High-Frequency Training: Should You Do Shorter Workouts, But More Often? Part 1

What the science says about training frequency.

How often should you train each muscle group in the gym?

Most gym rats will tell you once or twice a week.

One of the most popular training formats nowadays is the "Bro Split," where you train five days a week, but divide workouts so that each muscle group is hit once weekly.

Other popular formats are four-day-a-week "push/pull" and "upper body/lower body" split routines, where individual muscle groups are trained twice weekly.

While common in years gone by, few people nowadays train muscle groups three times weekly. As for training the same muscle group four or more times per week, most brofessors will vigorously scoff at the idea. Tell them that's what you plan to do, and they'll almost certainly launch into a diatribe about injury and overtraining. "Your muscles won't have enough time to recover, man! You'll end up injured and overtrained!”

Whatever this belief is based on, it's not science (“trust me bro” is not a valid scientific source).

Up until 2018, only one published study that I’m aware of had directly compared a high-frequency routine (i.e. training individual muscle groups four or more times per week) with an equal-volume low-frequency routine.

So why did researchers ignore high-frequency training until recently?

The impetus for change, I suspect, was an unpublished study involving young members of Norway’s national powerlifting squad.

The Norwegian Experience: Train More Often, Get Stronger Quicker