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Sign Up & Get A Sample Training Program! by Dr. Mike Israetel, Chief Sport Scientist & Dr. Mel Davis | Mar 19, 2020 First, the bad news: to combat the spread of covid-19, the gym and/or other sport training facilities you've diligently frequented multiple times each week are currently - and indefinitely - closed. Now for the good news: effective
muscle-sparing workouts can be done at home with just some dumbbells, no matter your training level, so there's no need to put your hard work and physique goals on pause. To help, we’ve put together the following instructions for an at-home dumbbell program.
Designed to support both muscle maintenance on a cut and muscle gains if you plan to mass, this training will be extremely effective for the coming months. To get good hypertrophy training with very limited equipment, we have to get creative. With that, here is how you design a program to train at home with just a pair of dumbbells. Choose the
right exercises In the absence of heavy weight, you want exercises that can be made difficult via manipulation of other variables. That means conventional deadlifts, traditional squats, and presses are out for many people. Ouch, that hurts. But here are some highly effective options and variations: Chest: Dumbbell flyes from the floor Wide grip slow
eccentric push-ups (bonus if you can elevate your hands and go super deep) Feet elevated push-ups (feet on a chair or couch) Back: Dumbbell bent rows to hip Dumbbell bent rows to armpits Dumbbell bent rows with spinal flexion and extension Dumbbell straight-arm pulls to the hip, Vertical pulling if you can do it (if you have secure bar or ledge to
grab) Shoulders: Lateral raises Laterals with a pause Bent laterals Upright rows Dumbbell face pulls Biceps: Dumbbell curls Dumbbell hammer curls Dumbbell seated curls Dumbbell alternating curls Dumbbell concentration curls Triceps: Inverted skull crushers from the floor (a close grip push-up with your whole forearm touching the ground at
the bottom, elbows in) Close grip push-ups One-arm behind the neck triceps extensions Triceps kickbacks Dumbbell skull crushers Abs: Any crunches V-ups Reaching Sit-ups with Dumbbell Planks Calves: 2-legged and 1-legged calf raises (on a stair, step, or safe ledge) with or without dumbbells Glutes: Lunges of different types Single-leg glute
bridges 3 second top-hold glute bridges with dumbbells or bodyweight Slow eccentric sumo squats with pauses Hams: Stiff legged deadlifts with narrow, normal, and wide stances Single-leg stiff legged deadlifts Nordic curls if someone can help keep your feet propped and you’re really strong Quads: Heel-elevated close stance squats (a 2-3 inch heel
elevation will BLAST your quads) Long-step lunges Slow eccentric squats with dumbbells Rear-foot elevated (on a chair or stairs) Single leg squats (these are very tough!) Get close to failure To make up for the lack of heavy weight and variety of exercises, you have to get close to failure or fail by the end of every set. On the bright side, working with
bodyweight and dumbbells means that going to true failure is generally going to be very safe. For those few exercises where it isn't, shoot for 1-2 reps from failure. This strategy will often mean hitting 30 or more reps, given the relatively light weight being used. Yes, this will burn and require some willpower to push through, but the reason to do so is
that even sets of up to 40-50 reps taken to failure or very close will robustly grow muscle. It's true that lower rep ranges (5-30 reps) with heavier weights offer a better stimulus, but lower weights/higher reps will also ensure some progress for almost anyone, advanced lifters included. beperi Rest Less If you rest a long time between sets for this type
of training, it will take more reps to approach failure each set. The harder reps at the end of a set probably stimulate more muscle growth than the first few easier ones, so making reps harder earlier works for you. To accomplish this, keep rest between sets short.
As soon as you catch your breath and the burn of the target muscle recedes, start the next set. This structure, called rest-pause or myorep training, is both very effective and very time efficient… but painful, so be ready! Do more sets If you’re working with weights that require 30-50 reps to get near failure, sets will not be as stimulative of growth and
it might be wise to do more sets than normal. Start with the usual number of sets you’d do per muscle group (2-4 per session in most cases) and add sets from there if you’re not getting sore from the workouts, and your performance is climbing session to session. If you end up having to do as much as 1.5x your usual set number, know that this is
expected.
