Training Frequency and Hypertrophy: Key Insights from Meta-Analysis

Training each muscle twice a week maximizes hypertrophy and growth potential.

### Optimizing Muscle Hypertrophy: The Importance of Training Frequency and Volume
* 💪 Dr. Mik and Dr. Milo Wolf discuss a new meta-analysis on training frequency and muscle hypertrophy, emphasizing that **training each muscle at least twice a week** is beneficial for growth.
* 📊 The meta-analysis indicates that frequency has a **neutral to slightly positive effect on hypertrophy**, meaning training muscles **more often can yield better results** without increasing overall volume.
* 🔄 Training frequency is explained through the concept of **volume equated**, where the same number of sets can be spread out over **more sessions**, potentially **enhancing muscle growth**.
* 🧠 Mechanistically, training a muscle more frequently allows for **better recovery and muscle protein synthesis**, maximizing the **growth potential within the recovery window**.
* 📅 The researchers found that while training each muscle **twice a week** yields significant returns, the benefits **diminish slightly** beyond that frequency.
* 🔍 The study also highlights the importance of fractional frequency, where both **direct and indirect training of muscles** contribute to overall hypertrophy, making body part splits **more effective with slight modifications**.
* 🏋 For individuals training at higher volumes or specializing in certain muscles, **increasing frequency** can further optimize **muscle growth and recovery**.
* 📈 Ultimately, the key takeaway is that for effective hypertrophy, individuals should aim to **train each muscle group at least twice a week**, utilizing full-body or upper-lower splits based on their training frequency.

and I think Push Pull likes, for example, I see a use case for, but it's only for those who are consistently training 6 days a week or more essentially, 'cause otherwise you're missing out typically on training each muscle twice a week. Folks, Dr. Mik here, Farby Strength, and I'm here with Dr. Milo Wolf, researcher extraordinaire, actually doing research on how to get jacked, anything on how to get tan from your lab. Looking at me, you would think I'd have the keys, apparently not on getting jacked. You told me, Listen, this new meta-analysis came out, and it's kind of about how to get jacked in general or training for getting jacked, but it has a few unique features that it also has training frequency recommendations as well as volume. Tell us about the new meta-analysis, what we can learn from it. Sure, as of this video, when this comes out, there should be a pre-print of meta-analysis on training frequency and muscle hyper. So, we're getting the shit early, early, getting exclusive, exclusive. Essentially, they looked at all

the studies that manipulated frequency, having people train a muscle fewer times a week or more times a week, and they looked at how that influenced hypertrophy. I'm sure you've heard the claim online that certain people say full-body training is best. You want to have a full-body split, train each muscle as often as possible, or back in the day, especially body part splits, were best. Next Monday, exactly back Tuesday, shoulders, get the deal. This meta-analysis tried to look at that idea, and we found a few things. This was a meta-analysis by Pelin and colleagues. Frequency seems to have a neutral to slightly positive effect on hypertrophy, so as you volume equated or not volume equated, okay, correct. So, let's just describe to folks quickly what that means. Volume equated means if you have to do, let's say, 12 sets per week, you can do them Monday, Wednesday, Friday, four sets, or you can do them Monday, Thursday, six sets each, still 12 sets per week. So, the frequency doesn't raise the volume, but it just hits you with a little less.

a little bit more often. And what you're saying is the effect is either like man, nothing to write home about, or like a little bit of a boost, even if the volume doesn't go up. What do you ascribe that to, hypothetically? I have my own guesses, but I want to hear from you. There's a variety of things mechanistically. Whenever you muscle that growth curve, the response only lasts so long. So even if you blast a muscle with more and more volume in a single bout, that myoi protein synthesis response, muscle growth essentially, will only take so long. Several days, correct? Not eight days, not seven days, probably not six or five, correct? More like two to three, correct? So if you're only training a muscle once a week, you're missing out on three or four days out of that week where you're not growing that muscle, at least neutral, and then you grow it, but again, at least neutral, missed opportunity to get more growth, correct? Because essentially, what we want to do is maximize that area under the curve of hypertrophy. And so if

we only aggregating one bump that is only so much area on the curve we could potentially get. Yeah, so that is my most likely explanation to be clear. The effect is somewhere between there is next to none and there's a slight positive effect, slight. So, if we want to maximize muscle growth, we probably want to err on the side of training muscle a bit more often rather than a bit less often because there's nothing to be lost, but there is potentially a small thing to be gained. Train a muscle a little bit more frequently but with the same volume: 12 for three sessions versus 12 for two sessions, six versus four sets in those extra sets on the fewer sessions at the end. You're kind of a little bit tired, as the French would say, and then maybe your stimulus isn't as great as if you were more fresh. So, in essence, three days a week of training gives you kind of more rest breaks between the sets on average and the workouts on average, so you can come back fresh and hit it. Do you think there's

