Taken from Ben Carpenter's Facebook. Pretty interesting. Thoughts?
Effect of Two- Versus Three-Way Split Resistance Training Routines on Body Composition and Muscular Strength in Bodybuilders: A Pilot Study. - PubMed - NCBI
Training frequency for muscle growth, 4 vs 6 workouts per week?
This new piece of research is novel.
Typically speaking, studies tend to use untrained or trained (one year or more of training) participants but this went one further and recruited ten elite level natural bodybuilders who had all been competing for 3 or more years.
So, the goal of this pilot study was to look at training frequency.
If you had a total volume of work for the week and divided it into six workouts would it get better results than four workouts?
4 x 90 minutes or 6 x 60 minutes?
In theory, if you divided it into four workouts you may get worse results as cramming the exercises into longer sessions is more likely to increase the cumulative fatigue from the workout. Therefore, towards the end of the workout your quality of work would decrease. Splitting the same total quantity of work into six workouts could possibly overcome this by decreasing the time you spend in the gym per day.
The 4 time per week group (G4X in the table):
- 4 workouts per week
- 2 x total body routines both repeated twice per week
- 90-100 minute workouts
The six time per week group (G6X in the table)
- 6 workouts per week
- 3 workouts all repeated twice per week (chest/shoulders/triceps/abs, back/biceps/forearms, thigh/calves/abs)
- 60-70 minute workouts
Same exercises, same reps and sets.
The only difference was splitting the work into 4 or 6 workouts.
Results:
- No significant differences were noted for changes in fat free mass, fat mass or 1RM bench press.
Discussion:
This study utilised a very small number of participants (10) and only had a four week training period. Due to this, we must be very cautious to draw absolute conclusions from it. Nobody should say "it doesn't matter how many workouts per week you split your routine into" from this study. It is a piece of a much larger puzzle and warrants further research.
It would suggest that total volume of work per week is a key determinant for muscle growth and differences between 4 and 6 workouts may make minimal difference.
Therefore, I would suggest that you perform your workouts in a way that fits your schedule and don't try and change it based on this study alone, assuming you are already training at least four times per week.
Effect of Two- Versus Three-Way Split Resistance Training Routines on Body Composition and Muscular Strength in Bodybuilders: A Pilot Study. - PubMed - NCBI
Training frequency for muscle growth, 4 vs 6 workouts per week?
This new piece of research is novel.
Typically speaking, studies tend to use untrained or trained (one year or more of training) participants but this went one further and recruited ten elite level natural bodybuilders who had all been competing for 3 or more years.
So, the goal of this pilot study was to look at training frequency.
If you had a total volume of work for the week and divided it into six workouts would it get better results than four workouts?
4 x 90 minutes or 6 x 60 minutes?
In theory, if you divided it into four workouts you may get worse results as cramming the exercises into longer sessions is more likely to increase the cumulative fatigue from the workout. Therefore, towards the end of the workout your quality of work would decrease. Splitting the same total quantity of work into six workouts could possibly overcome this by decreasing the time you spend in the gym per day.
The 4 time per week group (G4X in the table):
- 4 workouts per week
- 2 x total body routines both repeated twice per week
- 90-100 minute workouts
The six time per week group (G6X in the table)
- 6 workouts per week
- 3 workouts all repeated twice per week (chest/shoulders/triceps/abs, back/biceps/forearms, thigh/calves/abs)
- 60-70 minute workouts
Same exercises, same reps and sets.
The only difference was splitting the work into 4 or 6 workouts.
Results:
- No significant differences were noted for changes in fat free mass, fat mass or 1RM bench press.
Discussion:
This study utilised a very small number of participants (10) and only had a four week training period. Due to this, we must be very cautious to draw absolute conclusions from it. Nobody should say "it doesn't matter how many workouts per week you split your routine into" from this study. It is a piece of a much larger puzzle and warrants further research.
It would suggest that total volume of work per week is a key determinant for muscle growth and differences between 4 and 6 workouts may make minimal difference.
Therefore, I would suggest that you perform your workouts in a way that fits your schedule and don't try and change it based on this study alone, assuming you are already training at least four times per week.