Train more often Lighter weight and more reps favor slower twitch fibers which heal more quickly, allowing you to recover faster and train more often. Also, lighter weights are less taxing for joints and connective tissues, which also means less requisite recovery time between training days. For example, with barbells and heavier weights, you might
train your quads twice a week. When training with just bodyweight and dumbbells, however, you can likely train quads three or eventually even four times a week, thanks to the faster recovery. A good rule of thumb is: if a muscle isn’t sore and your rep strength is as high as ever, you can train that muscle again! Get progressive overload via reps
rather than weight If you have one set of dumbbells at home, you won’t be able to add weight week to week. But you can add volume across weeks: a great strategy that can work for a long time. If some exercises are easier and you start with even as high as 30 reps, you can continue to get good gains as you move up to as many as 50 reps.
Realistically, it takes weeks of training to be able to do 20 more reps of an exercise, so adding reps can buy you months of progress. Use small variations when you need to make a change With any luck, we'll be back at our gyms before multiple mesocycle considerations have to be made... but here are a few just in case. With limited equipment,
varying exercises is harder, but not impossible. Foot and grip position differences become your best friends. Do hammer curls and close grip push-ups for a few months, then switch to supinated curls and medium grip push-ups for the next few months. Another tool of variation is cadence. Do curls and rows dynamically for a few months, then try rows
with a pause and one second hold at the top and curls with a slow eccentric phase (slow down your descent to span 3 seconds). Save time with antagonist and non-overlapping muscle group supersets Choose one exercise for one muscle group, and another exercise for its antagonist muscle group. Antagonist muscle groups are those that move the
body in opposite directions from each other. For example, chest and back muscles: do a set of push-ups, then, with no rest, a set of dumbbell rows. Because the main muscles involved don’t overlap, one muscle group rests while the other works. Add to that short rests between supersets, and you are putting in some efficient and effective work. You
can also use muscle group pairs that aren’t antagonists but are non-overlapping. For example, you can do squats and then push-ups without resting between. Before we wrap up this article with a sample program, let's briefly chat about the kind of dumbbells to get (provided you don't already have some lying around): Adjustable dumbbells with a
broad range of options are the ideal choice The next best thing are three sets of dumbbells, one to use for legs/back (heaviest), one for chest/triceps (moderate), and one for shoulders and arms (lightest). To determine the weights you'll need, use the following guide based on your knowledge of your capabilities: Your 10-15 rep max for dumbbell
lunges = your heaviest dumbbell weight Your 10-15 rep max for incline dumbbell press = your moderate dumbbell weight Your 10-15 rep max for dumbbell curls = your lightest dumbbell weight This errs on the side of heavier weights since you will have a broad range of reps, but no ability to increase weight incrementally across weeks. Better to end
up only getting six reps with a weight that is heavy for you and have room to move all the way up to 50 reps (that's a lot of "room to grow")! The last - but still effective - choice, is a single pair of dumbbells that’s light enough for you to curl and lateral raise for at least 5-10 reps, and heavy enough to stiff-legged deadlift for 30 or fewer reps.
yorurupusacu If there is a single weight that fits these two specifications, you’ll be golden for months of effective training. Lastly, in dire circumstances where dumbbells are completely sold out online and you (wisely) plan to stay out of physical stores until the "all clear", there is still hope for hypertrophy. As you can imagine, making this work
requires innovation! Water jugs can act as dumbbell like weights and backpacks can be loaded with weight for leg workouts. Word to the wise: stick with your lower weights over a backpack of 200lb of household items (and/or dogs/kids:) -- unwieldy loads can make lifts more accident prone, and injury will of course interfere with your progress at
best, and force you into a clinic at worst, defeating the original purpose of all of your "quarantined creativity". If you get really (but safely) creative with household weight construction, you might even be able to overload weight a bit. In Closing We at RP support both the choice to pause fitness pursuits during this complicated time and the choice to
push through any obstacle to continue to make gains (or at least not lose any). To help you make informed fitness choices or just fill some quarantine time with quality reading and videos, we've made RP+, our online learning environment FREE between now and July 1, so add this $0 offer to your RP cart now for immediate access (including a weekly
webinar and user Q&A with Drs.
