How Often Should You Train Each Muscle Group For Size and Strength?

Few training topics create more debate than workout frequency.

One camp says you should train each muscle group once a week with high-volume “bro splits.” Another argues that twice-per-week frequency is superior for hypertrophy. Then there are lifters pushing full-body training three or four days a week, along with others advocating high-frequency specialization programs that hit muscles nearly every day.

The truth is, all of those approaches can work.

That’s because training frequency isn’t something you can evaluate in isolation. How often you train a muscle only matters within the context of your overall program design. Volume, intensity, exercise selection, recovery ability, training experience, nutrition, and even lifestyle stress all influence how much frequency your body can actually benefit from.

This is one reason I’ve used a wide variety of training frequencies in my own programs over the years. Programs like Shortcut to Size and many old school bodybuilding splits use lower-frequency, higher-volume approaches. Other programs incorporate upper/lower splits, push-pull-legs structures, full-body training, or undulating periodization with more frequent muscle stimulation.

There isn’t one universally “best” frequency for everyone at all times. But there are situations where certain frequencies tend to work better than others.

Why Frequency Matters in the First Place

Every hard training session creates a stimulus for muscle growth. Resistance training increases muscle protein synthesis, which is essentially the process involved in repairing and building muscle tissue after training.

That increase doesn’t last forever.

For most people, muscle protein synthesis remains elevated for roughly 24-72 hours after training, depending on factors like workout intensity, training age, nutrition, and recovery. Once that response starts returning to baseline, the muscle is no longer receiving the same growth stimulus from that workout.

That’s why frequency became such a major topic in hypertrophy research. The idea is fairly simple: If you stimulate a muscle more often throughout the week, you may create more total opportunities for muscle growth over time.

But frequency alone doesn’t guarantee better results.The body still has to recover from the training stimulus. And that’s where things become more nuanced.

Let’s go through some different training frequency options, one by one…

When Once-Per-Week Training Works Well

Despite the criticism it gets online these days, once-per-week training can absolutely build muscle. Bodybuilders have used lower-frequency splits successfully for decades, especially when training volume and intensity are high enough within each workout.

Just to be clear about what once-per-week training looks like, any time one of my programs is a 4-day, 5-day, or 6-day training split, that means each muscle group is trained only once a week. If it were a 3-day split, that means the entire body is training over the course of three days, which means that could be repeated twice a week. Same with a 2-day split, except that that could actually also be done three times a week. 

The advantage of a once-weekly split is that it allows you to dedicate a tremendous amount of focus, volume, and energy toward a single muscle group in one session. Instead of spreading chest work across multiple days, for example, you might perform 16-20 total working sets in one workout using multiple angles, rep ranges, and intensity techniques.

That can create a massive hypertrophy stimulus.

Lower-frequency training also tends to work well for advanced lifters training with very high intensity. The stronger and more experienced you become, the more taxing workouts usually become on muscles, joints, connective tissue, and the nervous system. Recovery demands increase significantly as training loads rise.

This is one reason many experienced

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