Switching to 2x a week

[pobox1334 0]

Hey everyone thank you for all the useful info on this site. It's been really helpful to me.

So I've been training about 15 years and I'm in my mid 30s. I've always (for the most part) trained each muscle once a week so chest day, back day, leg day etc.

I really want to increase my results and have been wanting to train 2x a week , especially bc I've been focusing a lot on my legs lately and want to give them much more attention.

I'm just confused about how many sets to do. So currently for chest and back I'll do about 16-20 sets per. Arms about 12 sets. Shoulders get 16 and about 20 sets on leg day.

I'm thinking about starting like this
Day 1: chest and back
Day 2: legs
Day 3: shoulders and arms
Day 4: off or cardio and abs
Day 5: repeat

So should I cut the amount of sets I'm currently doing in half and do them 2x a week so for instance if I'm doing 16 sets on chest day doing it 1x a week, should I do 8 sets 2x a week? Legs 10 sets 2x a week or should i increase it some so the overall set amount is more? I hope this question makes sense, I think it does.

And I'm currently 1 month into a test and eq cycle if that makes a difference..

Thank you guys so much for any input!

[Aton 4,637]

It really depends on ur recovery. U may have to drop it down around 8-12. But I say keep it where it’s at now and feel it out to see if you can keep up the volume.

[Dick 1]

Do 12 sets 2x a week 

[jshredz 292]

On 10/11/2020 at 9:51 PM, pobox1334 said:

Hey everyone thank you for all the useful info on this site. It's been really helpful to me.

So I've been training about 15 years and I'm in my mid 30s. I've always (for the most part) trained each muscle once a week so chest day, back day, leg day etc.

I really want to increase my results and have been wanting to train 2x a week , especially bc I've been focusing a lot on my legs lately and want to give them much more attention.

I'm just confused about how many sets to do. So currently for chest and back I'll do about 16-20 sets per. Arms about 12 sets. Shoulders get 16 and about 20 sets on leg day.

I'm thinking about starting like this
Day 1: chest and back
Day 2: legs
Day 3: shoulders and arms
Day 4: off or cardio and abs
Day 5: repeat

So should I cut the amount of sets I'm currently doing in half and do them 2x a week so for instance if I'm doing 16 sets on chest day doing it 1x a week, should I do 8 sets 2x a week? Legs 10 sets 2x a week or should i increase it some so the overall set amount is more? I hope this question makes sense, I think it does.

And I'm currently 1 month into a test and eq cycle if that makes a difference..

Thank you guys so much for any input!

I'll give you my opinion based on my experience with weak body parts. It is very rare that someone improves a weak body part by training it more often.

There are some exceptions, but in most cases I've seen, it's been due to the muscle not being trained hard  enough or effectively .

Now you can benefit from Direct/Indirect training for a short interval, which is another way to train a muscle more than once. For example focusing on quads one day a week and hamstrings on a different day. You are still training legs 2 x per week but focusing the intensity on a specific muscle.

[Torres 508]

See @Aton is correct. It does depend on your recovery.

Back in the day, BodyBuilders did each body part 2X a week, and worked out 5-6 days out of the week. Those dudes were in a league of their own !!! But i mean 2X a week? I'm not sure if you're going to see the results you want, but your genetics could be awesome and you might do very well.

Give it a go and try it for a month, keep a log of how you're doing and go from there. Just My Opinion.

Oh, and

cut the Sets down and increase the intensity.

[Koolio 1]

When I turned 50 back in 2009 I started training 2x a week...legs one day and upper body one day (usually Saturday morning)...I do 3 work sets for chest and back and 2 work sets for shoulders, biceps and triceps...12 sets total...generally a HIT routine...I found it to work well for me...