Mike Israetel and James Hoffmann)! Also, please check out the RP Gym-Free dumbbell-only training program*, currently marked down by 60% to do our part to support the fitness community. *This program is geared for the ladies, but its male counterpart is expected in just days -- please look for emails and social media announcements! For
maintaining and making headway on your diet during these times, this recent article from our Chief Physician, Dr. Spencer Nadolsky has great, bite-sized info: Meal Prep And Diet Guidelines For Weathering COVID-19 by Tiago Vasconcelos, RP Research Editor | Sep 11, 2017 I feel this topic is hugely misunderstood, especially for those who are
relatively new to training. When people think about how many times you train per week, they usually associate it with how much progress they can make, and the recovery associated with it. zufibari For example, most believe going to the gym 5 times per week is better than 4, and 4 is better than 3.
But if you go 5 times per week, it will be harder to recover than 4, and 4 being harder than 3.
In a practical sense, it’s close, but when creating a program, there’s more than meets the eye and it’s important to understand the implications of it to make sure we have a good training frequency adequate to the situation. Just to make things clear, in the context of this article, everytime I mention frequency, it's referring to how many times you're
training per week, and not how many times you're hitting a muscle group or movement. A number of training sessions per week is largely dependent on 3 factors: 1) Training age 2) Commitment 3) Preference 1) Training age Because of diminishing returns, the more you train, the harder it is to progress. In order to continue to make progress,
overtime, your overall volume is going to have to increase.
And the more volume increases, the more frequency is needed, to split that volume. You could also argue that novices can recover from more volume, but would bring the discussion of MAV differences according to their respective MRVs, which would go beyond the scope of this article. Let's just take the axiom that more advanced athletes need more
volume. For example, if Bob needs 6 sets of squats per week to progress, he can do 2 sessions consisting of 3 sets each. However, John, who is more advanced than Bob, might need 15 sets of squats per week to progress. He can still do 2 sessions, for example the first one with 7 sets, and another with 8. But it’s a lot easier to add another session. If
he now has 3 sessions instead of 2, he only has to do 5 sets per session. This is an over-simplification, but it’s just to showcase the point that over time, you need more volume, thus more sessions are beneficial. 2) Commitment In very general terms, a higher number of days per week is always better. If I have an athlete that wants to have the
maximum results humanly possible and he's willing to do anything, I guarantee you that I will put him on a very high frequency. However, the problem with this line of thinking is that while most people want to have the maximum amount of progress, most have restrictions on what allows them to do so. We have school, work, friends, family, hobbies,
and so forth. dowake While doing "whatever it takes" sounds great and motivational, there's more to life than being big and lifting heavy things, and most people are aware of that. This to say that a higher number of days is indeed almost always better, but almost every one of us is restricted by other life factors. Training more times per week usually
means prioritizing your training more, there will be fewer rest days that you can make other plans for. And even though the time in the gym might be the same, you will still spend more of your time overall. More sessions mean more gym trips, more bag preparations, more showers, etc. Most professional athletes have a very high training frequency,
sometimes even training twice a day, but that’s their job.

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Sign Up & Get A Sample Training Program! by Dr. Mike Israetel, Chief Sport Scientist & Dr. Mel Davis | Mar 19, 2020 First, the bad news: to combat the spread of covid-19, the gym and/or other sport training facilities you've diligently frequented multiple times each week are currently - and indefinitely - closed. Now for the good news: effective
muscle-sparing workouts can be done at home with just some dumbbells, no matter your training level, so there's no need to put your hard work and physique goals on pause. To help, we’ve put together the following instructions for an at-home dumbbell program. Designed to support both muscle maintenance on a cut and muscle gains if you plan to
mass, this training will be extremely effective for the coming months. To get good hypertrophy training with very limited equipment, we have to get creative. With that, here is how you design a program to train at home with just a pair of dumbbells. Choose the right exercises In the absence of heavy weight, you want exercises that can be made
difficult via manipulation of other variables. That means conventional deadlifts, traditional squats, and presses are out for many people. Ouch, that hurts.
