2895: Should You Train Each Muscle Twice a Week? The Data Says Yes - Here's Exactly Why

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Approaching over half a billion downloads, this is the Mind Pump podcast, the best in fitness entertainment and health. Today's episode we talk about whether or not you should train your body parts twice a week. Is it superior? Short answer, yes, and we break it down for you. By the way, we have a brand new program that we just launched that follows this kind of a split. It's an upper lower routine. It's four days a week, upper lower, take it off, upper lower. It's brand new. So it's 40% off. Go to maps, upper lower.com, use the code launch. That'll give you the 40% off discount. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, element. So this is an electrolyte powder. You add it to your water. It tastes amazing. 1000 milligrams of sodium. Why? Because if you need electrolytes, you need the sodium, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar. So it's got zero calories. Now what does this do for people who need this? Well, you get better mental clarity, better athletic performance. Maybe you have muscle cramps or headaches or fatigue. Many people report more energy. I know I do. I drink two of these every single day. So if you go to drink element T.com/mind pump, on that link, you'll get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear over at mypumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mypumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. There's often a lot of debate on how often you should train a body part or a muscle group. Well, guess what? The data shows clearly there is a superior way. We're going to talk about why you should train each muscle group twice a week. Let's go. This is a cool conversation. It's something I've actually mean to ask you because I know what the data says or what we talk about when we compare this one time, two time or three times a week that you train a muscle group. Do we have good studies on four and five? Yeah. And controls controls on a lot of these because what comes in mind for me is when I think about today and the amount of stress and busy and poor sleep and technology and I think like that, like variables like that have to play a role too. Of course, you know, like somebody somebody might think that my body would do better training, you know, training the muscle group three times a week. And maybe that's true. If you're very well rested, you're very well hydrated, you're well fed, you're in a calorie surplus, all these great, you know what I'm saying? You're just focused on bodybuilding. Then it may make sense that you can train at that high of all you. But like, how does that factor in these studies? They've actually done some pretty good studies on training frequency. So there were early studies that made comparisons and the more frequent, you know, training style, produce better gains in the early studies. But the criticism was that the early studies didn't control completely for volume. So let me give an example. And we'll get more into this as the episode goes on. But let's say you did 10 sets of bench press on Monday versus five sets on Monday and five sets on Thursday. Same exercise. You're going to be doing, you're going to do naturally more volume if you do it Monday and Thursday because you're going to be stronger. So even though you're doing the same amount of sets, because you split it up, you're able to lift more on Thursday for those last five sets. And if you do those last five sets after the first five sets on Monday. So what they've done under their studies is they've controlled totally the volume. I've always thought of that as like, it's just more effective because like you'll perform it better at the same time. And then, okay, so there's two parts here. One is in perfectly controlled studies. And then the second one is how does this actually work out in the real world, which is what I'm interested in. Right. So the well controlled studies still show that training a body part about twice a week is going to produce more gains than once a week. Every additional workout subsequent workout, you see diminishing returns or maybe no additional gains and hypertrophy. Now, there's a case that the data will make on strength, but that has more to do with skill. When we're talking about just building muscle, the large body of evidence that we have points to two days a week, all things being controlled. Same exercise, same weights, same wraps, when they control everything, two days a week or hitting a body part twice a week, builds more muscle. I thought three was superior, but it was barely superior. So that was the argument was like, you know, so three, you don't see a huge difference in hypertrophy, but you see a difference in strength. And that has more to do with skill acquisition. Yeah, that makes sense. You're practicing the, I mean, in a month's time, you get four extra practices at that, that live. So that's logically that makes sense. You're get better at these compound lifts and you'll get more. But I actually thought