How to schedule workouts
When
it comes to bodybuilding, more is not always
better. For instance, while your initial
temptation may be to take your ambitious mind
and eager muscles to the gym as often as
possible, that strategy can actually work
against you. Again, one essential key is
to know when to work out and when to rest.
Too much of one or the other and you've upset
the apple cart.
As
you lift, you're actually fatiguing and wearing
down the muscle tissue. It's during the
recovery process that your muscles actually grow
bigger and stronger. So as you can see,
you should never train the same muscles on
consecutive days since it's actually
counterproductive.
That's
where a split routine comes in. This is a
program in which you train different muscles on
different days. So while you might lift on
consecutive days—chest, shoulders, and triceps
on Monday; legs, back, and biceps on
Tuesday—you'll be using different muscles each
day. Not only does this allow ample time
for your muscles to recover, it means you'll be
doing fewer exercises on any given day.
This prevents burnout, allows you to spend less
time lifting on each visit, and means you'll be
able to work more intensely on the exercises
that you will do.
At
the other end of the "too many"
spectrum, if you train too infrequently, the
strength gains you made in one session will be
lost by the next. That means even if you
do the best routine in the world on January 1
and little or no training until February 1, the
result would be minimal at best in the strength
gains department. That should come as no
surprise, but we hear people who lift twice a
month lament the fact that they're not making
much progress.
So
what is the ideal frequency? That varies from
individual to individual and has a lot to do
with how hard each training session is.
Here's another immutable rule to note: A hard
workout will require more recovery time than an
easy one.
Individual
strengths and weaknesses aside, two workouts per
week is good; three may be better.
Whenever possible, we advise beginners to aim
for three workouts. If you manage to do
two, fine; however, if you're shooting for two,
the tendency is that you miss one and compromise
your gains. There's another reason why
three sessions may be better than two.
Early in your workout life, one of our primary
goals is to get your brain and body used to the
exercises. At this stage we're less
concerned with intensity than frequency.
So don't worry about your body's ability to
tolerate three workouts a week. Once your
make going to the gym a regular part of your
life—when your bodybuilding workout becomes
part of your regular routine—we'll up the
intensity and really start to see significant
gains.
