Working out one body part twice a week

[Chillicat]

I'm fairly new to this, still learning, and I wanted your thoughts on whether it's wise to work one muscle group twice a week, and the rest just once, if you're wanting to work that area in particular for whatever reason.

I'm on a quest to do chin-ups/pull ups (I can so far manage exactly one chin up \:D/ ), and I had some advice that if I really want to work those muscles, I should do them twice a week for about a month, and other body parts once a week as usual. After that, go back to a normal once a week for each muscle group.

I've only just last week started doing 1-2 body parts per day, and before that I was doing more of a circuit type workout, upper body and lower body twice each a week, so I was working each part twice a week anyway.

What are your thoughts?

[teamfatboy]

My thoughts... it IS possible to work any body part twice a week, if you build up to it. At one stage, I did a 3-day split repeated (so six days training/week), and I'm still really only an 'intermediate' level.

Key points - get as much recovery time for the muscle group as possible - it should be possible to get three clear days between working that muscle.

Keep on top of nutrition - even if you simply added a second day of back workouts to your existing split, you will be working harder.

Consider for your second back day doing slightly different exercises, rather than just doing the same things twice.

[autechre]

If you're just going to do chins/pullups, then that should be fine twice a week for a short period until you build up the reps. I'm sure others can give more advise on working a major muscle group like back twice a week.

As TFB has said, try to keep the training days as far apart has possible to allow you body to recover.

I'm probably doing something similar with chins/pullups. Did them a couple times last week, once as a test & hit them hard on back day. Now i'm paying for it :grin:

Will be attempting some more tomorrow even though it's not my back/bis workout.

[Small]

whether it's wise to work one muscle group twice a week, and the rest just once

im not shure what this really insinuates

as when you aren't training a bodypart you are resting it...so if you are training it 2x p/w then you would consider it being rested 5x p/w ? ofc not to say you should be training it more often I just don't understand your reasoning behind the quote-do you mean one full day off perweek and train 6days perweek.

honestly i think no more than 4-5days in the gym; thrashing yourself, and two days rest minimum.

[Chillicat]

whether it's wise to work one muscle group twice a week, and the rest just once

im not shure what this really insinuates

as when you aren't training a bodypart you are resting it...so if you are training it 2x p/w then you would consider it being rested 5x p/w ? ofc not to say you should be training it more often I just don't understand your reasoning behind the quote-do you mean one full day off perweek and train 6days perweek.

honestly i think no more than 4-5days in the gym; thrashing yourself, and two days rest minimum.

I think we've got crossed wires here, as you're not sure what I'm saying, and I don't understand what you're saying in relation to my question.

I was asking, is it ok to train (for example) back twice a week and other muscles just once. I do weights 4 or 5 days a week. So an example might be (stress on 'might' - it's just in theory):

Sun - Back/biceps

Mon - Chest and triceps

Tue - Legs/glutes

Wed - light cardio

Thur - Back/biceps

Fri - Shoulders/abs

In terms of the quote of mine you've got above, the word 'rest' doesn't relate to rest day at all, that's not my question. 'Rest' in this context means 'the rest of the muscle groups' -as in, working one group twice, and the others once. I guess I should have been more specific, but I thought it seemed clear in the context of the full post. But again, I might be misunderstanding what you're saying - one of the problems of forum talk, unfortunately!

(Just for the record: I rest on Saturdays fully, and Wed is kind of a rest day as well - the cardio that I do is really just my lunch break, something to do to break up a day of sitting on my but and is very light, and there's not any real muscle work going on.)

[Ginyuu]

I think training a muscle group twice a week is fine for those who are at the beginner-intermediate level. The more muscle you have, the longer recovery time you need.

Have a go, and if you're feeling progressively weaker after each back workout, then perhaps you're not getting a long enough break. Diet also has a huge effect on your recovery time.

[Chillicat]

I think training a muscle group twice a week is fine for those who are at the beginner-intermediate level. The more muscle you have, the longer recovery time you need.

Cool, thanks. My back is definitely at a not particularly muscly level, and I'd certainly call my general level beginner at this stage (5 months of easing into taking weights seriously, after doing Pump classes for 8+ years)

[Sportsgirl]

It's fine, and if you are a beginner or intermediate lifer, I would actually recommend it. I work each muscle group around 2-3x each week and have gotten superior results from this way of training compared to traditional bodypart splits.