that it showed more muscle, not a lot, but I, and that's why two tends to be the more favorable amount, because it's like once you do, once you hit two, you're getting 80, 90% of the results a whole other day or a whole other workout for 10% more. It's like, I guess if you had the time and you had the dedication, yeah. It also depends like what people like. Two days a week, you know, hitting, like, for example, doing an upper lower split, which would be a good example of this, right? Where you'd be like, let's say upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, you take Wednesday off, and then Thursday, upper body, Friday, lower body. So like a traditional bodybuilding split. I love that split. People like that kind of a split, because you get the value of the additional frequency that builds more muscle, but you also get the kind of bodybuilding feel, the pump within the workout. Whereas full body workouts, which are typically the, when you're talking about the three day week, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, full body. You don't get the pump. You don't get to really hyper focus on a body part. And so people who are more interested in hypertrophy and building in the pump, they tend to favor this twice a week. And the data supports like this. This is, this is pretty much where you're going to build the most amount of muscle, all things being equal. So again, the data on this is clear. So that's one reason why you should train this way. The second reason is that fatigue becomes less of a hindrance. So when it comes to exercise or working out, people view fatigue is a good thing. And in some cases, it is, right? In other words, if I'm training for endurance, I have to train fatigue. I have to press fatigue because I'm trying to get stamina and endurance with strength fatigue is a problem. Yeah. You can't train strength if you're fatigue. If you're fatigued in your training, you're training endurance. If you want to train power or strength, the less fatigue there is the more you can train power or strength. So this is why sprinters, when they're, like Olympic sprinters, they don't run to fatigue. They sprint, they rest. And then they come back and you notice that they kind of wait for a while. I mean, this is our biggest, this is our biggest quam with jump boxes. You hear us talk about on the podcast all the time. Is people do plios the wrong way? If you're training for power, which is what plios are for, it should look like this explode. And then this long respiratory explode. And this long respiratory not this rep after after now you're training stamina. That's right. And this is why, you know, they've done data to compare like rep ranges in which one builds more muscle. And previous studies showed that the lower rep ranges like eight reps, 10 reps, let's say six reps, even built more muscle than let's say 15 to 20 reps. But then there were later studies that compared the two. And so long as the rep ranges or the training is close to failure, they build the same amount of muscle. So then everybody's like, Oh, cool, 15 reps or 20 reps build as this much muscle is eight reps. This is true. So long as fatigue doesn't get in the way. So give an example, if I go and train one rep close to failure of barbell squats for eight reps versus 20 reps, for most people that night, that 20th rep, what's stopping you is your endurance. You're breathing hard, man. It is not the muscular very cardiovascular failure. Yes. And so it gets in the way. So my lower reps, 10. So fatigue is not what you want when you're trying to build muscle. You're trying to do is train strength and power. And so when you split up your volume over two workouts, rather than doing them all in one workout, for example, if I'm doing chest and I'm doing, you know, 16 sets on one day versus eight sets on one day, eight sets on another day, same total sets. Yeah. But they feel very different because fatigue is not so much of a, you know, this didn't make your list. I also like this because I like this type of a split. One of the things that I make a point of saying with the full body routine that I like is that you're hitting the full body. And so even if you have a bad week and you don't hit, you only get a workout in order that you least hit everything muscle group, I find the commitment to one or two days a week. And then like, even if you only got two days out of the week and you can pick right back up on that upper lower split, it's easier to do that versus like a, these body part splits that split up to one day hit that body part. Yes. And if you miss that, yes, which is traditionally what a lot of bodybuilders tend to lean towards this one body part, they or two that they focus on. And I found that like, man, you just got to have a day or two off. And then now it throws the whole thing off where an upper lower is really easy because even if I did miss a workout or two, it's real easy to get back in the swing of that. And I don't feel like you fall way behind on hitting a muscle group. That's like a real life. Yes. That's what tends to be what happens. The other thing is