But here are some highly effective options and variations: Chest: Dumbbell flyes from the floor Wide grip slow eccentric push-ups (bonus if you can elevate your hands and go super deep) Feet elevated push-ups (feet on a chair or couch) Back: Dumbbell bent rows to hip Dumbbell bent rows to armpits Dumbbell bent rows with spinal flexion and
extension Dumbbell straight-arm pulls to the hip, Vertical pulling if you can do it (if you have secure bar or ledge to grab) Shoulders: Lateral raises Laterals with a pause Bent laterals Upright rows Dumbbell face pulls Biceps: Dumbbell curls Dumbbell hammer curls Dumbbell seated curls Dumbbell alternating curls Dumbbell concentration curls
Triceps: Inverted skull crushers from the floor (a close grip push-up with your whole forearm touching the ground at the bottom, elbows in) Close grip push-ups One-arm behind the neck triceps extensions Triceps kickbacks Dumbbell skull crushers Abs: Any crunches V-ups Reaching Sit-ups with Dumbbell Planks Calves: 2-legged and 1-legged calf
raises (on a stair, step, or safe ledge) with or without dumbbells Glutes: Lunges of different types Single-leg glute bridges 3 second top-hold glute bridges with dumbbells or bodyweight Slow eccentric sumo squats with pauses Hams: Stiff legged deadlifts with narrow, normal, and wide stances Single-leg stiff legged deadlifts Nordic curls if someone
can help keep your feet propped and you’re really strong Quads: Heel-elevated close stance squats (a 2-3 inch heel elevation will BLAST your quads) Long-step lunges Slow eccentric squats with dumbbells Rear-foot elevated (on a chair or stairs) Single leg squats (these are very tough!) Get close to failure To make up for the lack of heavy weight and
variety of exercises, you have to get close to failure or fail by the end of every set. On the bright side, working with bodyweight and dumbbells means that going to true failure is generally going to be very safe. For those few exercises where it isn't, shoot for 1-2 reps from failure. This strategy will often mean hitting 30 or more reps, given the
relatively light weight being used. Yes, this will burn and require some willpower to push through, but the reason to do so is that even sets of up to 40-50 reps taken to failure or very close will robustly grow muscle.

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Sign Up & Get A Sample Training Program! by Dr. Mike Israetel, Chief Sport Scientist & Dr. Mel Davis | Mar 19, 2020 First, the bad news: to combat the spread of covid-19, the gym and/or other sport training facilities you've diligently frequented multiple times each week are currently - and indefinitely - closed. Now for the good news: effective
muscle-sparing workouts can be done at home with just some dumbbells, no matter your training level, so there's no need to put your hard work and physique goals on pause. To help, we’ve put together the following instructions for an at-home dumbbell program. Designed to support both muscle maintenance on a cut and muscle gains if you plan to
mass, this training will be extremely effective for the coming months. To get good hypertrophy training with very limited equipment, we have to get creative. With that, here is how you design a program to train at home with just a pair of dumbbells. Choose the right exercises In the absence of heavy weight, you want exercises that can be made
difficult via manipulation of other variables. That means conventional deadlifts, traditional squats, and presses are out for many people. Ouch, that hurts. But here are some highly effective options and variations: Chest: Dumbbell flyes from the floor Wide grip slow eccentric push-ups (bonus if you can elevate your hands and go super deep) Feet
elevated push-ups (feet on a chair or couch) Back: Dumbbell bent rows to hip Dumbbell bent rows to armpits Dumbbell bent rows with spinal flexion and extension Dumbbell straight-arm pulls to the hip, Vertical pulling if you can do it (if you have secure bar or ledge to grab) Shoulders: Lateral raises Laterals with a pause Bent laterals Upright rows
Dumbbell face pulls Biceps: Dumbbell curls Dumbbell hammer curls Dumbbell seated curls Dumbbell alternating curls Dumbbell concentration curls Triceps: Inverted skull crushers from the floor (a close grip push-up with your whole forearm touching the ground at the bottom, elbows in) Close grip push-ups One-arm behind the neck triceps
extensions Triceps kickbacks Dumbbell skull crushers Abs: Any crunches V-ups Reaching Sit-ups with Dumbbell Planks Calves: 2-legged and 1-legged calf raises (on a stair, step, or safe ledge) with or without dumbbells Glutes: Lunges of different types Single-leg glute bridges 3 second top-hold glute bridges with dumbbells or bodyweight Slow
eccentric sumo squats with pauses Hams: Stiff legged deadlifts with narrow, normal, and wide stances Single-leg stiff legged deadlifts Nordic curls if someone can help keep your feet propped and you’re really strong Quads: Heel-elevated close stance squats (a 2-3 inch heel elevation will BLAST your quads) Long-step lunges Slow eccentric squats
with dumbbells Rear-foot elevated (on a chair or stairs) Single leg squats (these are very tough!) Get close to failure To make up for the lack of heavy weight and variety of exercises, you have to get close to failure or fail by the end of every set. On the bright side, working with bodyweight and dumbbells means that going to true failure is generally
going to be very safe.