[biggurl27]

Yep all of last year I rotated a 4 day split so some bodyparts were repeated but would always fall on different days. As long as you are getting rest you will get gains :grin: And I also agree with Sports girl full body work outs 3x per week with 3x cardio works a treat.

[shruglife]

How often you can train a bodypart generally depends on the size of the muscle group, the volume of your workout, nutrition and your genetic abiltiy to recover.

If you want to focus on increasing the number of Chinups you can do there are a lot of specific programs on the net which you could use as a template to then add your other other bodyparts to. From personal experience (I used to be able to do 17 Chins @ 75kg when I Rowed), the most important thing at first is grip strength. It may not make sense at first but you can test it if you try do Chins on a smooth fat bar or a rough thin bar. Your only as strong as your weakest point, your Lats can't work at full capacity if your grip is weak.

My TP is doing negative Chins because he is too heavy to do a lot of Chins. You won't improve quickly doing 4 sets of 1 Chinup nor will you progress as quickly doing Lat Pulldowns which aren't as specific. Static training is also great for increasing strength, which is pausing at different phases of the movement for a certain amount of time. To summarise your training has to be specific to make the fastest gains. Even those Assisted Chinup Machines aren't great because they take out the stabalising muscles from the movement but it's better than Lat Pulldown...

Anyway thats my 2cents :wink:

[Daniil]

Hi, have you tried assisted chins? Choose weight that allows you to do 5 sets of 12 reps. Next time go one plate less. You are likely not to be able to 5 sets of 12 reps then, so keep trying until you can do 5 sets of 12 reps. Then remove one more plate and so on. That's what I do with dips and it works very well.

As for working one body part twice a week, I think it's good as long as you choose only one part to work, and that's coming from my own experience. For the last two months I've been working on chest and back twice a week and managed to put on almost 5 cm. Needless to say, I'm going to try that trick on other body parts to see if it works universally.

[Bazza]

My view is that balance is one of the most important things to keep in mind. Sure, some muscles groups can take more of a hammering than others and in many cases that is individual specific. What works for me most likely is different in some cases than it is for you, so I say listen to your body and keep in mind how you are developing proportionally.

How many people do you see in the gym who do something like:

Mon: Chest/Arms

Tuesday: Back/Shoulders

Wednesday: Chest /Arms

Thur: Back/Shoulders

and end up looking like an hour glass with the bottom half missing. I reckon just look objectively at which parts of your body need the most development and double up on those exercises with a 48 hour break (provided the body part can take it. Good luck)

[teamfatboy]

If your objectives include specific performance goals like unassisted chins - and many of us have goals just like that (or benching bodyweight, for instance), then I continue to believe that, for the short term as Chillicat outline was her intention, training the same bodypart twice a week isn't going to do any harm.

In the long term, neglecting any muscle group, like Bazza says, will be counterproductive - especially legs. Because legs are such a big muscle group, the benefits from working them out include extra calories burned, therefore extra bodyfat (potentially - if diet etc are right) burned.

Bazza also makes a good point about proportion - as you burn bodyfat, build muscle and the underlying shape becomes apparent, you really don't want to look unbalanced - but, to repeat the point, this won't happen over night so (my 2c worth) no harm would come from doing what CC proposed.

[Chillicat]

Thanks everyone for all your thoughts - much appreciated. I think I'll go ahead and do it then - Mon to Fri is my standard workout, which sees all of my muscle groups getting some attention. Then on a Sunday if I do an extra workout, I'm going to dedicate it to extra back/biceps for the short term.

I went hard on triceps a couple of months back, because I could see muscles everywhere (ok, not by all your standards, but by my own!!), except for tris, so I did extra of those for a couple of months.

Now I'm giving them a rest from the doubling up and doing back/bicep focus - partially because I want to be able to do more unassisted chins (2.5 yesterday!), and eventually unassisted pull ups - but also because I think my back hasn't had much attention over the last few months and could do with some catch up.

I'll only do this for the next month, then after a 2-3 week snowboarding break I'll pick another muscle group to give special attention for 4-6 weeks.