I started high frequency training in late 2012 and have been preaching it ever since starting my blog in 2013.
Training full body everyday has been the best way for me to gain muscle mass while staying lean and it’s the way I have most of my clients train.
Now, almost 8 years later, the “evidence based” community is finally waking up and there are videos of training full body 5 days per week on YouTube.
This is a great example of the science always being behind the people in the trenches.
Another example is when I continuously stated that you can get optimal growth from training with light-moderate weight as long as you go to failure (and then years later a well designed study came out and proved it).
Anyways, what’s the benefit of high frequency training?
The first benefit is that it signals to your body to transform. (This is something that isn’t proven yet by science but don’t worry, just like everything else I’ve preached it will eventually be).
When you continuously make blood flow into your muscles, they get stimulated into growth.
This works especially well for hardgainers who don’t respond well to training.
Second, this increased blood flow to the muscles then makes you never get sore.
With the exception of the first few weeks where you’re getting used to high frequency training, you will not get sore after performing your workouts.
This leads to much better training performance.
Third, by training full body pretty much everyday, you increase your chances of hitting new personal bests.
Simply by having more workouts for each muscle group with a given exercise, you have a higher chance to beat your personal bests.
Over the course of a month and a year, this really adds up.
This only works provided that you take recovery seriously and get good sleep and good nutrition.
Fourth, you can choose to either increase your total volume or spread out your volume over more workouts to increase intensity on each set.
E.g. if you’re in a training cycle and you’re starting to feel fatigued and worn out, you can simply spread out your volume over more workouts so you achieve better intensity on each set.
Alternatively, if you feel the workout is getting too easy, you can increase the volume a bit each workout and easily increase the total volume by week substantially.
This is why full body training 4-6 days per week is my preferred training style for myself and most of my clients.
It allows for much better growth.
With that said, this doesn’t mean I don’t use a 2 split.
In many cases I also use a 2 split (PUSH / PULL + LEGS), but never less than a 2 split.
I want all of my clients to hit their entire body at least twice per week, but preferably 3-6 times per week.
Be proud but stay hungry!
Oskar Faarkrog, ISSA Certified Personal Trainer
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