Training Each Part 2X Per Week?

[El Jugo Buen0]

After a year of working out each body party once a week and getting almost no where, I'm finally pissed off enough to change it up. I bought 6 bottles of protein, stacked up on my chicken, etc. I don't know how much my repaired shoulder will be able to handle at twice a week but my celebrex definately should fix that. But i wanted to know if this kind of split has worked for anybody, 3 on, one off, then 3 on again. Now I'm ready to get serious but I wanted to know if everyone thought thats a good split that would definately bring me some results.

[ripped525]

Im in a similar boat, ive been working out for a year and a 1/2 doin a 5/2 split and my progress has came to a hualt, so starting this monday im starting a 3/2 split for 8 weeks to see if i can really shock em, and if i have progress ill stay with this routine till my body once again becomes used to it.
day one - chest/back
day two - legs, tri's
day three - delts, traps, bi's
2 days rest then repeat, as for ur 3/1 i highly recommend you taking at least 2 days off, the only time u grow is when ur inactive, sleeping, resting!!!
When on a bulking cycle u have to eat eat eat, thats my problem, i will have to master my diet in order to see massive gains

[Beernutz]

"People on their cell phones at the gym"
"people who stand in front of ur view when doing an exercise"


ditto on those two things i fu@#$ hate that... How could you workout and talk on a cell wtf. i keep my phone at home i cant be disturbed when training it ruins my concentration.

[Beernutz]

sorry bro no hijack intended.

[bad_man]

I've been making steady progress on this for the last two years:
Day 1 - chest
Day 2 - back
Day 3 - Shoulders/calves
Day 4 - bis/tris
Day 5 - thighs/hams
Day 6 - repeat

I work out every day. Once in a while I'll take a day off but it depends on how my body feels.

[phreezer]

We powerlifters have been doing 2x bodypart workout sessions per week for quite some time.. Dual Factor training is a very succesful way fo training.... Look at guys like Scott Mendelson and Ryan Kennelly... These are some of the biggest and strongest athletes in the world...

Dual Factor:

by John Smith

what is important to note is that there is almost universal agreement amoung scientists and athletes and coaches in all sports EXCEPT bodybuilding that the two factor theory is correct and the single factor theory is not correct and is in fact suitable only for beginners to follow when planning training.

it is also important to note that most athletes in most sports are experiencing some level of constant fatigue ALWAYS, except for maybe a couple of weekends a year, when they are peaking. training takes place daily against a backdrop of fatigue... animal, concerning the single and dual factor training theories you asked about earlier... i dont think the bodybuilding community has altogether ignored the latter... in fact i think that the HST that ******* has talked about seems to be taking advantage of this principle.

basically the most real-world and practical advice i can give you concerning the dual factor theory is this. instead of thinking of each workout as one seperate "fatigueing" session, followed by a seperate "recovery" session of a day or two of rest... begin thinking in terms of weeks. in other words, you have one, or two or even three weeks which are "fatigueing" in other words you think of this time period just the same way as some people think of one workout.

you accumulate fatigue the whole time, you never completely recover. then you have another time period of recovery. this is another one, two or three weeks in which you train with reduced frequency, volume, or intensity and allow recovery to take place.

personally i favor keeping intensity high, drastically lowering volume, and slightly lowering frequency.

in any event the overall training stress is lower. so you have say two 3 week periods which you approach like you would have approached two days, one a workout day and one a rest day.

now, of course in programming for elite athletes it gets much more complicated than thsi. you may also have a 6 month "overload" period, during which you have a series of 5 week periods each consisting of 3 weeks of hard work and 2 weeks of lower stress training. then you may have another 3 or 4 month period of "recovery" consisting of 1 week of "loading" or hard work, then 1 or 2 weeks of reduced training.

all this may be superimposed upon 3 years of slightly harder overall work, in other words slightly higher volume overall... then 1 year of slightly lower volume.

this fits into the fact that the olympics are every 4 years and athletes want to hit their highest performance at the olympics. the greeks do 3 loading weeks followed by 1 unloading week (approx 12 workouts a week during loading, and 9 workouts a week during unloading, also all weights are lowered by about 10kilos during the unloading week)... these are "loading" months, then every 4th month is an "unloading" month consisting of only 1 loading week and 3 unloading weeks. close to a big competition like the olympics... they switch to alternating weeks, 1 loading week followed by 1 unloading week.

however, to actually program sets and reps... this is very individual. what is unloading to me may be highly stressfull to you. but this is how training is programmed for the majority of athlets in sports other than BB and powerlifting. fatigue is gradually accumulated and then gradually disipated... i would encourage you or anyone else to take a look at the HST training protocol... as it is the first BB specific program i have ever seen that seems to be set up on these principles. people doing it seem to be making gains, so i assume it is the correct volume for a majority of bbers... of course individual adjustment is usually required with programs like this.

personally... when adjusting volume for individuals i am lucky in that i can use testosterone/cortisol ratios from weekly blood draws and also glutamine/glutamate ratios to assist in determining the stress level of the training for an individual athlete. this allows me to be pretty precise in loading an athlete to his limit without crossing the line into real overtraining... then determining the correct volume of training for the unloading period so that recovry takes place without any detraining.

unfortunately i doubt any of you have the rescources to do this or the expertise to interpret the data correctly if you did have access to it. HOWEVER... i do have some "rule of thumb" guidlines... during loading, if you are capable of setting personal records... your not loading hard enough. on the other hand, if performance falls below 85% for more than one or two workouts in a row... then you need to lighten the load.

the length of the loading period is also individual. start with one week to 10 days... after youve gone through a couple of cycles experiment with 2 and 3 week loading periods. very few people can handle a 3 week loading period. i know i cant. howeer the bulgarians and greeks do, so i know some great athletes can do it, and maybe some of you can.

as far as unloading... you should be approaching peak performance after 7-10 days of unloading... you should have peak performance somewhere between 14 and 21 days of unloading.

you dont always want to allow peak performance. you may want to follow 2 or 3 consecutive loading cycles without every allowing complete recover during unloading, if you are really advanced... however i dont recomend this for beginners to this type of training... load then unload long enough to set new personal records... allow another week or two to get good and rested then load again.

hope this helps explain how this is used in the real world... sorry but its just impossible to get into sets and reps on a specific basis... but if you copied the 8 week squat program i posted several times a while back this is an example of this type of training, and its a proven and result producing program.