like a, uh, these body parts splits that split up to one day to hit that body part. Yes. And if you miss that, yes, which is traditionally what a lot of bodybuilders tend to lean towards this one body part they, or two that they focus on. And I found that like, man, you just got to have a day or two off. And then now it throws the whole thing off where an upper lower is really easy. Cause even if I did miss a workout or two, it's real easy to get back in the swing of that. And I don't feel like you fall way behind on, on hitting a muscle. That's a good point. That's like a real life. Uh, that's what tends to be what happens. Uh, the other thing is that the splitting up your, your workout in half, let's say, so you hit upper body twice a week, lower body twice a week, split up the exercises. So you can do half on one day, half on the other day, you know, both for upper and lower, this allows you to focus more of your effort on the better lifts. So again, to use the example of, let's say chest or back, you know, if I'm doing 16 sets for back in one day, the, the, the last eight sets are not barbell rows, deadlifts. Your exercise selection is going to be completely different. You're going to have to consider what's not going to be as taxing, right. For one, cause you're just going to have to keep adding that in. So you're going to lean more towards machines and you're going to lean more towards, you know, a certain exercise or build volume, but not necessarily the big movers. This is where the term junk volume came from, is where, you know, someone's doing everything in one workout for a body part. And it's like the first five sets or six sets of the workout are legit. Then the back half it's like, now I'm just, you know, what are they, what did bodybuilders say? I'm just trying to squeeze more blood in the muscle, trying to get more of a pump, which, you know, feels good. I get that. The finisher. Finisher lifts, right. But they're not the big ones that make the biggest difference. Whereas if I'm doing, you know, instead of doing 20 sets of back on one day, I'm doing 10 on one day, 10 on another day, I'm probably going to do a good, good, the best lifts on both days because of the point I made earlier with the fatigue. This also, so this type of routine ends out working out to be basically four days of the week that you're lifting. And then the other, so what I like about this too is personally for myself, it takes, it takes more mental focus and get up for like leg day for me. It's just more fatiguing. I want to train them harder too. And so because I, because it's just a four day routine and there's three days of flexibility in there, I, I schedule my leg days on my days when I'm ready to get after it. Like that's, I feel like I can, I can cruise through my upper body on a day where I don't, I don't feel the best. I didn't get the best rest or whatever it does. I don't feel like I need to feel my best when I want to train legs. I want to feel my best. And so another reason why I like a split like this is that I can shift that lower body day on or put a mental, you know, yes, when I'm, when I'm, when I'm focused, when I'm rested, when I'm good, it gives me enough flexibility where, Oh, today I'm not feeling it. I'm going to take the day off today or, you know what, I'm feeling great. I'm going to go after my lower body. I'm going to rest tomorrow, whatever. Yeah. This kind of a split, like you're mentioning upper lower type split, uh, like our maps upper lower program, which is like what we're talking about, right? Where you're training each muscle group twice a week. It allows for more volume than a traditional, uh, full body three day a week routine. Because once you start to ramp up the volume on full body, the workouts get too long. Yeah. You know, they can turn into long workouts, but when you split it up this way, now you're, you know, the time comes down, but the volume is higher because of the way it's split. Um, here's the other thing too, when you train a body part twice a week versus doing all of it once a week, volume naturally goes up. So there are a few things that are connected that we can directly connect or correlate to muscle growth. One is strength. Okay. We talk about this all the time on the show, like especially in the first few years of your, of your consistent lifting career. Let's say if you're going to, if you're getting stronger consistently, that tends to translate almost reliably, like a hundred percent reliably to muscle. Now, later on, it's not so reliable. You know, once you get really strong, it's not like adding, you know, 15 pounds is going to really make a big difference when it comes to muscle. But in the first few years, it's the best thing you should do is chase strength. But there's another thing that is even more closely related to muscle growth that seems to be related, regardless of how you've been lifting, how long you've been lifting and it's, it's connected in the beginning, it's connected 10 years later, and that's your total training volume and volume naturally goes up when you split up your body and train it twice a week instead of once a week. Why? I made this point earlier. You're stronger. Yeah. You're not fatigued. You're, you're able to actually like perform the lifts well. Um, and then again, too, you're able to actually like load and progressively overload and then work on the strength aspect. And that's volume. So volume, people tend to think, I used to think this, I thought volume was just sets, but it's not volume is sets, uh, reps and weight. And so if I'm doing, you know, let's just create a