Mark Kerr said:
My workouts take about an hour. I do a 3 on/1 off followed by 2 on/1 off split. Therefore, I am lifting Mon, Teus, Wed, Fri, Sat with Thurs and Sunday off. I also only work each bodypart 1x per week, excluding abs, dips and chins, which I do 2x week.
Question for Hogg: When JS and other powerlifters claim to be able to work a muscle group more than 1x per week, they are refering to core movements only correct? For example, one could do bench press 2x per week, but are you saying that JS wouldnt have minded someone hitting biceps with 12-16 sets 2x per week? It seems that such small, isolated muscle groups (like bi's) should be trained with less frequency than larger, more complex muscle groups. Actually, I would prefer this language...Would you agree that isolated movements be used less frequently than compound movements? The reason I ask this is that I could personally bench press 2x or 3x per week and not feel like I am overtraining. However, If I were to work biceps 2x or 3x per week with 12-16 sets, then my arms would be in constant pain. I hope I am clearly communicating this properly. So what do you think?
Your friend,
Mark
Body parts can be trained, whether by isolation or compound movements, at a 2x frequency providing that the volume and loading is tailored appropriately.
As far as training biceps for 12-16 sets, thats probably going to hinder your core movements because when you consider that they are involved in your compound rowing and pulldown movments, you are working biceps 4 times per week! The result of training a small muscle group such as the biceps with that much volume while also using them in compound movements would indeed lead to overtraining the hell out of them and bad tendonitis would probably be the first indicator. You see, so rather than 12-16 direct sets per session, you would want to cut that to perhaps 1 movement of 4-6 sets or 1 movements of 3 sets apiece and train them 2x per week in that fashion. They would be trained indirectly through your rows and pulldowns and then directly via the isolation movements - curling. And with this reduced volume, you should be able to recover. If ever your biceps or triceps did not seem to be fully recovered by the time you went in for your next compound session - ie, triceps a little tender when you bench press - then you would want to reduce the direct isolation movement volume a little further - say 1 movement, 4 sets max - and then see how you feel in the weeks that follow. You never want your arms holding up progress on your torso. Its like a person who trains the shit out of their forearms so much that they cant hold on to the bar and when they row or pull, it is a less than sincere effort. Here, the forearms are holding up work on the back. Its not a good proposition.
I'll give you some other examples that paint a picture of the amount of volume that you would perform with your compound movements.. Lets say that you train legs and erectors 2x per week. Then perhaps you would take your heavy squat day and work up to your training poundage over say 5 sets and then perform another 3-5 sets at training weight. Now your quads are done after 8-10 sets. You would then go on to good mornings and perform say, oh, about 5-6 sets with lighter weights than you use on your heavy day.
Now you are on your second leg session of the week. You might begin with stiff-legged deadlifts and work up to your training poundage over 4-5 sets, and then perform another 3-4 sets at load. Now you move on to your squat. Perhaps you work up to a comfortable poundage after 3 sets and perform another 4-5 sets at this weight.
With the above example, there are no isolation movements because in truth, they are largely unnecessary in the muscle groups that we mentioned. I did not mention calves but I'd expect that most people would be training calves independently 4 times a week anyway. Lets look at some examples of upper body training that include isolation exercises.
Lets take a chest/shoulder/tricep session-
Perhaps your big movement for chest is incline dumbbell. You might work up over a few sets to your training poundage and then perform another 3-4 sets at target weight and then call it done for that session. You might do a few sets of flys to stretch but chest is pretty much done after than initial 6-7 sets. Then you move on to shoulders, perhaps do 5-6 sets of seated military and then move on to lateral raises, perhaps 3-4 sets here, and 3 sets of posterior raises though I think these are better included on back day when you do a lot of rowing. From there, you move on to triceps, perhaps you do skullcrushers - 5-6 sets and thats it. The laterals and the skullcrushers were your isolation movements.
Now mind you, we are talking about pretty decent load. With skull crushers, after 5 sets at a sincere load, performing a set of 6-8 reps is going to be an effort. If you are using loads that allow you to knock out your sets without ever feeling a bit of sweat on your brow, then indeed, more sets might seem necessary to you because the load is low and thus a very large amount of volume must be performed in order to feel like you even trained.
These are conservative examples. I could see adding some sets to each of the examples that I gave however, each person has to tailor his volume to his own recovery. But, if someone said "yeah hogg, I'm training 2x per week but I increased the volume to 20 sets for chest" then I know right there that the person is not using sufficient loading and I would suspect that the energy expenditure that is required to train at such high levels of volume is going to burn that person out and put him back on a 1x per week program very quickly because he 'cant' recover from a 2x program - all the while not seeing that his intensity (as measured by load) is too low.
I see guys at Gold's who train chest/back/biceps for 2 hours apiece. they come in, start curling, continue curling, and then when you think they are done, they do some more curls. They typically do not grow much because it is too much work and by the time they are recovered enough to make it back to the gym, the training effect has diminished - meaning that their training effort keeps them slightly better than maintenance all year long.
Re-reading my response, I think I addressed your initial question and perhaps expanded a bit on the big picture of the amount of volume that you would perform on a 2x program. I'd be happy to answer any additional questions that you have. Just let me know.
H
