Mike, I wondered what your thoughts were on the effects of differing training frequencies. Given the same volume, stress and intensity do you believe different results wil be achieved if all the weeks traing for one lift is done on one day as opposed to spread across the week. For example say the planned training calls for three squat exercises, do you think it makes a significant difference if they are all done on one day as opposed to being spread between two or three days. I can see how arguements could be made for both all on one day allows more time for recovery in between sessions and possibly a greater cumulative stress spread across three days allows for more regular practice of the movement and may require less recovery as the stress on each day is less
Its a strange answer when its not in a specific context, because different issues will cause different options to become optimal. That said, I feel that if things can be done at a higher frequency, that would be better in the long run. Here are some reasons:
Its more frequent practice of the exercise, meaning that even on a basic level, theres more days of practice to work on a particular skill and youll generally be more fresh when you practice it. Also, theres evidence that says after a practice (particularly one involving technical skill), when you go to sleep your brain effectively re-practices the events. It works kind of like this: When you do pretty much anything requiring brain activity, synapses are connected and disconnected as neurons communicate. When you sleep, your brain re-enforces some of these connections and disconnects others. So you effectively re-practice as you sleep (which brings into play a whole other discussion on why you should do what you can to have a perfect practice).
Also, having the stress spread throughout the week actually allows you to handle more total stress than lumping it all onto one day. I dont have any good analogies for this, but its been true in my coaching experience. Its probably got to do with the depth of a stressor and its subsequent impact on other systems of the body. For instance, if you experience a small stressor, its impact on, say, hormonal profile will also be small and may not have a significant effect on recovery time. But a large stressor will have a larger impact on the same hormonal profile, which could possibly result in a longer recovery time (aside from the fact that there is simply more stress to recover from). I guess a way to think about it is like this: If you recover from 100 stress-units per day (I just made that up for the purposes of this example) and you induce 300 stress units. Standard mathematics would say you recover in 3 days. Lets say thats true for now. What if you induce 1000 stress-units? Conventional wisdom would say that you recover in 10 days, but in my experience it is more like 12. I think the reason is the stress-response (which I discussed earlier) slows your recovery from 100 stress-units per day to something less. Of course, all the reasoning is just conjecture. The only thing I can say with certainty is that, in my experience, less frequency does not necessarily result in more stress recovered.
Now, as I said earlier, there are instances where this doesnt hold true and people who are more suited for low-frequency programs, but Id say this is fairly accurate for most.
Thanks for your reply, which helps a lot and certainly gives me something to think about. Sorry if my question was little vague.
After reading through your book and the suggested programs which suggest two squat exercises on the first squat/deadlift day and one squat exercise on the second squat/deadlift day, I was trying to figure out whether you thought it would be OK to split the three squat exercises per week over three days, as opposed to two. For some reason it seems that I get better results when the lift are done more often. I guess the thing to do is give a try and see what happens.
Yes, you can spread things even more if you wish. I do this with my deadlift training just because of the way it works out in the weekly template and it works fine.