hypothetical, right? Let's say I did, uh, 15 sets of barbell curls. Okay. Let's just say all in one day. And let's say I used 70 pounds. Uh, and my first set was 10 rep, you know, 10 reps with good intensity. I'm sure by the 15th set, I'm going to be down to like six reps or five sets. But if I did, if I split that up into two workouts, uh, I would be able to complete more reps with that amount of weight. Yeah. Even though the sets are the same, I did more, more reps volume went up. And so this is where the studies that are really controlled, I don't think they tell the full story because they're controlling perfectly for everything. I don't know, do this many reps, do this much weight. But in real life, when you split the body up without even trying, because you've split up the volume, uh, you end up doing more, more, uh, more volume because you're not as fatigued. And what's nice about that is volume actually goes up. And then the way this is split up different than like a full body is you should get more rest before you come back around to that too. So typically if you have a three day a week routine, it's like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So every other day you're coming back. It'll be Monday, Thursday or Tuesday and Friday. Right. And so you've got a nice two days in between before you come back around to those muscle groups. And so with the volume naturally going up, needing a little bit more rest and recovery, it just, this is personally one of my favorite splits, especially when you're getting the volume up a little higher. Yeah. And it's not too much though either. And it's even like, even though it's like, we're talking about it being laid in a perfect scenario. It's laid out. Like you said, it's the, you know, upper, lower day off, upper, lower. But I, again, I always like looking at things real world, like bad week. I only get one in this. Sometimes it'll look like, so for me, lower body is always the main focus. That's always, that's my weaker part. And so if I have a rough week, I'm going to make sure I at least get my lower body in and then I'm going to pick up right where I left off the very next week. So it could be like upper, lower, oops, I missed a bunch, but I'll jump back in. That's right. That's right. And so it's like, and it's still, it's, it's a way I like training if I'm not doing a full body routine. And I like that I still get to get that little bit of a pump because as a, as the guy who likes to do bodybuilding type stuff, the one thing I don't like about full body is I miss. I feel like this, this kind of a split is, is a nice bodybuilding slash strength building split because the skill acquisition aspect that we like so much from practicing lifts frequently is a little bit here, right? Yeah. I'm working my legs out twice a week. I get to practice squats twice a week, or I get to practice rows twice a week or bench press overhead, press twice a week. And, uh, there is value in practicing exercises more frequently, all, all, all other things being equal because lifts are skills. Well, that I would say that's probably the difference, major difference between, you know, our version is the emphasis on those like specific type of barbell lifts, because you don't see that in every like split program, especially like, you know, upper, lower, like it typically leans a lot on machines. Yes. Yes. Now, if you were advising somebody, I know we talk about this a lot on the podcast, but yeah, I feel like we still get this question of like, you know, is this for bulking or is this for cutting? It's like every program could be either way. But do you think because certain, like, for example, this one has naturally volumes going to go up naturally, it's, it's, it's leaning towards kind of strength and bodybuilding. Do you think it bodes well or better for somebody who's trying to build? I think, uh, I would say if we were speaking specifically to a kind of the kind of split that we're talking about, which would be like, would be like our maps, upper, lower program. This is a moderate volume, bodybuilding, muscle building routine. You could do an upper lower split and make it really crazy where it goes upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, lower. Uh, uh, and that would be a super high volume salad training, which most people wouldn't do well on at all. 99% of people's week. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's like our map split program. This is a really good, moderate, like this is going to build, this is a great muscle building program. Now to your question, Adam, I tell you what, like anytime you do strength training, your goal is to build muscle, whether you're trying to cut or build. Sure. Because if you're trying to cut, you want to keep the muscle you're trying to build, you're trying to build. Yeah. And so, yeah, no, this is an excellent program. I think it follows maps anabolic really well too. Totally. Yeah. It's a great followup to that. It's a great followup to, uh, PPL. Yeah. Uh, it's like a regression from that. It's the perfect kind of moderate volume. Like I'm consistent. I train, I'm a normal person though. I'm not some like crazy genetic anomaly. Yeah. Uh, I'm natural. Um, I have a regular life too, but I also like going to the gym. So you got your four days a week in the gym and the volume is split up very nicely and you get phenomenal results from it. And I, you know, I should know this, Justin will probably know better than me, but this is the first time we ever created a program that is specific to four days, right? This is, this is a, yep. The only one I know of. Yeah. That's