Wee G

Depends what you are training for, and how. I'll assume you are Bodybuilding, as most here are.

There is an old axiom that says “You can train hard or you can train long...but you can’t train hard for long” that is often used to promote so called “High Intensity Training (HIT)”. A more useful axiom would be “You can train to create soreness and fatigue, or you can train often, but you can’t train to create soreness and fatigue often”.

Both methodologies are of value, at the correct time and in the correct context, but this is a classic example of the conflict between maximising training frequency and fatigue caused by training reducing training frequency.


Very high frequency schedules are put in place to take advantage of delayed transmutation. This is a complicated sounding but really dead simple phenomenon whereby loading schedules that do not allow full recovery in the short term can create a large training effect in the long term. Again there is a fine balance between over reaching caused by high training volume or frequency and overtraining; and ofcourse a period of overreaching must eventually be "balanced" by a period of lower training frequency - have a wee search for dual factor training for more on this.


Many athletes (especially bodybuilders) use low training frequencies - ie once a week / bodypart or less. They simply cannot train very often as the fatigue and DOMS caused by their training methodologies prevents them from training the same body part for several days after a training session without overtraining.This would be worthwhile if the resulting soreness and fatigue was coincident with a dramatic level of progress in size or strength but oftentimes it is not. Why is it that most Bodybuilders, when given the choice, will choose to utilise means that enforce low training volumes and frequencies by creating large amounts of fatigue and soreness?

Often, more progress would be made in hypertrophy by adopting more frequent training schedules with less training to the point of fatigue, no training to “failure” and no training with forced reps, slow negatives and other so called “intensity” techniques.

Idealy, when training for hypertrophy training frequency should co-incide with the time scale for protein synthesis. PS is elevated for about 48 hours after training, so each muscle group should be training at least twice and preferably 3 times per week. Balancing this frequency against fatigue whilst ensuring sufficient loading is the trick, but it just take a little planning and forethought.

G.