that the splitting up your workout and half, let's say. So you hit upper body twice a week, lower body twice a week, split up the exercises so you could do half a one day, half on the other day, you know, both for upper and lower. This allows you to focus more of your effort on the better lifts. So again, to use the example of, let's say, chest or back, you know, if I'm doing 16 sets for back in one day, the last eight sets are not barbell rose dead lifts. - Your exercise selection is gonna be completely different. - Yeah. - You're gonna have to consider what's not gonna be as taxing for one, 'cause you're just gonna have to keep adding that in. So you're gonna lean more towards machines and you're gonna lean more towards, you know, certain exercises of build volume, but not necessarily the big moveers. - This is where the term junk volume came from. - Yeah. - Is where, you know, someone's doing everything in one workout for a body part, and it's like the first five sets or six sets of the workout are legit. Then the back half, it's like, - Yeah. - What do they, what do the body both say? I'm just trying to squeeze more blood in the muscle, trying to get more of a pump, which, you know, feels good, I get that. - It's the finisher lifts, right? But they're not the big ones that make the biggest difference. Whereas if I'm doing, you know, instead of doing 20 sets of back on one day, I'm doing 10 on one day, 10 on another day, I'm probably gonna do a good, good, the best lifts on both days, because of the point I made earlier with the fatigue. - This also, so this type of routine ends out working out to be basically four days of the week that you're lifting. And then the other, so what I like about this too is personally for myself, it takes more mental focus and get up for like a leg day for me. It's just more fatigue. - Totally. - I wanna train them harder too. And so because it's just a four day routine and there's three days of flexibility in there, I schedule my leg days on my days when I'm ready to get after it. Like that's, I feel like I can cruise through my upper body on a day where I don't feel the best. I don't need the best rest, it doesn't, I don't feel like I need to feel my best. When I wanna train legs, I wanna feel my best. And so another reason why I like a split like this is that I can shift that lower body day on, or put it-- - It's a mental, you know, state that you're going to be. - Yes, when I'm focused, when I'm rested, when I'm good, it gives me enough flexibility where today I'm not feeling I'm gonna take the day off today, or you know what, I'm feeling great, I'm gonna go after my lower body, I'm gonna rest tomorrow or whatever. - Yeah, this kind of a split, like you're mentioning upper lower type split, like our maps upper lower program, which is like what we're talking about, right? Where you're training each muscle group twice a week. It allows for more volume than a traditional full body, 3-day week routine, because once you start to ramp up the volume on full body, the workouts get too long. - Yeah. - You know, they can turn into long workouts. But when you split it up this way, now your, you know, the time comes down, but the volume is higher. - Yep. - Because of the way it's split. Here's the other thing too, when you train a body part twice a week versus doing all of it once a week, volume naturally goes up. So there are a few things that are connected that we can directly connect or correlate to muscle growth. One is strength, okay? We talk about this all the time on the show, like, especially in the first few years of your, of your consistent lifting career, let's say, if you're getting stronger consistently that tends to translate almost reliably, like 100% reliably to muscle. Now, later on, it's not so reliable. Once you get really strong, it's not like adding, 15 pounds is gonna really make a big difference when it comes to muscle. But in the first few years, the best thing you should do is chase strength. But there's another thing that is even more closely related to muscle growth that seems to be related regardless of how you've been lifting, how long you've been lifting, and it's connected in the beginning, it's connected 10 years later, and that's your total training volume. And volume naturally goes up when you split up your body and train it twice a week instead of once a week. Why? I made this point earlier. You're stronger. - Yeah, you're not fatigued. You're able to actually, like, perform the lifts well, and then again, too, you're able to actually, like, load and progressively overload and then work on the strength aspect. - And that's volume. So volume, people tend to think this. I used to think this. I thought volume was just sets, but it's not. Volume is sets, reps, and weight. - Yeah. - And so if I'm doing, you know, let's just create a hypothetical, right? Let's say I did 15 sets of barbell curls. Okay, let's just say all in one day, and let's say I used 70 pounds, and my first set was 10 reps, you know, 10 reps with good intensity. I'm sure by the 15th set, I'm gonna be down to like six reps. - Yeah. - Or