Weight Training

Is working out one muscle group a day enough to gain weight and strength. and…

Dan's answer

Dan Wirth, MA, CSCS

The one problem with this type of program design is that you are only training each muscle group one time per week. Working a muscle group once a week might be enough to gain weight and strength, but I have always noticed better results from training a muscle two times per week. Below, I have attached a response that I have given to a somewhat similar question. RESPONSE: Everyone can have small differences in how their body reacts to training. I have been training for 20 years and I have trained thousands of people professionally in the past 12 years. What I have found to be the best training program is one that works each muscle group twice per week. However, one of the training days should be a little more easier and one of the training days should be hard. Take your legs for example. I would recommend training them twice per week. One of those days would be heavier squats, step ups, lunges, etc. The other training day would be a much easier squat workout or just the step up and lunges. This will provide the best balance in your training program. You can also train every day as long as you are training on a split program. A split program simply means that you are splitting up the muscle groups so that you don't train the same muscle group 2 days in a row. I even have variations on a weekly basis. Some workout weeks are very hard and some are very easy! This is called periodization. This type of weekly variation will keep you away from being overtrained or having plateu's in your progress. Work hard and be consistent!!