I recently posted about an old myth that somehow resurfaced with the most unexpected person in my current work life, the idea that a pound of muscle at rest burns 50kcal per day. While this was the most painful part to discuss and deny to this individual, there were more things that came up under the same shadow of untruth and lies.
One of the things that was pitched to me in the form of “education” was that training a muscle group 3 times a week will actually cause muscle breakdown and over time this would make you lose muscle mass.
The idea goes by saying that every time you train a muscle you incur in damage and muscle protein breakdown (MPB), and that by not allowing enough time to recover, the muscle will continue to lose fibers at a rate so accelerated that you won’t be able to keep up with the repairing process.
This ultimately leads you to somehow lose your actual muscle as you lift weights, only because you trained it three times and apparently that will make you spiral down into muscle wasting land. You can imagine that by now I was crunching my face like a raisin.
How muscle loss happens
It is true that when we train MPB occurs, which means your muscles have been damaged and tissue is being broken down.
This is happening even in the absence of weight lifting, the body is constantly breaking down muscle protein, the reasons are unknown (although this is typical about science and how they take ages to confirm something) but it seems to me that this is for the same general reason like how fat is also being released from the cell and kept around for possible usage.
The protein’s amino acids are being released into the free amino acid pool in case they are needed for other bodily functions, simple as that. When we lift weights we accelerate this process in the muscles involved during the exercises, and more protein is broken down.
There are a couple of things that reverse this, and the most important ones are protein and calorie intake. Protein is by far the most important piece here as it adds amino acids to the pool and plays a key role in maintaining or even increasing muscle mass. This depends on something called protein net balance (Explained below).
Muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is the other side of the coin here, and this just means the amount of protein built in a period of time. So, the balance between MPB and MPS determines if you will be in a positive (muscle building) or negative (muscle loss) state.
Protein turnover
For you to lose muscle, MPB needs to be higher than MPS, and this will surely happen if you don’t eat enough protein, and to a small degree if you overtrain. This is the key word here, overtraining will cause you to lose muscle mass, but for this to happen it will take a lot of time and effort, things that beginners never get into.
Understanding that MPB happens when you train is important for the whole picture, and the crucial information to have is that MPS will kick back in when you eat after training, and will remain high if you continue to eat and recover. The quantities and calculations are beyond the scope of this post, but enough to say that if your protein intake is within decent range, you don’t have to worry about losing muscle after training.
On the other hand, excessive training for a beginner could be categorized as using the same muscle group every single day with enough volume to cause damage that 24 hours won’t be enough to recover from. But 3 times a week, even if it’s 3 days in a row it will not make you lose muscle (although 3 days in a row are inefficient for most).
A rrequency refresher
Now we are at the crux of the matter, this is a topic that confuses a lot of people so I’ll take a couple of paragraphs to clarify it, especially because it’s important for the context I am discussing here about training muscles several times a week.
The amount of times we train a specific muscle group is called frequency, there is nothing magical about it. The importance of frequency comes down to programming and nothing else. Usually someone would split their workouts throughout the week, and to maximize muscle growth frequencies of 2-3 times per week are in fact recommended.
This is due to the nature of muscle growth via resistance training, where the spike in MPS and other anabolic signaling lasts roughly 48 hours or so, especially in beginners (this is a huge point for my conclusions, keep it in mind). It stands to reason then that if we want to maximize muscle growth on a new trainee, we might want to suggest a frequency of 2-3 times a week per muscle group.
Schoenfeld, Ogborn, and Krieger performed a systematic review and meta analysis on this subject, and their conclusions were that 2-3 times was superior to once, and the only thing left was to see if 3 times was superior than 2, which says a lot about how a 3rd day might even yield better results.
In this other meta analysis it was concluded that when volume is equated (i.e. the same volume was used on all three frequency scenarios), muscle growth remains the same. This is a perfect example on how unimportant it is to train once or seven times a week, as long as you do the required volume you should be doing, it’s all about how practical you make it for your own schedule and availability to train.
Reality, not gimmicks
As a coach I deal with programming for all kinds of people, and the amazing thing is that depending on how long you have been training for, the more advanced you are, and the lower the frequency should be. The opposite is also true, a beginner can train the same muscle group much more often than an experienced lifter.
This makes sense when you think about the amount of muscle damaged by an advanced trainee, with the volume they can tolerate they can break down a lot of tissue, which will take several days to recover from.
On the flip side, someone who is new to training is still acquiring lifting skills, form, posture, intensity awareness, so forth and so on. Couple that with the low volume they can perform since they are not strong enough yet (neural adaptations take time to maximize strength per unit of muscle), and you find that their workload and stress is barely enough to disrupt homeostasis for a day or two.
This means that beginners are actually suited to train more often than advanced trainees, and they benefit from it, not the other way around. This is a known fact, Greg Nuckols did a great job in this data analysis where he took a ton of studies comparing frequency of training in all kinds of trainees. Mike Israetel voices this as well, often citing that frequency of 4 or even 6 times a week for some small muscles are actually better.
Training programs
If everything I’ve said wasn’t enough, I want to finish by mentioning that many of the most successful and popular programs have a frequency of 3 times or more per muscle group, and these are generally for beginners and not so much for advanced athletes.
Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength has you squatting 3 times a week, as well as bench pressing and doing back work (through deadlifts or pull-ups). And I doubt his system is known for making people lose muscle mass. He even talks about the novice effect and how you should take advantage of it.
Mehdi’s Stronglifts also builds on the same principles, these are programs designed for strength and hypertrophy and they have a higher frequency with fewer exercises at a higher intensity. This means that they are not your easy-going programs where you come out of the gym all fine and dandy, they test you (if done properly) on every session and leave you fatigued and sore, yet the body is easily recovered from it and adapted.
Every bodybuilding program has you at least doing muscle groups twice a week, with a third one optional if the person has the time and commitment to do it. The key in all these programs is equated volume, that is the amount of work you can perform for every muscle group every week and recover from. Spread this out in 2 or more sessions and you will always see virtually the same results.
I know that I am beating a dead horse at this point, but I’ll just add that anecdotally I’ve been training in this fashion for a while, and those clients who started with me their serious training career have seen the best results with a frequency of 3 times a week, picking 3 main exercises and performing them for several months with some accessory work on the side that varies now and then.
Conclusions
To wrap up this post, I want to finish by saying that your BS meter should always be active, people are out there to prey on your hopes and goals by selling you something with false expectations, lies, and tricks that are only meant to make you believe that anything you do without them is wrong, and that they have the only solution to your issues.
I entered this business out of love for what I do, not for the money, so it grinds my gears to spot people doing this for the sake of profit and not to truly help people. They take advantage of the confusing field of fitness to make people feel dumb or ignorant, often elevating themselves as the keepers of truth and success.
“Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.”
Pete Seeger
Fitness in general is not complicated, like everything else if someone overcomplicates things in an explanation is because they are trying to portray it as unachievable for you and they want to somehow take advantage of you. Or maybe, which is the case on many, they have no idea what they are talking about.