Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below I was wondering how or if you guys change up the frequency of your workouts when cycling and if so by how much. For example if you've been weightlifting for a year and a half and you work each muscle group once a week would you increase that or continue with the same workout regimen. If this has already been covered somewhere else I apologize in advance. Thanks!
workout frequency when cycling??
- Thread starter phx
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silver_shadow
New member
whether you're on cycle or off cycle, the frequency per week doesn't change. what changes is your intensity measured in terms of actual weight lifted, whether for a single, a double, triple, five, or whichever rep range you chose to get stronger in.
having said that, as marcell mentioned 2-3x per week is more efficient for muscle gain.
having said that, as marcell mentioned 2-3x per week is more efficient for muscle gain.
T
The Shadow
Guest
Well......I do disagree - if you are "on" you can revocer fatster - its one reason why gear work so well....one of the reasons anyway.
If you ramp up frequency - you lost the enhanced recoverability.
As far as 2-3 times per week.
Not for me.
I train one bodypart DIRECTLY per week - they also get worked INDIRECTLY at least once - usually twice.
I hit arms on Monday...and they are so sore that there is NO way I could train them directly again.
If you ramp up frequency - you lost the enhanced recoverability.
As far as 2-3 times per week.
Not for me.
I train one bodypart DIRECTLY per week - they also get worked INDIRECTLY at least once - usually twice.
I hit arms on Monday...and they are so sore that there is NO way I could train them directly again.
hey thanks for the input guys. I used to do a 2x per week routine, but felt like in many cases my muscles never fully recovered and I started to plateau. I've been hitting my muscles twice as hard since trying the once a week plan. Is it safe to say that once my muscles no longer feel sore that they are recovered and ready for another workout?
There's no real easy answer for this stuff. To arrive at a good answer you'd need to understand a whole lot more about programming and really have a handle on where you are currently.
Just to be clear, in trained lifters protein turnover baselines within 72 hours (muscle repair complete or the vast majority of it - often it will baseline sooner depending on what exactly was done). The uber long recover periods that Mentzer quotes are all on untrained lifters. Once you start training your muscles get conditioned due to repeated bout effect.
The real limitation in overtraining faced by most people is the nervous system. Think about the symptoms - disruption of sleep pattern, slowed reaction times, general performance decrement of up to 15%, inability to concentrate. That stuff is not at the muscle. Overtraining is all about the nervous system. Given that the muscular system and nervous systems cover and decay at very different rates, people will exploit this. Basically fatigue is accumulated (that high volume workout that rocked for 2 weeks and by week 6 almost killed you) but can be dissipated quickly. The decay ratio is generally around 3:1 so you could tolerate a much higher volume over a short period (say 3-5 weeks) than could be tolerated over a very lengthy one (8-12 weeks+) and then a week or maybe 2 of lower workload (weight might still be high but volume might be low) would allow recovery. What you wind up with is much higher average workload (stimulus) over longer periods thanks to the undulation and taking advantage of the recovery relationship. And for the record, the stimulus at the muscle is mechanical work. It needs to be decently heavy (measured by the variable intensity as a percentage of 1RM) and you need to do enough work with it (volume or total number of reps performed).
Now back to training, thinking about fatigue accumulating, start thinking about stimulus not just workout to workout but as a block of workouts. Frequency is not an absolute - it distributes workload over a period. So take your 6 sets of 5 reps at 85% 1RM in the squat on Monday - you can only manage that once a week. Well, what if you did 3 sets of 5 on Monday and 3x5 on Thursday. That's equal workload and 2 sessions. There won't be additional fatigue and in actuality most find that they can start raising workload again for a higher average. Frequency is not in isolation, too many people try to do 2x per week and double weekly workload by doing the same workout twice. Even if they could eventually tolerate that, unless they are sandbagging you won't be raising it 100% instantly without additional accomodation.