For those few exercises where it isn't, shoot for 1-2 reps from failure. This strategy will often mean hitting 30 or more reps, given the relatively light weight being used. Yes, this will burn and require some willpower to push through, but the reason to do so is that even sets of up to 40-50 reps taken to failure or very close will robustly grow muscle.
It's true that lower rep ranges (5-30 reps) with heavier weights offer a better stimulus, but lower weights/higher reps will also ensure some progress for almost anyone, advanced lifters included. Rest Less If you rest a long time between sets for this type of training, it will take more reps to approach failure each set. The harder reps at the end of a set
probably stimulate more muscle growth than the first few easier ones, so making reps harder earlier works for you. To accomplish this, keep rest between sets short. As soon as you catch your breath and the burn of the target muscle recedes, start the next set. This structure, called rest-pause or myorep training, is both very effective and very time
efficient… but painful, so be ready! Do more sets If you’re working with weights that require 30-50 reps to get near failure, sets will not be as stimulative of growth and it might be wise to do more sets than normal. Start with the usual number of sets you’d do per muscle group (2-4 per session in most cases) and add sets from there if you’re not
getting sore from the workouts, and your performance is climbing session to session.
If you end up having to do as much as 1.5x your usual set number, know that this is expected. Train more often Lighter weight and more reps favor slower twitch fibers which heal more quickly, allowing you to recover faster and train more often. Also, lighter weights are less taxing for joints and connective tissues, which also means less requisite
recovery time between training days. For example, with barbells and heavier weights, you might train your quads twice a week.
When training with just bodyweight and dumbbells, however, you can likely train quads three or eventually even four times a week, thanks to the faster recovery.
A good rule of thumb is: if a muscle isn’t sore and your rep strength is as high as ever, you can train that muscle again! Get progressive overload via reps rather than weight If you have one set of dumbbells at home, you won’t be able to add weight week to week. But you can add volume across weeks: a great strategy that can work for a long time. If
some exercises are easier and you start with even as high as 30 reps, you can continue to get good gains as you move up to as many as 50 reps. Realistically, it takes weeks of training to be able to do 20 more reps of an exercise, so adding reps can buy you months of progress. Use small variations when you need to make a change With any luck, we'll
be back at our gyms before multiple mesocycle considerations have to be made...
but here are a few just in case. With limited equipment, varying exercises is harder, but not impossible. Foot and grip position differences become your best friends. Do hammer curls and close grip push-ups for a few months, then switch to supinated curls and medium grip push-ups for the next few months. Another tool of variation is cadence.
Do curls and rows dynamically for a few months, then try rows with a pause and one second hold at the top and curls with a slow eccentric phase (slow down your descent to span 3 seconds). Save time with antagonist and non-overlapping muscle group supersets Choose one exercise for one muscle group, and another exercise for its antagonist
muscle group. Antagonist muscle groups are those that move the body in opposite directions from each other. For example, chest and back muscles: do a set of push-ups, then, with no rest, a set of dumbbell rows. Because the main muscles involved don’t overlap, one muscle group rests while the other works. Add to that short rests between
supersets, and you are putting in some efficient and effective work.