five sets. But if I did, if I split that up into two workouts, I would be able to complete more reps with that amount of weight, yeah. Even though the sets are the same-- - High amount of weight. - And more reps, volume went up. And so this is where the studies that are really controlled, I don't think they tell the full story. Because they're controlling perfectly for everything. I don't know, do this many reps, do this much weight. But in real life, when you split the body up, without even trying, because you've split up the volume, you end up doing more volume, because you're not as fatigue. - And what's nice about that is volume, actually goes up, and then the way this is split up, different than like a full body, is you actually get more rest before you come back around to that, too. So typically, if you have a three day week routine, it's like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So every other day, you're coming back in your-- - So every Monday, Thursday, or Tuesday and Friday. - Right. And so you've got a nice two days in between before you come back around to those muscle groups. And so with the volume, naturally going up, needing a little bit more rest and recovery, it just, this is personally one of my favorite splits. - Yeah. Especially when you were getting the volume up a little higher. - Yeah, yeah. And it's not too much, so either. And even though we're talking about it being late, in a perfect scenario, it's laid out, like you said, it's the upper lower, day off, upper lower. But again, I always like looking at things real world, like bad week, I only get one in. This, sometimes it'll look like, so for me, lower body is always the main focus. That's always my weaker part. And so if I have a rough week, I'm gonna make sure I at least get my lower body in. And then I'm gonna pick up right where I left off that very next week. - Yeah, so it could be like upper, lower, oops, I missed the bunch, but I'll jump back in. - That's right, yeah. - That's right. And so it's like, and it's still, it's a way I like training if I'm not doing a full body routine. And I like that I still get to get that little bit of a pump. Because as a guy who likes to do bodybuilding type stuff, the one thing I don't like about full body is I miss that. - I feel like this, this kind of a split is a nice bodybuilding slash strength building split. Because the skill acquisition aspect that we like so much from practicing lifts frequently is a little bit here, right? I'm working my legs out twice a week. I get to practice squats twice a week. Or I get to practice rows twice a week or bench press or overhead press twice a week. And there is value in practicing exercises more frequently all of the things being equal because lifts are skills. - Well, I would say that's probably the difference, the major difference between our version is the emphasis on those specific type of barbell lifts because you don't see that in every split program, especially like upper lower, typically leans a lot on machines. - Yes, yes. - Now if you were advising somebody, 'cause I know we talk about this a lot on the podcast, but yeah, I feel like we still get this question of like, you know, is this for bulking or is this for cutting? It's like every program could be either way. But do you think because certain, like for example, this one has naturally volumes going to go up. Naturally, it's leaning towards kind of strength and bodybuilding. Do you think it bodes well or better for somebody who's trying to build? - I think I would say if we were speaking specifically to the kind of split that we're talking about, which would be like our maps upper lower program, this is a moderate volume bodybuilding muscle building routine. You could do an upper lower split and make it really crazy, where it goes upper lower, upper lower, upper lower. And that would be a super high volume salad training, which most people wouldn't do well on at all. 99% people. - Six weeks. - Yeah, that's like our map split program. - Yeah, it's getting way too high of volume. - This is a really good moderate, like this is a great muscle building program. Now to your question Adam, I tell you what, like anytime you do strength training, your goal is to build muscle, whether you're trying to cut or build. - Sure. - Because if you're trying to cut, you wanna keep the muscle, you're trying to build, you're trying to build. And so yeah, no, this is an excellent program. - I get follows maps and a ball look really well too. - Totally. - Yeah. - It's a great follow up to that. It's a great follow up to PPL. - Yeah. - It's like, - It's a regression from there, right? - It's the perfect kind of moderate volume. Like I'm consistent, I train, I'm a normal person though. I'm not some like crazy genetic anomaly. - Yeah. - I'm natural. I have a regular life too, but I also like going to the gym. So you got your four days a week in the gym and the volume is split up very nicely. And you get phenomenal results from it. - And I should know this, just don't probably know better than me. But this is the first time we ever created a