Only train strength once per week?

[Tartovski]

Interesting article here:

http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/training/weightlifting.htm

What do people think?

[tetsu ryu]

Wow! Very interesting! I know sometimes I take a week off every now and then and I come back lifting stronger. Hmmm.. I've never really taken this into consideration as I've always heard that 3 - 4 workouts a week was the norm. But what about things like HIIT or tabatas. Would we see better results by only training them once a week? :confused: Gahh.. I'm glad you posted this tartovski. I wonder what kind of program I can formulate for a total body one day workout.. :D

Thanks man!

Tetsu

[nready]

Hello Tartovski,
That is kinda how I use to workout personally. People that have workouts around that idea are like Tony Horton. There are others(people/trainers) out there that have a program around this idea. Horton my brother uses an he think it works he uses the detraining idea with muscle confusion.

I think the detraining Idea has been around for a while now. What I did was similiar and it allowed more rest sort of. I did like back and than shoulders, than chest, than stomach, than legs and than arms, than stomach. The thing is I always had it mixed with weights and bodyweight exercises, always one day for just stretching like a Yoga or Pilates. I would do like so many push ups in say 40 seconds did the same when I used weights. I did it like a round training or a interval training where you do like several exercises in a block and return to the same exercise just done slightly different.

Detraining has been shown to be the better way to train non professional athletes. It one to have enough rest to actually see the improvements. It can allow you to change and develop a more cut based workout or a more size based.

My two cents you are on to something here now Tartovski, just my opinion.

[bulkathos72]

I found that after weightlifting it is best to cardio your muscles. Do exercises to increase blood flow but not stress or damage the muscles. This improves recovery time. Plus, I retain more of my speed. In general doing exercises in off time to increase blood flow is good.

[Tartovski]

Hmmm.. I've never really taken this into consideration as I've always heard that 3 - 4 workouts a week was the norm.

Well if you think about it, if you do a split programme 3 times a week, each body part will get 7 days rest before you train it again the next week.
So maybe this is really only relevant for people trying to do a full body plan more than once a week (ie - me!)

Still, it's an interesting article, though i'm not sure how easy it is going to be for me to implement it. At the moment I struggle to get one session of weights in a week, as i also get a quite hardcore full body (bodyweight) workout every tues, weds, and sat at kungfu!!

I found that after weightlifting it is best to cardio your muscles. Do exercises to increase blood flow but not stress or damage the muscles. This improves recovery time.

Oddly enough, another article on the same site says that that is one of the worst things you can do for strength training! See point 4 here:
http://www.johnberardi.com/updates/oct252002/na_warmup.htm

Last time I went to the gym I avoided cardio completely and lifted better than I ever have. Still playing with the warm-ups sets i need to do, but it seemed to work for me.

[bulkathos72]

I am not talking about stretching or warm ups. I am talking about gentle movements after a work out to get blood flow moving. Rather then letting your body lay dead and filling up with harmful toxins. :)

[steppenwolf]

Everybody know that you won't get better (neither strength, nor muscle size wise) by training same muscle group too often. Most fitness programs I've seen so far are based on one workout per muscle group per week.
I usually do weight training twice a week. I train different muscle groups on these days... at least I try. However I use free weights and do exercises for the whole body (like squats, clean and press, pull-ups, etc), so it's quite hard to isolate muscle groups. Plus I have many martial arts trainings (proper fighting sport ones = quite hard). And I still manage to progress in both martial arts and strength training (without gaining mass).

Another thing is that we are all different and probably some people can train same muscle group twice ore even more times a week and still progress. Some even work 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a hard physical job and still have no problems with their muscles and joints. On the other hand some need 14 days for their muscles to recover and starting to have problems with joints after light 5km jog.

[cxw]

I'm not saying that once a week can't work. But I am saying that more than once a week definitely can work.

Look at programs such as John MacCallum's, HST, Starr 5*5 and Riptoe 3*5. They're having you do most lifts 2 to 3 times a week. And they've produced results with real non-drugged people.

[White Belt]

Ever heard of Mike Mentzer's High Intensity Training (HIT) method? He makes a good case for weight training sessions to be brief, infrequent, and intense. Training frequency depends upon individual recovery ability. After hypercontraction exercises to tear down muscle tissue, a certain amount of recovery is required to rebuild that muscle. Recuperation time depends upon each individual's metabolism, nutrition intake, and rest. I've used HIT training before, only working out once a week, and I had very positive results. Each week I had to increase the weight used on each exercise. I was only performing one repetition of 11 exercises for the entire body. HIT advocates once/week sessions because hypercontractive exercise produces systemic fatigue on the body, not just locally to the individual muscle used. Mentzer argued that split routines and training before your individual ability to recover was complete was counter-productive to gaining strength and quickly led to overtraining (therefore split routines and 3x/wk routines are detrimental). Mentzer was the target for some truly vicious criticism for his beliefs, but they do stand up to rational analysis.

You can check out his website at www.mikementzer.com

[cxw]

An obvious problem with full recovery is that recovery might be different across different parts of the body. E.g. the shoulders might recover in 3 days, but they need to wait 7 days as the quads need this time.

That and the whole issue of the muscles having to wait for the CNS.

Abbreviated training definitely has advantageous, especially for martial arts as the extra time could be spent rolling, sparring, shadow boxing etc.

It's just how abbreviated, and whether failure is too much intensity.

[Tartovski]

I am not talking about stretching or warm ups. I am talking about gentle movements after a work out to get blood flow moving. Rather then letting your body lay dead and filling up with harmful toxins. :)

Ooops, my bad. totally misread you before. Yes, I warm down with cardio too, then stretch, then take a contrast shower. Anything to stop DOMS!!

[Radok]

Frequency is key in building strength. You aren't trying to tear down the muscles as much as possible when you work out, unless you're trying to bulk up. If you're trying to gain strength, you should do very heavy but low volume workouts with a lot of rest between sets. You won't stay sore for long and you'll be able to lift a lot more often. Doing this, your CNS will tune up for lifting heavy weights and you'll increase your lifts much more quickly.

[NaughtyKnight]

I agree with this, at least for seasoned weight lifters. When you first start out, a full body workout, 3x a week is still king. After 8 weeks, you notice that you fatigue yourself too much with pull ups, for example, to be able to military press properly anymore. Thats when you know its time to move to a split.

Got to love John Berardi. Articulate, well thought out, scientifically backed articles; delivered with wet your pants humour. :D

[nready]

Frequency is key in building strength. You aren't trying to tear down the muscles as much as possible when you work out, unless you're trying to bulk up. If you're trying to gain strength, you should do very heavy but low volume workouts with a lot of rest between sets. You won't stay sore for long and you'll be able to lift a lot more often. Doing this, your CNS will tune up for lifting heavy weights and you'll increase your lifts much more quickly.You have a point here, I assumed that he wanted first to bulk and wanted short burst of intense size building workouts.

If you want strength it is not as easy to do in a one work per week routine. It can be done!

There are even full body workouts that are like what Ross does with very heavy weights for like once a week based ideas. He does not suggest that specifically. His workouts are so intense you can tell he is very body based thinker in he listens to his body.

The best strength ideas I have seen are from the Gymnastics, gymnast workout every day and can life double there own weight even with dips. They literally place another gymnast on there shoulders while doing dips. They add weight when doing rings by wearing weighted vest and weight between the feet and or knees. So you want strength like a gymnast than do that. Add allot of weight very slowly over a year, while you work out on the rings or the parallel bars.