• Keep up to date with Ausbb via Twitter and Facebook. Please add us!
  • Join the Ausbb - Australian BodyBuilding forum

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.

    The Ausbb - Australian BodyBuilding forum is dedicated to no nonsense muscle and strength building. If you need advice that works, you have come to the right place. This forum focuses on building strength and muscle using the basics. You will also find that the Ausbb- Australian Bodybuilding Forum stresses encouragement and respect. Trolls and name calling are not allowed here. No matter what your personal goals are, you will be given effective advice that produces results.

    Please consider registering. It takes 30 seconds, and will allow you to get the most out of the forum.

High vs low frequency training

How often do I train each muscle group?


  • Total voters
    19
I murder myself with high volume and frequency but the intensity is pretty low (less than 85% most of the time)
 
I sort of mix and match.

I do a pretty standard 5-day bb split, hitting 2 muscle groups each session for about 30 minutes each.

But on the 6th day I'll do a full body workout to hit each muscle group again. With this it will be very light weight and reps until failure. So about 5 minutes per muscle group.
 
Last edited:
i believe the difference is they use totally different systems...

if you always goto the gym, you get an adaptation so much that you rarely even get DOMS.

if you rarely goto the gym, and work really hard, you get DOMS every single time without fail.

These 2 different approaches take advantage of 2 totally different systems.

Its now proven that inflammation in the muscle you trained, holds a host of other localised growth factors, thats where they discovered peptides. for example a big leg workout, 3-4 days later your legs are still swollen and sore, when they take a biopsy of this muscle tissue it contains igf-1 and a load of other healing peptides BECAUSE of the inflammation.

whereas if you train 6 days a week, your body will adapt so well to the training that theres no way you can be sore for 3-4 days let alone upto 10 days (aka mike mentzer style)!!!

you will however, get a good overall HGH and test response from higher freq so there is always a trade off. and for fitness and weight loss, this would be def the preference.
 
Cytokines, Growth Mediators, and Physical Activity in Children During Puberty - Google Books

"This suggested that children who trained the hardest and had the biggest increase in fitness also had the largest increase in circulating level of pro-inflammatory cytokines. In addition, changes in IGFBP-3 were inversely correlated with changes in TNF-a and IL-6, suggesting that the increase in inflammatory response mediates the training-associated decrease in components of the GH-IGF-1 axis."

to me, this means if you train alot, you get less igf-1 and gh factors

if you train rarely, you don't have this adaptation and hence take advantage of these growth factors.

edit:
"... associated with substantial increase in energy expenditure leads initially to an increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines, and as a consequence, to decreases in IGF-1 levels. Further, if the training adaption is successful, the proinflammatory cytokines fall, and with that decrease, the suppression of IGF-1 diminishes, and anabolic 'rebound' in the GH-IGF-1 axis may ensue, and IGF-1 level exceed the pretraining level."

double edit:
its simply taking advantage of our system, and utilising it for muscle benefit, not fitness like the study is about. open your mind @Silverback ;
 
Last edited:
to continue from above

"tapering down from training intensity prior to the competition is a well-known training methodology to help the athlete to schieve the best performance. This strategy is indeed associcated with a parallel increase in circulating IGF-1 levels."

suck a fat one @Silverback ; trying to talk shit, how bout you read a little about how the body works before slandering fellow members?

its quite clear if you dance on this level, find out how your body reacts and take adv of this system, you can remain in optimal IGF-1 and grow more, than trying to maintain 6 days a week and down-regulate everything.

im not saying its the best approach, but for bodybuilding without PED then yes it probably is the best way to take adv of what we produce inside our body's.

"In optimal conditions, during the tapering of training intensity, IGF-1 level will increase above baseline levels and will be associated with improved performance, however, this does not occur always. Since IGF-1 can be reduced by weight loss, it is possible that a deliberate decrease in body weight in athletes who participate in weight category sports (@oni ; )... Moreover, previous studies demonstrated training-associated negative correlation between circulating IGF-1 and ghrellin, a hormone that is secreted by the stomach and pancreas and known to stimulate hunger, in athletes. These hormonal relationships can play a role in the training induced changes in energy balance and body composition, in particularly to weight category sports."
 
Last edited:
my first post i simply said it in words everyone can understand, whats the difference?

why'd you feel to say "WTF" if thats what you were thinking?

i try to type in ways everyone can understand, no riddles, no stupid talk. straight to the fact.
i found that study (first one i clicked from google) to back up my claims, and they did 110%.
so why you being a bitch all the time?

still going:
"although changes in circulating IGF-1 are good markers of general condition and energy balance of the athlete, they are not neccesarily good predictors of the athletes performance. Probably, it is the local muscle levels of these hormones, and their autocrine or paracine secretion, that is more indicative of skeletal muscle performance."

more localised levels means, DON'T FUCKING TRAIN EVERY DAY!!!!

its really simple

are you understanding the picture yet??? @Silverback ; ? probably too caught up in your own bs to see outside the box
 
Last edited:
Yes, what -was I thinking

and what? all of a sudden because i can link a study, it justifies what i say???

what i type here about bodybuilding is the collective of about 15yrs of serious research. I don't write papers, but i sure did study them until about 2yrs ago when i started to read teh bullshit factor on a regular basis and i knew what they were saying, wasn't the truth...

thats why i hate quoting papers, my gut usually is better instinct now. but you wouldn't understand.

your just another troll.
 
whereas if you train 6 days a week, your body will adapt so well to the training that theres no way you can be sore for 3-4 days let alone upto 10 days

Not true. I train 6 days a week and frequently get DOMS that lasts 3 or so days. I trained quads on Tuesday and today they hurt from simply laying on the hamstring curl machine. The mistake everyone makes with fitness/physiology is that not everyone can be put in the same box/generalised.