No thinking about Repeated Bout Effect (RBE), conditioning, and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) - what happens when you do a brand new exercise? You get really sore. What happens when you take an exercise where you do 2x10 and all of a sudden do 8x10? You get really sore. Why? Because you aren't conditioned to the stimulus being applied. What happens when you take that new exercise and do it 1x per week for a while? You get a little sore for a day or so but nothing much (you are more used to or conditioned to) the stimulus. Ask any of the people in this forum who squat 3x a week how sore they get? Answer will be that they don't. Yet they get bigger and stronger, most at rates far faster than what they did before. In other words, DOMS is a self fullfilling prophecy and isn't a good indicator of when it's okay to train again (the less you train, the more DOMS you have, the less you train). Your muscles don't even need to be fully recoverd at all times to benefit from another dose of training. Think about tanning, do you bake hard once for a long time, burn, go back to pasty white and then tan again or would it be more efficient to tan a reasonable amount but with more frequency and not insist on returning to pasty white?
So those are some of the issues in programing and organization. There's simply more to this than going into the gym, doing some stuff, and hoping to become better for it. The further you progress the more planned the stimulus will need to be (or alternatively many just keep jacking their drug dosages to get decent results from a crappy stimulus - this is possible in bodybuilding because hypertrophy and hormones are so tightly linked, in sport with a performance criteria growing muscle isn't enough).
To your original question. Anabolics help with recovery. To varying degrees they are also active on the nervous system (i.e. many experience improved concentration when supplemented with testosterone). So you will no doubt be able to handle more that you normally would. How much is impossible to say and how you should optimally structure your training to get that "more"...you'd have to know a lot about yourself and programming to begin with as well as how you react to a given dosage and how much "more" you can typically tolerate.
That's a long answer but that's the best answer you are going to get even though it's not what you were looking for.
If that type of stuff interests you and you didn't fall asleep, you might also read through this document: http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/Topics/Training_Primer.htm
Just to be clear, in trained lifters protein turnover baselines within 72 hours (muscle repair complete or the vast majority of it - often it will baseline sooner depending on what exactly was done). The uber long recover periods that Mentzer quotes are all on untrained lifters. Once you start training your muscles get conditioned due to repeated bout effect.
The real limitation in overtraining faced by most people is the nervous system. Think about the symptoms - disruption of sleep pattern, slowed reaction times, general performance decrement of up to 15%, inability to concentrate. That stuff is not at the muscle. Overtraining is all about the nervous system. Given that the muscular system and nervous systems cover and decay at very different rates, people will exploit this. Basically fatigue is accumulated (that high volume workout that rocked for 2 weeks and by week 6 almost killed you) but can be dissipated quickly. The decay ratio is generally around 3:1 so you could tolerate a much higher volume over a short period (say 3-5 weeks) than could be tolerated over a very lengthy one (8-12 weeks+) and then a week or maybe 2 of lower workload (weight might still be high but volume might be low) would allow recovery. What you wind up with is much higher average workload (stimulus) over longer periods thanks to the undulation and taking advantage of the recovery relationship. And for the record, the stimulus at the muscle is mechanical work. It needs to be decently heavy (measured by the variable intensity as a percentage of 1RM) and you need to do enough work with it (volume or total number of reps performed).
Now back to training, thinking about fatigue accumulating, start thinking about stimulus not just workout to workout but as a block of workouts. Frequency is not an absolute - it distributes workload over a period. So take your 6 sets of 5 reps at 85% 1RM in the squat on Monday - you can only manage that once a week. Well, what if you did 3 sets of 5 on Monday and 3x5 on Thursday. That's equal workload and 2 sessions. There won't be additional fatigue and in actuality most find that they can start raising workload again for a higher average. Frequency is not in isolation, too many people try to do 2x per week and double weekly workload by doing the same workout twice. Even if they could eventually tolerate that, unless they are sandbagging you won't be raising it 100% instantly without additional accomodation.
