Don asks the following questions regarding muscle gains on limited time.
I’ve purchased a number of your materials through Dragon Door and through Legendary Strength. Thank you for creating such great quality stuff.
I have a question for you regarding training frequency for muscle gain. Could you provide any guidance on how often a person should be training in order to make gains? I would also like to note that my preference it to train as little as possible because I also do a number of other things and more time working out it less time for the
other things.By way of background information I exercise pretty much strictly using body weight only. I eat quite healthy and count calories and macro-nutrients. I get around 7 hours of sleep a night.
I would also consider myself to be a bit of a “hard gainer”.
Great question Don. As with all things it depends on a few factors.
So let’s just take it from your preference of minimal training. If that is the case then it’s hard to beat HIT, that’s high intensity training.
(Actually it should be called high severity training, as intensity is being used in a different way than what it is normally used for in weightlifting. See The Master Keys to Strength and Fitness for more details.)
With working very hard and training to failure, or even beyond failure, you can trigger muscle growth with just a single set of an exercise.
Just one set of grueling 20 rep squats will trigger growth.
Anyone that doesn’t believe that hasn’t done them before!
You might be sore for a week so you’d want to wait at least that long between squat workouts.
But that’s with weights and Don mentioned bodyweight training. The question is can this same effect come with just bodyweight workouts?
For the legs only it’s a little tougher to do but still very much doable. Here you’ll want to do pistols or other one legged squats to up the intensity and then do them similarly.
A set of as many pistols as possible done to failure (assuming the skill and flexibility issue isn’t a problem for you) will often trigger the same kind of soreness the 20-rep barbell squats could.
Anyone that doesn’t believe that hasn’t done them before!
For the upper body it’s pretty simple. You can do a body split as they often do in bodybuilding. Here focus on pushing exercises one day and pulling the other. Or do them both at once.
In this style you should be able to gain muscle in just two or three workouts per week.
You don’t have to stick to just one set. A couple to a few of them also works. Either way those workouts can all be pretty short.
Then it’s a matter of eating copiously.
And having the correct mindset is critical in importance too.
While there is such thing as a “hard gainer” in that some people can more easily put on muscle than others, it can be a hindrance to believe you are one.
I use to believe that. Then I found out if I did the right things mentally and physically I was able to put on more than 25 lbs in less than a month. (Now that wasn’t all muscle, nor did I decide to keep it, but I wanted to demonstrate to myself that it could be done.)
For that I highly recommend hypnosis, visualization and the other things you’ve learned about in Mental Muscle.