You can also use muscle group pairs that aren’t antagonists but are non-overlapping. For example, you can do squats and then push-ups without resting between. Before we wrap up this article with a sample program, let's briefly chat about the kind of dumbbells to get (provided you don't already have some lying around): Adjustable dumbbells with
a broad range of options are the ideal choice The next best thing are three sets of dumbbells, one to use for legs/back (heaviest), one for chest/triceps (moderate), and one for shoulders and arms (lightest). To determine the weights you'll need, use the following guide based on your knowledge of your capabilities: Your 10-15 rep max for dumbbell
lunges = your heaviest dumbbell weight Your 10-15 rep max for incline dumbbell press = your moderate dumbbell weight Your 10-15 rep max for dumbbell curls = your lightest dumbbell weight This errs on the side of heavier weights since you will have a broad range of reps, but no ability to increase weight incrementally across weeks. Better to end
up only getting six reps with a weight that is heavy for you and have room to move all the way up to 50 reps (that's a lot of "room to grow")! The last - but still effective - choice, is a single pair of dumbbells that’s light enough for you to curl and lateral raise for at least 5-10 reps, and heavy enough to stiff-legged deadlift for 30 or fewer reps. If there is
a single weight that fits these two specifications, you’ll be golden for months of effective training. Lastly, in dire circumstances where dumbbells are completely sold out online and you (wisely) plan to stay out of physical stores until the "all clear", there is still hope for hypertrophy. As you can imagine, making this work requires innovation! Water jugs
can act as dumbbell like weights and backpacks can be loaded with weight for leg workouts. Word to the wise: stick with your lower weights over a backpack of 200lb of household items (and/or dogs/kids:) -- unwieldy loads can make lifts more accident prone, and injury will of course interfere with your progress at best, and force you into a clinic at
worst, defeating the original purpose of all of your "quarantined creativity". If you get really (but safely) creative with household weight construction, you might even be able to overload weight a bit. In Closing We at RP support both the choice to pause fitness pursuits during this complicated time and the choice to push through any obstacle to
continue to make gains (or at least not lose any). To help you make informed fitness choices or just fill some quarantine time with quality reading and videos, we've made RP+, our online learning environment FREE between now and July 1, so add this $0 offer to your RP cart now for immediate access (including a weekly webinar and user Q&A with
Drs. Mike Israetel and James Hoffmann)! Also, please check out the RP Gym-Free dumbbell-only training program*, currently marked down by 60% to do our part to support the fitness community. *This program is geared for the ladies, but its male counterpart is expected in just days -- please look for emails and social media announcements! For
maintaining and making headway on your diet during these times, this recent article from our Chief Physician, Dr. Spencer Nadolsky has great, bite-sized info: Meal Prep And Diet Guidelines For Weathering COVID-19 by Tiago Vasconcelos, RP Research Editor | Sep 11, 2017 I feel this topic is hugely misunderstood, especially for those who are
relatively new to training. When people think about how many times you train per week, they usually associate it with how much progress they can make, and the recovery associated with it. For example, most believe going to the gym 5 times per week is better than 4, and 4 is better than 3. But if you go 5 times per week, it will be harder to recover
than 4, and 4 being harder than 3. In a practical sense, it’s close, but when creating a program, there’s more than meets the eye and it’s important to understand the implications of it to make sure we have a good training frequency adequate to the situation.
Just to make things clear, in the context of this article, everytime I mention frequency, it's referring to how many times you're training per week, and not how many times you're hitting a muscle group or movement. A number of training sessions per week is largely dependent on 3 factors: 1) Training age 2) Commitment 3) Preference 1) Training age
Because of diminishing returns, the more you train, the harder it is to progress. In order to continue to make progress, overtime, your overall volume is going to have to increase. And the more volume increases, the more frequency is needed, to split that volume. You could also argue that novices can recover from more volume, but would bring the
discussion of MAV differences according to their respective MRVs, which would go beyond the scope of this article. Let's just take the axiom that more advanced athletes need more volume. For example, if Bob needs 6 sets of squats per week to progress, he can do 2 sessions consisting of 3 sets each. However, John, who is more advanced than Bob,
might need 15 sets of squats per week to progress. He can still do 2 sessions, for example the first one with 7 sets, and another with 8. But it’s a lot easier to add another session. If he now has 3 sessions instead of 2, he only has to do 5 sets per session. This is an over-simplification, but it’s just to showcase the point that over time, you need more
volume, thus more sessions are beneficial. 2) Commitment In very general terms, a higher number of days per week is always better.