maybe some reason to think that a little bit. It's funny you mention that because I'm aware of an upcoming analysis on the topic of session volume and hypertrophy. Now, that is probably not going to be published at the time of this video. If it is, I'll comment it below so you can check it out. But the relationship between session volume and hypertrophy displays more strongly diminishing returns compared to weekly volume. Now, as we mentioned in our video on volume, we don't have any studies looking at high-frequency training in conjunction with high-volume training. Yeah, we don't really have studies where people are training five or six days a week with really high volumes. Most of our studies are on high volumes but training muscle two or three times a week. Yeah, we have very few studies on frequencies of like four, five, six times a week per muscle. However, with a previous analysis by Gregor James Kerr, for example, on per-session volume and this one that I'm aware of behind the scenes, I can tell you that there is more of a

diminishing returns situation with per session volume and hypertrophy, which with a bit of speculation and a bit of theory crafting leads me to think practically speaking, if you're trading with really high volumes, if we want to maximize that area under the C, we're better off spreading that high volume across more sessions because we get such strong diminishing returns on a per-session basis, yes. And so, if you're doing, say, 20, 30 plus sets for a muscle fractionally speaking, counting both direct volume and indirect, that is where I think there's a case to be made, as we'll probably see in the meta-analysis by Remon colleagues, for your volume to be spread out across three or more sessions. It's just that we don't have the research on that yet to make any super clear inferences, right? All right, so small increase in growth, potentially neutral to small from added frequency in a volume-constrained manner. Did they look at unconstrained volume as well? They did not. However, they looked at a variety of potential moderators, so

they performed sub-analyses based on training status, whether they were more untrained or at least slightly trained, whether they were trained to failure, etc. And just like with volume, the relationship between frequency and hypertrophy seems to be robust to different moderators. So, for most populations, in most contexts where you're trained to failure, etc., training a muscle a bit more often is going to have a sort of neutral to positive effect. So, I would say as a rough ballpark, train each muscle at least twice a week. Mhm. That relationship between frequency per week, like how often you train a muscle and hypertrophy, you see slightly larger returns when you go from, say, once to twice a week than you do after that. I would say this kind of an inflection point where after twice a week, there's maybe a positive effect, but it's very minimal. So, significantly different returns from one to two versus practically. I would say so practically. I would say that you're better off training each twice a week than once a week. Past that, it's probably a neutral-positive effect, but it's a

very slight one that there is one very so practically that means that if you are training two days a week for example your someone doesn't have much time you should almost certainly be training with full body split. There's no real downside but there is an upside to training each muscle twice a week or more. Likewise if you're training say four days a week you're likely better off with something like an upper lower split compared to like a body part split sure importantly here's an interesting part just like with volume they looked at frequency fractionally. So they looked at direct instances of training a muscle like for example the biceps doing bicep curls would be a direct instance. They looked at indirect instances where for example doing back training would still Target the biceps but just not as well and they looked at fractional frequency where essentially they counted direct bicep training as one unit of training frequency for the biceps and back training is half a unit of training frequency for the biceps and once again just like for volume.

fractional frequency was the most accurate way of looking at the data. Excellent. So, back training still counts for something because it's more realistic, correct? It would be a lie to say that 16 sets of back work on a Friday does nothing after a Monday and Wednesday bicep workout. It doesn't have any more effect on biceps. It would also be a lie to say that it counts for 16 CS of biceps. That's fucking crazy. But it might for something like 4 to 12. Yeah, some half there, sure. So, that was interesting as well because it means that a body part split can be modified to be pretty effective. Like, don't get me wrong, training a muscle once a week, probably not ideal. And if I were coaching you, I would say try training at least twice a week, sure. But if you modify it a little bit, say instead of just doing Monday chest, Tuesday back, Wednesday shoulders, Thursday legs, and Friday arms, you add in some compound training for your arm day. You do some chin-ups and do some bench.