I do know what you're saying though in terms of training infrequently and maximising DOMS. I wonder if there is a benefit with doing a 5-day split vs 5x full body workout. With the 5-day split you're working each muscle much more and giving it more recovery time. I know this has been covered before but there isn't really a definitive answer.
 
Last edited:
if you start it yes, but not if you continue it... there are many many combinations to this, and i tried not to be too distinct tbh.

cause i could, like a study, change anything to suit the final outcome...
 
i think you totally didn't get the entire thing at all sorry steveP

the key is to train so hard you can't train for another week. atleast not that muscle group atleast, if not everty 1.5-2 weeks to get through each bodypart.

you seem to confusing it with normal training, fight through it, cause your exhausted?
well why are you exhausted? why you fight through? simply because your tired from the previous training! (if you actually train that hard, not manny achieve this,if this was fact everyone here would be a pro)
 
shorten your rest but keep everything the same.

some take 2hrs, some take 45 mins... thats a start

but then we take into effect diff styles of training, so its really hard to say, basically, if you sweat your ass off, always out of breath from start to finish, no talking and making chit chat, then if and only if then, you are still pushing youself to be faster with even shorter rests, and sustain that... thats for real bodybuilding!
 
Not true. I train 6 days a week and frequently get DOMS that lasts 3 or so days. I trained quads on Tuesday and today they hurt from simply laying on the hamstring curl machine. The mistake everyone makes with fitness/physiology is that not everyone can be put in the same box/generalised.

I do know what you're saying though in terms of training infrequently and maximising DOMS. I wonder if there is a benefit with doing a 5-day split vs 5x full body workout. With the 5-day split you're working each muscle much more and giving it more recovery time. I know this has been covered before but there isn't really a definitive answer.

i never said 6 days a week wasn't good, i simply said it wasn't the best for natural bodybuilding. its fantastic for getting extremely fit!

what i did say, was listen to your body, and maybe, maybe backing off a bit, and going harder, may benefit muscle growth, through the internal factors (the growth factors) that happen naturally, if your natural.
 
With the 5-day split you're working each muscle much more and giving it more recovery time.
Unfortunately for the natural bodybuilder, steroids have really fogged up the glasses Steve. Working the muscle much more and giving it more recovery, does not take into consideration the recovery of your other much more important factor to recovering overall, and that's your nervous system. So a natural bodybuilder working his muscles really hard (because he can, due to the 5-day split), still needs to take into consideration the how is he working that muscle (despite it being [say] one muscle vs. a whole body workout). If he is using low repetitions, then that would have a totally different effect and ramification on his ability to recover from such a workout. If on the other hand he's using higher repetitions, with emphasis on metabolically stressing the muscle fibers over CNS stressing his whole nervous system, then not only would his ability to recover be enhanced, but his body's release of Myostatin would be suppressed (which is a good thing if muscle growth is his goal). Heavy loads have been shown to increase Myostatin, aka GDF-8. Do your research on Myostatin, for me I'm content with the metabolic stress type of workouts over the heavy load ones.

It's good to look at the overall picture and take more than one aspect to training into consideration when/before deciding on writing a potentially good metabolic stress and /or muscle (joint) overload program. As I've written before, there's no such thing as a muscle hypertrophy/bodybuilding program, as muscle growth is only a side effect of those two training methods I just mentioned.
 
wall of text, i respect you fadi, but use the enter key please...

"Unfortunately for the natural bodybuilder, steroids have really fogged up the glasses Steve. Working the muscle much more and giving it more recovery, does not take into consideration the recovery of your other much more important factor to recovering overall, and that's your nervous system."

"So a natural bodybuilder working his muscles really hard (because he can, due to the 5-day split), still needs to take into consideration the how is he working that muscle (despite it being [say] one muscle vs. a whole body workout). If he is using low repetitions, then that would have a totally different effect and ramification on his ability to recover from such a workout."

If on the other hand he's using higher repetitions, with emphasis on metabolically stressing the muscle fibers over CNS stressing his whole nervous system, then not only would his ability to recover be enhanced, but his body's release of Myostatin would be suppressed (which is a good thing if muscle growth is his goal).

Heavy loads have been shown to increase Myostatin, aka GDF-8. Do your research on Myostatin, for me I'm content with the metabolic stress type of workouts over the heavy load ones.

It's good to look at the overall picture and take more than one aspect to training into consideration when/before deciding on writing a potentially good metabolic stress and /or muscle (joint) overload program.

As I've written before, there's no such thing as a muscle hypertrophy/bodybuilding program, as muscle growth is only a side effect of those two training methods I just mentioned.

=== see how much better it looks formatted?
 
Top