How Often Do You Need To Workout To Grow Muscle
How Often Do You Need to Workout to Grow Muscle?
A question that has plagued us for the ages. How much is too little? How much is too much? The answer does come with a lot of ifs and buts. Essentially, in order to GROW muscle (Hypertrophy), you will need to perform resistance training to strain the muscle and then allow adequate recovery time for the muscle to repair itself. For more on this type of training read out article on MUSCLE GROWTH. To find the appropriate frequency, we first need to determine where you are in a hypertrophy training phase.
Initial Stage (1-2 Weeks)
If you are new to resistance training the first 1-2 week (4-8 sessions) will be the most painful. This comes from muscle growth that mainly occurs through muscle damage induced swelling. If this sounds like fund then great because the greatest amount of size gains will happen in the first couple weeks when your cells are not used to this training. This cell expansion is mostly due to Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. Your body will start filling your muscle with glycogen to prepare for these workouts, which will increase the size. During this "pain" phase, the frequency for this will be the lowest due to the fact your muscles will need the most time to recover. A simple test to see if you are ready to train again would be if you muscle are painful to a light finger touch. If that is the case, it would be better to rest.
During this time you most likely will want to resistance train 2-3 times per week, with about 10 working resistance sets per muscle group a week. You will most likely need 72 hours+ for a muscle to recover from this, therefore you should only train a muscle group once or twice a week.
Because the recovery time it would be best to split your resistance training sessions to an Upper Body workout one day and then a Lower Body workout another day.
Example:
Week 1
Monday - Upper Body
Wednesday - Lower Body
Friday - Upper Body
Week 2
Monday - Lower Body
Wednesday - Upper Body
Friday - Lower Body
Strength Phase (2-6 Weeks)
While you gain the most size in the first couple of weeks (4-8 sessions) you will begin to gain more strength in the next 4 weeks (or 8-12 sessions). Because of the swelling that occurred in the first part of training in would be difficult to replicate that muscle cell expansion without it. But the good news your muscle fibers will begin to grow back stronger., this is referred to as Myofibrillar Hypertrophy. This is when you can start adding more resistance to the exercises. The time to recover will shorten and you can now train more frequently.
During this time you most likely will want to resistance train 3-4 times per week, with 10-15 total working resistance sets per muscle group a week. Your recovery time should be 48-72 hours to recover therefore you could train a muscle group twice a week.
Your recovery time is better now and your split can become more creative.
Example:
Week 1
Monday - Push Day
Tuesday - Pull Day
Thursday - Push Day
Friday - Pull Day
Week 2
Monday - Push Day
Tuesday - Pull Day
Thursday - Push Day
Friday - Pull Day
Return to Muscle Growth Phase (6-12 Weeks)
Once you have come to this point you have passed the beginning phase. Your body is now ready for regular Hypertrophy Training, which suggests in order to grow your muscles to will need to train them 1-3 times per week. Depending on your recovery routine, age, rest, etc. you will need about 48 hours for a muscle to recover. The studies do suggest 20 working sets per week divided between 2 sessions per week for a muscle group. The old method of training one muscle group per day once a week is likely not enough, it would likely to be better to train multiple body parts per session.
You could now push to training 4-6 resistance training session per week, with 15-20 total working resistance sets per muscle group a week. This can remain at 4 days per week but with an increase in total sets per muscle group.
You could split this up more and train the muscle groups you want to grow more often.
Week 1
Monday - Push Day
Tuesday - Pull Day
Thursday - Push Day
Friday - Pull Day
Sunday - Arm Day
Week 2
Monday - Push Day
Tuesday - Pull Day
Thursday - Push Day
Friday - Pull Day
Sunday - Arm Day
Under or Over Training
Once you get up to speed, in order to grow a muscle you will want to train that muscle 2-3 times per week, getting about 15-20 working sets per week. If you are not hitting that many sets per week, depending on your experience and recovery levels you may be under training. If you are training sore or exceeding 30 working sets per week you are likely over training.
How often do you need to train to grow muscle?
..to grow a muscle you will want to train that muscle 2-3 times per week, getting about 15-20 working sets per week
