Elite Physique The New Science of Building a Better Body

48 Elite Physique
MUSCLE RULE 5: Early in my career I started experimenting with high frequency
Train all major
training (HFT), which I define as training a muscle group four or
more times per week. I did this to accelerate growth in my clients’
muscle groups at
lagging muscle groups. After much experimentation, I found that
least twice per week
for small muscle groups (e.g., calves, biceps, deltoids), 12 sessions
and up to 12 times per week was optimal. This meant my clients performed one set to
per week for lagging failure in the morning and evening of, say, a standing one-leg calf
body parts. raise six days per week. They continued with that frequency until
the intended growth was achieved and then maintained it with three
sessions per week, at the beginning of their three full-body workouts when they
were fresh and could stimulate that muscle with a high intensity.
I attribute their success with my HFT protocols to the fact they were able to
expose those lagging muscles to a significantly higher volume of work each
week, which research has shown to be important for hypertrophy (Schoenfeld,
Ogborn, and Krieger 2017). Indeed, they would not have been able to perform
all 12 sets in one workout with the same repetitions and intensity as they were
able to do one set at a time, many hours apart spread throughout the week. This
brings up an important point: When volume is equated, more sessions per week
isn’t advantageous for hypertrophy (Schoenfeld et al. 2019). For example, let’s say
you were going to do six sets of eight repetitions (6 × 8) of the bench press with
225 pounds (102 kg). Whether you did three sets on Monday and Thursday or
one set per day for six days straight, the hypertrophy effect would be the same.
Sleep Hygiene
There is an old adage that states, “Muscle is built outside the gym.” Sure, you need
to train hard and intelligently program your workouts, but you will not achieve
optimal results if you lack sufficient sleep. The recommended sleep duration for
adults is seven to nine hours per night (Mukherjee et al. 2015). However, people
who consistently perform challenging resistance training will likely need even
more than seven hours. So if we split the difference, your mother was right when
she told you to sleep eight hours each night. There are numerous deleterious
effects of sleep deprivation. Here is a list of some that pertain to athletes:
• Increased cortisol (a stress hormone) and decreased growth hormone
(Mougin et al. 2001)
• Decreased maximal and submaximal strength for the deadlift, bench press,
and leg press (Reilly and Piercy 1994)
• Poorer cognitive function and decision-making ability during athletic performances
(Killgore 2010; Reilly and Deykin 1983)
• Increased susceptibility to obesity and diabetes (Patel et al. 2006)
• Decreased muscular power output (Souissi et al. 2013)
MUSCLE RULE 6:
Sleep 8 to 9 hours
each night, or
over the course of
24 hours.
Many of these negative effects are demonstrated with as little as
two hours of sleep deprivation, and caffeine the following day didn’t
help (Reyner and Horne 2013). The good news is that restoring sleep
to eight hours per night can solve all these problems, including your
anabolic hormones (Chennaoui et al. 2016). If you can’t manage to
get sufficient sleep during the night, a short (e.g., 30 minute) nap