actually for a four day, a four day routine. Yes. Almost everything's either been three, six, some five. Yeah. Do we have a five? We do have five. Yeah. So I don't think we have, and we also made a, a men and women's version in here. Just the program is a little different for, because women, yeah, women tend to want to build more glutes, more delts, you know, guys, a little more chest quads, you know, type of deal. So the programming's a little bit different. Um, but what you'll find, cause I remember years ago, the first time I switched to hitting each body part twice a week, one of the mistakes I made was I just duplicated my workout. So I just kept, I just doubled the volume and hammered out the intensity and overtrained like crazy. Yeah. Um, and then when I realized, Oh, wait a minute, I should cut the volume in half, try it twice. And I thought, what's the difference? I'm doing all the same amount. It was, is it going to be the same thing? No. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor element. So this is an electrolyte powder. You add it to your water. It tastes amazing. Thousand milligrams of sodium. Why? Because if you need electrolytes, you need the sodium, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar. So it's got zero calories. Now, what does this do for people who need this? Well, you get better mental clarity, better athletic performance, maybe have muscle cramps or headaches or fatigue. Uh, many people report more energy. I know I do. I drink two of these every single day. So if you go to drink element t.com slash mind pump on that link, you'll get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. All right. So here comes the show. They got way better results from training this way. I was stronger. I felt better. I built more muscle. Yeah. Um, and it just worked out well with those. That's right. Now here's the thing. Training like this, I think this is important to know. And again, the data supports us for pretty much any program, but especially if you're hitting a body part more than once a week is you train with intensity, but you don't train to failure. So that's a big mistake someone may make when hitting a body part more than once a week as they train to failure all the time, that'll fry you and we'll actually cause things to go backwards. Uh, and again, the data supports us pretty much for any kind of programming, but you're stopping about one or two reps short of failure. Now, do you, do you have a, like when you're, when you're splitting this like this, do you tend to one day of the week, you know, you're bringing a little bit more intensity versus the other day? Yep. Yeah. So that's how like the typically what I, what it looks like for me is back again, back to that point, I'm making about my legs, like the day there's, there's always at least a day in the week where I'm well rested, I'm well fed. And it's like, and I go in and I feel good. It's like, okay, I'm getting after legs this day. And then my next leg day will be more kind of going through it. More of the practice, bringing the intensity down a little bit. It's typically the first two workouts of that week or the heart. That's the Monday, Tuesday, heavier. That's Thursday, Friday. That's how it is weekend. That's right. That's how it is ideally for me. The only thing that would make that pivot and change is if, if I'm going into it and I don't feel good, then I'm like, okay, the next one I'll get after today, I'll just kind of go through the, and then just, just to add a little extra, I mean, we're going to go a little into the weeds here, but to what you were saying, Adam, if you're more upper body focused or more lower body focused, I like to eat in a much higher surplus the day before. So if I know tomorrow's upper body getting after it, then I eat more, right? If it's legs for me, that's well, then I'm going to eat more the day before to fuel that one workout that I'm looking for. And what's cool about this is, you know, when, and a lot of people are trained, are trained to train a very balanced physique, but a lot of people are like, look, I work out the whole body, but I want to focus on my legs or, hey, I train my whole body, but I want to focus on my upper body. And you can kind of do that with a program like this, where you place more emphasis. That's why I like that. That's how, that's where I am. Like I, I mean, I spent a lot of my early teens and, or even early twenties of being very upper body focused. And so, you know, most of my thirties and forties has been like more balancing out lower body. So if I miss anything, I'm going to skip arms. I'm going to skip, I'm going to skip an upper body type of workout, but I'm not missing legs. Legs are going to get hit every single week. And then that I want to put more of this, this type of routine lends itself well to that, where it's just like, that's what you're going to get out. Yeah. So we have a program that follows this split. It's a four day a week routine. It's maps, upper, lower. You can go to maps, upper, lower.com. Now, because it's a new program, it's 40% off. So we do this anytime we launch a brand new program. When you go to maps, upper, lower.com, you have to use the code launch to get the 40% off discount. Again, the program comes with a male and female programming version and the program has workout videos, exercise demos, coaching videos in there. And when you sign up during the launch period, you'll get some live coaching from one of our coaches here at mind pump to kind of help you through the process. So go check it out. You can also find us on Instagram. It's mind pump media.