pressing. Maybe you add some a couple of leg exercises on your shoulder day. All of a sudden, for most muscle groups, fractionally speaking, you're actually training them one and a half or two times a week. Yes, it doesn't take a lot of modification to make even something, a body part split, pretty effective with frequency not playing so big of a role in the first place, with it being more so about volume and potentially other factors. Even the body part split can be effective, but if you want to improve that a little bit, just some small tweaks can take it from effect to quite a bit more effective. Many people may see this study and, as usual, without reading it, will conclude that frequency is not a big deal, neutral effect may be a little positive, but what do you think they're missing, Milo, if they don't include the fact that this was a volume-equated study? Tell us a story about non-volume equated frequency that makes some sense. Yeah, so a few things. One, with really high volumes, like we just mentioned, there is a potential use case for higher

frequencies. That is one thing. Equally, I think most people will be able to tolerate more volume and have higher quality volume, quote unquote, if they're doing the same amount of sets with a higher frequency. So, just spread out across the week. Better technique, better effort, better follow-through, less likely to slack off on later sets. Correct, is set number seven of legs. You're like, man, I'll do it, but I'm not going to do it to it. Whereas if you take those eight sets, for example, you're doing in one session and spread it into two days. Yep, mentally present for each 100%. So, I think with specialization phases where you're performing higher volumes, or if you want to get the most out of each set, a slightly higher frequency can be beneficial. Look, it's not going to be a 9-day effect, but I think if you want to optimize your growth, slightly higher frequencies are probably a good idea. It's an optimization thing, but it's also a question of what exactly do you lose.

by just taking single mouth training and spreading it out more. I think it's a personal preference thing for a lot of people. They like to just smash the muscle just a few times a week or even once. But even for the one time a week, your recommendation is like, Okay, fuck it. You like once a week? Sweet. Monday, hit chest like crazy, hit a few sets of triceps after though. And then Thursday, hit your tricep workout, your bicep still say arms Thursday, Thursday arms, back, shoulders, arms somewhere there. And uh, legs never shows up. But uh, after you finish your bicep stuff and your tricep stuff, do a couple of sets of close grip presses or push-ups after your triceps stuff. It'll cook your triceps even better, but it'll get you enough of a stimulus for chest that you're definitely benefiting from multiple per week frequencies. And you'll probably be able to put in a little bit more volume that way and a little bit more of an elevation of the fractional synthetic.

rate of muscle growth, and you'll get more jacked over the long term versus Monday chest, Thursday shoulders, and arms, but nothing remotely to do with chest at all because it needs recovery, bro, because it probably doesn't train once a week. I agree, and I think people can think of the frequency of training kind of like protein, where total protein intake is fairly important for hypertrophy, and you want to make sure you're getting enough protein each day to maximize hypertrophy, but exactly what your meal frequency is in a given day, like whether you're having three or four meals or four to six or what have you, doesn't seem to play nearly as large of a role. It's the same with volume and frequency, where volume seems to be quite important for hypertrophy, as we've discussed, but exactly how you spread that out plays potentially a small role, but certainly not as large as volume. Yes, unless we go to the extremes, correct? One meal a day, difficult to get your protein at all, just like one workout a week is how you're going to

get all your volume in its practical consideration, but also a lot of the protein that's available to you in the digestive tract from any one meal. Some fraction of it gets used for muscle synthesis, not high, and the rest of it, the body doesn't need at the time, just gets burned directly for energy. And so you eat 250 grams of protein in one meal, you may find that like you only really analyzed 125 of that, which is good. But if you ate 100 grams of protein per meal twice a day or 125, you may anabolizantes because I think here's where I'm going. This Smo, some people are looking what can I get away with doing the minimum to still get great results, and there's nothing wrong with that's great. But a lot of people are looking for I want to make sure that my workout routine is checking all the big boxes and not missing out some shit where it's like man I wish I knew that. You know, like for example, talk to people who try

to get bigger shoulders, side delts, and they training shoulders. The shoulder day is crazy, but it's once a week. I usually talk to those people, and I go, Dude, try two or three shoulders per week exercises and/or sessions rather. You're going to see a huge difference because your shoulders just take that long to recover, and you can multiply your volume by XYZ. Those people typically experience that. They go, God damn it, why didn't anyone tell me this shit? So, as far as frequency per week, we're ready to say you and I real serious effort at getting jacked two times a week. Frequency is the meat and potatoes for most people. Sometimes higher is better, unlikely that lower is better. Solid take. I think practically for people what that means is if you're training two to three days a week, I would typically stick with a full-body approach that allows you to train most muscles two to three times a week. And real quick, just for folks that don't connect the dots yet because it took me a while to understand this, the

alternative is people will say okay I train Monday Thursday you're okay great and you and I are on making think in full body because it takes the growth happens for a few days it comes down down happens a few days comes down but some people will be like okay so I do upper body on Thursday lower body on Monday and you're like oh man the volume is the same total if the total amount of workout 's the same but now the frequency is insufficient and now you grow a little bit but then you sort of and you grow a little bit more so just the frequency alone even if it's a smaller effect and between one and two it's a notable effect it's a good idea to do a 2X or more even if you just train twice a week correct which means the best routine for you will depend on how often you train CU we want to hit each muscle at least twice a week sometimes more so I think if you're training two to three days a week all us

being equal, a full-body routine will be pretty adequate for most people. If you're training four days a week or five days a week, an upper-lower split could work great. Full body can work great too, still luck for sure if you're recovering, joints feel okay, but then four to five days a week is where upper-lower starts to become more viable because it allows you to train each muscle twice a week at least. If you're doing a 5-day split, for example, you could do upper-lower-upper-lower-upper, yep, days for upper body, which anecdotally I enjoy, two days for lower body, and I think Push-Pull legs, for example, I see a use case for, but it's only for those who are consistently training six days a week or more essentially because otherwise you're missing out typically on training each muscle twice a week. For you to train each muscle twice a week, you need two full rotations of the push-pull legs sequence, sure. So I think that's more of a reserved use case, a body part split.