No thinking about Repeated Bout Effect (RBE), conditioning, and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) - what happens when you do a brand new exercise? You get really sore. What happens when you take an exercise where you do 2x10 and all of a sudden do 8x10? You get really sore. Why? Because you aren't conditioned to the stimulus being applied. What happens when you take that new exercise and do it 1x per week for a while? You get a little sore for a day or so but nothing much (you are more used to or conditioned to) the stimulus. Ask any of the people in this forum who squat 3x a week how sore they get? Answer will be that they don't. Yet they get bigger and stronger, most at rates far faster than what they did before. In other words, DOMS is a self fullfilling prophecy and isn't a good indicator of when it's okay to train again (the less you train, the more DOMS you have, the less you train). Your muscles don't even need to be fully recoverd at all times to benefit from another dose of training. Think about tanning, do you bake hard once for a long time, burn, go back to pasty white and then tan again or would it be more efficient to tan a reasonable amount but with more frequency and not insist on returning to pasty white?
So those are some of the issues in programing and organization. There's simply more to this than going into the gym, doing some stuff, and hoping to become better for it. The further you progress the more planned the stimulus will need to be (or alternatively many just keep jacking their drug dosages to get decent results from a crappy stimulus - this is possible in bodybuilding because hypertrophy and hormones are so tightly linked, in sport with a performance criteria growing muscle isn't enough).
To your original question. Anabolics help with recovery. To varying degrees they are also active on the nervous system (i.e. many experience improved concentration when supplemented with testosterone). So you will no doubt be able to handle more that you normally would. How much is impossible to say and how you should optimally structure your training to get that "more"...you'd have to know a lot about yourself and programming to begin with as well as how you react to a given dosage and how much "more" you can typically tolerate.
That's a long answer but that's the best answer you are going to get even though it's not what you were looking for.
If that type of stuff interests you and you didn't fall asleep, you might also read through this document: http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/Topics/Training_Primer.htm
Tweakle
New member
I hate this topic.
If you have a good natural recovery ability, maybe. If you don't, no. AAS isnt some magic potion with suddenly allows you to train like arnie.
There are NO ABSOLUTES.. some natural guys can train everything 2 x weekly and make good gains, some ppl can take several grams a week and still burn out training on anything other than a M-W-F template. You need to regulate your intensity and volume if you want to increase frequency, you cant just jump in and expect AAS to double your work capacity and CNS recovery.
No way dood, I read on the AAS forum that you can train chest n bicepts 3 times a week when yor ON
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516447
If you have a good natural recovery ability, maybe. If you don't, no. AAS isnt some magic potion with suddenly allows you to train like arnie.
There are NO ABSOLUTES.. some natural guys can train everything 2 x weekly and make good gains, some ppl can take several grams a week and still burn out training on anything other than a M-W-F template. You need to regulate your intensity and volume if you want to increase frequency, you cant just jump in and expect AAS to double your work capacity and CNS recovery.
No way dood, I read on the AAS forum that you can train chest n bicepts 3 times a week when yor ON
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516447
Tweakle said:
Well, I'd definitely go by what they say then and disregard what I wrote above.
It is always very obvious that their training knowledge is supperior. I especially liked the two people yesterday who called the training board here "weak" - one guy forgot what muscles upright rows worked and the other asked if squats were bad for your knees.
Not sure if you saw my response: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6771964#post6771964
(and this was a supreme effort of holding back as I think I likened it to Jeffrey Dahlmer seeing a guy wearing linen 2 days after labor day and calling him a psycho)
BiggT
New member
What if I use spot injections of Winstrol in my bisepts in addition to drinking my normal Winny does?? Would it be overtraining if I did 8 sets of bis after every workout, except legs cause i don't do legs because I played soccer in 6th grade and my legs are already too big from that.
BiggT
New member
On a serious note, madcow, that was an excellent post.....It really should be stickied by someone with some clout around here, lol......this topic comes up all the time, and the reason it isn't maddening is because the answers in the AAS forum are so freaking entertaining, lol.
My personal belief is that if you have to ask a basic, general, vanilla programming/frequency question, then you have no business using anabolics. (Not meant as a slam to the guys asking these Q's as they are going out and trying to gather info.....just a notion on how ass backwards, and in some cases totally non-existant, most people's concepts of training are).
My personal belief is that if you have to ask a basic, general, vanilla programming/frequency question, then you have no business using anabolics. (Not meant as a slam to the guys asking these Q's as they are going out and trying to gather info.....just a notion on how ass backwards, and in some cases totally non-existant, most people's concepts of training are).
