Effectiveness of Targeted Exercises

[pressure0354]

I keep hearing that you should only work on certain muscle groups each workout, about 3-4 times a week.

My routine I have been doing for a year or two has just been exercising all of my body each workout, doing about 2 or 3 exercises per group (arms/shoulders/chest/abs). My question is if you target say, arms, just once a week.. how does the muscle maintain itself over a week? I would think that just one day working out a muscle group would not maintain well.

So I guess my real question is, is it better to do more exercises with a muscle group just once a week, or less variation of exercises but hitting the group 3 times a week.

I am in pretty good shape with my routine and mostly happy with the results, but if there is a mroe effective way then I will be glad to experiment.:rockon:

 

[EFFORT]

Read A-Units post then look at this for a structure

Basic 3day split

Monday-Squat

Wed- Bench

Friday- Deadlift



Basic 2day split (most will probably do best on this)

Monday- Bench

Thurs- Alternate Squat and Deadlift each week.

Throw in accessory work as well

 

[WC2]

The point in splitting your workouts is to maximize your intensity during workout and to give certain muscles time to rest. Check out different bodybuilding sites that give different splits. Sometimes it all depends on how your body responds. Some like a push/pull routine in which they work their chest/tris and back/bis on certain days.

I picked up a routine from a friend of mine that has seemed to work well for ME lately. This routine involves sending certain muscle groups to failure each day.

Monday - Chest
Tuesday - Shoulders/Squats
Wednesday - Bis/Tris
Thursday - Back/Legs (Quads/Hams)
Friday - Cardio

While this routine might not work for everyone, it has come apparent to me that I myself can more effectively send each muslcle group to failure if I work less of them each day.

 

[pressure0354]

okay, ill give it a try.

my concern was that while only working on a certain group only once a week, is it enough to sustain muscle until the next week when you exercise it again.

 

[Wee]

I did my chest on monday, and I don't think I'm gonna fully recover from it till tomarrow or friday. Maybe I have a low recovery time though. Concentrating on each group is good so you can get a maximum intensity workout for that part. On each day I do 4-7 excersizes, and do 4 sets (and a warmup set). Works me out good, haha.

 

[hope7]

Don't do two pushing (chest, shoulders) one day after another

my workouts:

Sunday: legs
4 reps squats
4 reps stiff legged deadlifts
4 reps hip abductors (for inner tighs) or calves
4 reps leg curl

monday:chest/tricepts
4 reps bench press
4 reps overhead extenstions
2 reps cable butterfly's
4 reps incline dumbell press
2 reps machine butterfly's

wednesday: back
4 reps deadlifts
4 reps pulldowns
4 reps rows
4 reps pullsup/chinups

thursday: shoulders
4 reps lateral raises
4 reps dumbell shoulder press
4 reps front raises
4 reps one arms shoulder press