If I have an athlete that wants to have the maximum results humanly possible and he's willing to do anything, I guarantee you that I will put him on a very high frequency. However, the problem with this line of thinking is that while most people want to have the maximum amount of progress, most have restrictions on what allows them to do so. We
have school, work, friends, family, hobbies, and so forth. While doing "whatever it takes" sounds great and motivational, there's more to life than being big and lifting heavy things, and most people are aware of that. This to say that a higher number of days is indeed almost always better, but almost every one of us is restricted by other life factors.
Training more times per week usually means prioritizing your training more, there will be fewer rest days that you can make other plans for. And even though the time in the gym might be the same, you will still spend more of your time overall. More sessions mean more gym trips, more bag preparations, more showers, etc. Most professional athletes
have a very high training frequency, sometimes even training twice a day, but that’s their job. For the average guy, it might not be worth it. For example, let’s consider plan A and plan B. Plan A: Full-body, 3 times per week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Plan B: Upper Lower, 3 times per week, repeated twice: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Even though this is a bit of an extreme example (Plan A being almost the minimum frequency, and Plan B being almost the maximum people usually go), if the total volume is the same, the fatigue and recovery won't be that different.
Plan B is simply Plan A more distributed. Each session will be a bit easier because you only have to do half the work, but at the same time, it will require more time and effort from the extra sessions. People think more training sessions will impact their recovery a lot because they think about adding another session without change anything else in the
program. So in this case, people would think about adding another full-body session, which would increase the total volume. However, in the short-term, a higher training frequency is to split and distribute volume, not to add even more volume. So giving a more realistic example (and I implement this quite often) someone who has been doing full-
body, can split their last training session into an upper-lower. The volume stays the same, but now the end of the week is a bit easier because you have to do less work in each session. 3) Preference And lastly, like many other aspects of training, preference has to be taken into account. Within a certain range and as long as all the other variables are
the same, how many days per week you train doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things, especially if you're not an athlete doing this for a living. Sure, more and shorter sessions are better, but at the same time, exercise selection, volume, frequency (in this context, defined by how many times you train a movement/muscle group) will
affect your progress to a much higher degree. If you dislike going to the gym often, it’s pointless to force yourself to go to the gym 5 or 6 times per week when you can achieve the same outcome by going 3 or 4 times. Likewise, if you really enjoying going to the gym and working out, you don’t need to restrict yourself training 4 times per week
because you think more will automatically make you overtrain. It won't if you take the overall volume into account. So to answer the question of how many times per week should you train, think about these 3 factors. When trying to decide how many days to go for, these are the type of questions you should be asking: How long have you been
training for? Do you need a lot of volume to progress? Can you handle that amount of volume in fewer sessions? Are you willing to commit to a high number of sessions? Is it worth it for your situation and life goals? Do you enjoy going to the gym more often? With my clients, by far the most common frequency I use is 4 times per week. It seems to
strike a good balance between per-session volume and gym commitment. For novices, I very often go with 3, as they don't need that much to start with, and it's probably not a good idea to try to make huge changes in lifestyle overnight. For more advanced folks, if they're willing to, I often make programs with 5 days a week, and sometimes 6. But the
takeaway point is: view training frequency as a variable that can be changed according to your specific situation and don’t be stuck in a specific number because you are afraid it will either not be enough or that it will burn you out. It's not that black and white. Remember that volume is by far the largest contributor to fatigue. For example, in our
Male Physique Templates, you're able to choose the frequency you want, the lowest being 3 times per week, and going up to 6. The volume will be adjusted accordingly.