can work, but you need to be smart about it. Essentially, you need to make sure you're making those modifications to your routine to make each muscle be trained at least twice a week. So, it's not a b split anymore; it's a body emphasis split. If you view it as a body part split and you still enjoy it, and that's probably what you're doing in the first place, just those modifications make it a bit more effective. I wonder, is that why SCI... there you go, proved correct. And then the final use case I would say is if you're specializing in a muscle or you're training with really high volumes all around. That's where experimenting with slightly higher frequencies for those muscles you're specializing on or for your whole body can become beneficial. If you have the time and the inclination to say get 20-30 fractional sets per muscle per week, that's where maybe doing a full body split three or four days a week or training the specialized Aon muscles three or four days a week could become

beneficial. As I mentioned, those diminishing returns on per session volume might allow you to get more overall hypertrophy if you spread that out or stretch it out across the week. How many sets per muscle per session would you say starts to be a little much for optimal hypertrophy? I've heard eight, I've heard 12, I've heard six. What is your take on that? On average, that's a great idea. That's a great question. For my own coaching process and the app developing, I have essentially set a limit of around 5 to 8 sets per session. So, for every 5 to 8 sets, direct sets you do per week for a muscle, I would add one extra day of training to people. That's direct training. So, in fractional terms, maybe we're talking about 10 fractional sets. So, for every 10 fractional sets, I would add one day of training. If you're getting 20 sets a week in for muscle, that gets into about two days a week. If you're doing, say, 30 sets or below, like between 20 and 30, I

would do 3 days. That makes sense. I think that's a rough ballpark in theistic. I use that. Makes perfect sounds. That's it. That's it. I think. All right, guys. Like, subscribe, do YouTube things. Check out Milo. He's on YouTube. He's on Instagram. We'll have all the links below. See you guys next time.

Push, Pull, Legs, Split Is Dead

Renaissance Periodization

Training Frequency and Muscle Growth: Insights from a Meta-Analysis

The new meta-analysis on training frequency and muscle hypertrophy suggests that frequency has a neutral to slightly positive effect on muscle growth.

It highlights the importance of training a muscle more often, as the muscle growth response lasts only 2-3 days.

By training a muscle more frequently with the same volume, individuals can maximize muscle growth and come back fresh for each workout.

The Relationship Between Session Volume, Frequency, and Hypertrophy

Session volume has a diminishing returns effect on hypertrophy, with more significant returns seen from weekly volume.

High-frequency training combined with high volume is under-researched, but spreading high volume across more sessions may be beneficial.

Training each muscle at least twice a week is recommended, with minimal additional benefits from training more frequently.

The Impact of Training Frequency and Volume

Fractional frequency is a more accurate way to analyze training data, suggesting that back training can still have a realistic impact on muscle growth.

Modifying a body part split with compound exercises can effectively increase training frequency for muscle groups.

Higher training frequencies may lead to better technique, effort, and overall volume tolerance, making them beneficial for optimizing muscle growth.

Optimizing Muscle Growth Through Training Frequency

Training frequency is a personal preference, with some people opting for intense sessions once a week.

A suggested routine includes hitting chest and triceps on the same day, followed by arms and then incorporating close grip presses or push-ups for additional chest stimulus.

While total volume is important for hypertrophy, the exact distribution of workouts may have a smaller impact, similar to protein intake and meal frequency.

Optimizing Shoulder Training and Frequency

Training shoulders twice a week can lead to significant muscle growth, as they take longer to recover.

A full-body workout routine is ideal for those training two to three days a week, allowing for each muscle to be targeted multiple times.

For those training four to five days a week, an upper-lower split becomes more effective in hitting each muscle twice, while a push-pull-leg routine is best suited for those consistently training six days a week or more.

To effectively train each muscle, aim for at least two sessions per week, using a body emphasis split.

Higher training frequencies can be beneficial for muscle specialization or when aiming for 20-30 fractional sets per muscle per week.

A guideline of 5-8 direct sets per session can help determine the number of training days needed for optimal hypertrophy.