Strength Training Frequency
Our bodies are amazingly adaptive organisms. Its primary goal and purpose is survival, and that is it. It could care less how lean you want to get, how much muscle you want to build, or how strong you want to be - survival is the only thing it cares about. When your body faces new stimulus, such as having to perform three heavy set of squats for 6 reps every monday at 6pm - it instinctively knows, and adapts to that training stimulus. While your gains will be rapid and noticeable for the first few sessions, you'll quickly notice that your body's ability to cope and deal with this "stress" significantly improves.
There are several ways to get around this and deal with this problem. You can change a number of factors to create new stimulus and stress that your body must learn to cope with, such as:
- changing the day of the week when you perform squats
- changing the time of the day when you do your strength training
- change the weight and change the reps of your squat exercise
- change your training frequency (just to name a few)
So what's so special about training frequency for building strength and muscle? One of the biggest mistakes many people make is to follow the exact same routine, exercises, training schedule and frequency day in and day out. Your body quickly picks up on your consistent training frequency and training pattern and adapts and adjusts accordingly - you are unknowingly sabotaging your own training efforts.
Weightlifting Strength Training Frequency
As you become more advanced and get increasingly stronger, the level of physical stress and exertion increases accordingly. Think of it like this. As a beginner, you might do something like squatting 3 sets of 150lbs for 10 reps. But as you advance and get stronger, you place much higher demands on your muscles by using much heavier weights, say doings the same squats for 3 sets, but for only 6 reps with 300lbs. No, it's not far fetched to say that someone can go from squatting 150lbs to 300lbs with proper training, diet, and nutrition.
Now look at the two training sessions and compare the difference in the amount of effort required to complete 3 sets of 150lb squats vs 3 sets of 300lb squats. The difference is massive, and the amount of additional stress your body endures is far greater. So what's the point I'm getting at?
With increased workout load and intensity, you must also increase your rest time, and REDUCE your strength training frequency.
Wait, what, you're saying I should train less, and not more? That's right. Train less. The more you train, and the more intense your strength training sessions are, the more over-trained you become, and over-training is your worst enemy. When you workout and exercise, there's a whole series of metabolic functions that happen that involve many of your key organs such as your kidney and liver. Do not think for a moment that when you have ultra high intensity strength training sessions that only your muscles get stressed and worked - your ENTIRE body is placed under that stress including your organs such as kidney and liver. While you may have the capacity to increase your muscle strength (ie. squatting 150lbs to squatting 300lbs), you do not necessarily have the ability to increase the metabolic functions of your organs to the same degree. Which follows that as you progressively increase the level and stress and intensity of your strength training, you also need to increase your rest times by reducing your training frequency.
This may be somewhat a difficult idea to accept, especially when many people are afraid of taking prolonged rest periods - such as taking one or two full weeks off from training. However, these types of full rest periods will only do your body good, allowing it for a complete recovery. If you suspect you might be over-training, you need to take at least a week off from all training. You will find that when you get back to the gym after a complete recovery that you're probably a bit stronger and not weaker as many people believe. You may also consider reducing the overall training frequency of your strength training sessions. For example, if you previously worked your legs once a week, say on mondays, reduce your training frequency a bit - instead of working your legs once every 7 days, try training it once every 8 days, 9, 10, 11 days or longer.
Learn to train smart and get your body to function at its peak to develop pure strength and muscle.
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