What Is Frequency?
What is Frequency?
Frequency refers to the number of times a bodypart should be trained each week.
Frequency for beginner weight lifters
Beginners As far as weekly training frequency goes, beginners should train each muscle group three times per week. (A beginner may choose to split his bodypart training over two workouts, resulting in a six-day-a-week program that works each muscle group three times weekly.) Weightlifting trains a beginner’s nervous system, and by training more frequently, the nervous system can adapt at a faster pace. To make sense of this concept, consider when children learn to ride a bike. The more often they practice, the faster they learn.
Frequency for advanced weight lifters
Advanced On the other hand, advanced trainers should not train a bodypart more than twice per week to optimize strength gains. Unlike beginners, advanced trainers’ nervous systems have pretty much adapted by this point. Their strength gains come mainly from adaptations in the muscle fibers themselves. Because training with heavy weights and more total sets causes more muscle damage than beginners would experience if they used lighter weights and fewer sets (as suggested by this study), advanced lifters require more recovery time between workouts. This allows the muscles to regenerate muscle protein and grow larger and stronger.