program that is specific to four days, right? - This is a little, yeah, the only one I know of. - Yeah, that's actually four, a four day routine. Almost everything's either been three, six, - Some five, yeah. - Do we have a five? - We do have five of a five. - Yeah. So I don't think we have a four. - We also, we also have four. And we also made a man and women's version in here just the program is a little different for, because women tend to want to build more glutes, more delts, you know, guys a little more chest quads, you know, type of deal. So the program is a little bit different. But what you'll find, 'cause I remember years ago, the first time I switched to hitting each body part twice a week, one of the mistakes I made was, I just duplicated my workout. So I just doubled the volume and hammered out the intensity and over-trained like crazy. And then when I realized, oh, wait a minute, I should cut the volume in half, try it twice. And I thought, what's the difference? I'm doing all the same amount. Is it going to be the same thing? No. They got way better results from training this way. So you'd be stronger, like you say. I was stronger. I felt better, I built more muscle. And it just worked out for a while at those days. That's right. Now here's the thing, training like this, I think this is important to know. And again, the data supports us for pretty much any program, but especially if you're hitting a body part more than once a week, is you train with intensity, but you don't train to failure. So that's a big mistake someone may make when hitting a body part more than once a week as they train to failure all the time. That'll fry you and will actually cost things to go backwards. And again, the data supports us pretty much for any kind of programming, but you're stopping about one or two reps short of failure. Now, do you have a, like when you're splitting this like this, you tend to one day of the week, you know you're bringing a little bit more intensity versus the other day. Yeah. So that's how, like typically what I, what it looks like for me is back again, back to that point I'm making about my legs. Like the day, there's, there's always at least a day in the week where I'm well rested, I'm well fed. And it's like, and I go in and I feel good. It's like, okay, I'm getting after legs this day. And then my next leg day will be more kind of going through it, more of the practice, bringing the intensity down a little bit. It's typically the first two workouts of that week. Or the heart or the heart or the heart. That's the idea. The Monday, Tuesday, heavier Thursday, Friday, that's how it is. That's how it is ideally for me. The only thing that would make that pivoted in change is if I'm going into it and I don't feel good, then I'm like, okay, the next one I'll get after it. Today I was kind of go through the, and then just to add a little extra, I mean, we're going to go a little into the weeds here, but to what you were saying at 'em, if you're more upper body focused or more lower body focused, I like to eat a much higher surplus the day before. So if I know tomorrow's upper body, then I eat more, right? If it's legs for me, that's well, then I'm going to eat more. The day before to fuel that one workout that I'm looking for. And what's cool about this is, you know, when a lot of people are training, are training, training a very balanced physique, but a lot of people are like, look, I work out the whole body, but I want to focus on my legs. Or, hey, I train my whole body, but I want to focus on my upper body. And you can kind of do that with a program like this where you place more emphasis on your face. That's why I like that. That's where I am. I mean, I spent a lot of my early teens and, or even early 20s of being very upper body focused. And so, you know, most of my 30s and 40s has been like more. Yeah, balance out lower body. So if I miss anything, I'm going to skip arms. I'm going to skip, I'm going to skip an upper body type of workout, but I'm not missing legs. Legs are going to get hit every single week. And then that I want to put more of this type of routine lends itself well to that where it's just like, that's what you're going to get out here. Yeah, so we have a program that follows this split. It's a four day week routine. It's maps upper lower. You can go to maps upper lower calm. Now, because it's a new program, it's 40% off. So we do this anytime we launch a brand new program. When you go to maps upper lower calm, you have to use the code launch to get the 40% off discount. Again, the program comes with a male and female programming version. And the program has workout videos, exercise demos, coaching videos in there. And when you sign up during the launch period, you'll get some live coaching from one of our coaches here at Mind Pump to kind of help you through the process. So go check it out. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle@Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee. And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pump Media.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.