How Many Days Before You Can Train a Muscle Again?

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
00:21 General Adaptation Syndrome
01:14 Frequency
03:42 Recovery Times
09:52 Regional Muscle Stress
10:49 Practical Recommendations

STUDIES

ONLINE COACHING & CONSULTING

BOOKS & TRAINING TEMPLATES

COURSES

SOCIAL MEDIA

[prince]

Waiting longer in between trainings might slow your grain a little but overtraining may very well affect your joints and ligaments causing major muscle weakness, pain and fatigue which will make you stop training all together for months. Best option is to listen to your body and find your own wait time.

[jimmy]

Everyone is different. Age is a huge factor.
You have to find what works for you and it’s a process.

[liborrajm]

For years now I have settled into a routine where I do two bigger, intense trainings on Mondays and Thursdays. I could and have tried doing them just 48h apart rather than 72h, but here's what I found speaks for the longer rest approach:
- I genuinely feel excited to attack the next session after those multiple days of rest
- I have zero excuses to compromise the intensity in any of those trainings because I am 100% rested

[magnus]

72h seems to be the sweet spot when training HARD.

[onlineaddiction]

I workout everyday for a couple hours a day, I might be overtraining but it’s the only place I’m not depressed 😂

[kneewizard]

Comes down to this: in the international journal of strength and conditioning 2021, schoenfeld and colleagues recommend increasing frequency once you have to do more than ten sets for the same muscle in the same workout, assuming of course you rest long enough between sets. If you want to do ten sets per week, you can do it all in one workout with minimal to no negative impact on gains. There have been four studies relevant to this recommendation. All studies compared low frequency to high, on “trained” lifters, with 2+ minutes rest between sets. Low frequency groups did between 9 and 15 sets in a single workout for the same muscle. No major differences in muscle growth between groups. As always slight benefit to high frequency on average but nothing noticeable or worth caring about. James kreiger pushes the hardest for high frequency, but his 6-8 sets/workout max recommedation comes from slightly outdated data on few trained lifters, lots of untrained lifters, and all sets taken to failure. Nothing definitive backing that up yet. High frequency is fine, just watch out for repetitive movement injuries like nagging joint pains, and be sure you can at least match your previous workout performance, which means muscles have recovered.

[tomaszfalkowski]

I do total body muscle building, for example, Monday I'll workout every muscle in my body and then Tuesday, I'll take an entire day off. And then the next day I'll go back to the gym and do total body and I noticed that I'd gained tremendous strength. So yes, taking a day off every other day will help you gain strength.

[krane]

I've done the test many time, and anecdotally, 72 hours works best. BTW, the muscle gets stronger long before it gets bigger. You can get an increase in strength after a single session -- initially. Conversely, it takes roughly 3 weeks before you begin to see any noticeable change in size.

[chikara]

Just discovered you and your channel is just a diamond in youtube. I'd love to see videos on kettlebell training or bodyweight training both for muscle of general physical prep

[nuarra]

Best channel I've ever come across, everything is explained very well and precise with no noise like other channels, keep it the good work 💯💪🏽👍🏽

[bradleyboyer]

I started working out sets of a muscle group once in the morning until the exhaustion and once in the afternoon until failure. I then wait 3 days to work out again.

It increased my gains in an insane way.

[BimmerWon]

I do two days on, one day off. First day I do half my weightlifting workout, second day I do the other half. Each weightlifting session is followed by a half hour of cardio. On the third day I just chill and do nothing.

[topnep]

I can't do maximum intensity due to some longlasting shoulder joint issues, so I'm doing more lighter sessions. It's at least good to know that there's no bigger detriment to having more frequent sessions. Still, not doing maximum intensity often leaves me unsatisfied and is likely a loss in time-efficiency for the sake of preventing injury.

[redpillbulgaria-v.]

In the army we used to do the SAME exercises EVERY DAY and somehow the body adjusted.
People who do manual labor have to do the same thing over and over again and again their bodies adjust and those people are usually in a better shape than the average office worker.
IMHO the intensity is what matters the most... If you have a very heavy workout session and the next day you can hardly move, it's probably a good idea to wait a few days...
Age is also a huge factor as I myself can confirm... Over 50 is probably a wise idea to wait AT LEAST 48 before you hit the same muscle group.
What works best for me is split muscle group exercises distributed throughout the week.
Let's say:
Monday: Biceps/Triceps
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Shoulders, Back Chest
Thursday Off
and then repeat with slight variations of this routine. Sometimes I may leave an extra day off after the "Legs day" session
As many people have said. Just listen to your body. We are all different and especially with age we have to adapt..

[techoutlet]

I just want to add something to this. In certain stubborn muscles you may want to induce greater growth by peaking your training for that muscle closer to overtraining, usually called over-reaching; since overtraining doesn't happen over 1 week, it takes 3-6 weeks depending on training variables like intensity, rest times, weight, reps...etc.

In this case you would start off with 1-2x / week and gradually progress to 3-5x or even 7x / week protocols; then back-off to 1-2x / week before you overtrain that muscle. An example of such protocol is Jim Stoppani's 6 Weeks to Sick Arms Program which uses a variety of techniques for weeks 1-6 with increasing difficulty to overload the arms

[angel_machariel]

I'd be super careful with training during even light soreness. I did it today with the biceps and in the second set one of the biceps generated a weird sharpish pain. I immediately quit (was recovering from too high intensity for 6 days).

If you can't wait any longer I'd advice to do super light lifting only with the lightly sore muscle to get the blood locally flowing. At least you're busy in a healthy way. Soreness exists for a reason.

[adrak]

what I'm doing - 3 days a week, what I learned - keep doing 3 days a week.

[Linknelson]

Push/ pull 3 exercises, accompanied with arms day 1 legs day 2, then 2 days off shoulders arms day 5, then legs again day 6 and repeat after 2 more days off. That is what I’ve come to like most and respond best too. I’m in my early 30s and have done all types of splits and this is what has worked best for me. Really every body is different and you really do have to listen to your body. My leg days I’ll do 3 - 4 exercises as well usually start off with leg curl then extensions 4 sets, last a drop. Then I’ll move to leg press do 4 sets then drop and finish with squats . The next leg sesh I’ll just switch the exercises around, try it out.

[ParvParashar]

Great video! Highly informative and comprehensive. Thanks for the amazing and helpful content. 💪👍🙏

[A_Proud_Indian]

All these studies are done no more than 12 weeks. Muscles recovers within 72 hrs, tendons not. Thats why intensity should be moderate if you are incorporating frequency, if you want to train once a week in a good form, going near failure is best. I feel once a week works because you can have good warm up for specific muscle also streching. You get time to workout smaller muscles and do cardio in compatitively less time.