Two gym training questions:

[ethan]

Is it ok to train hard but only train twice a week and what amount of sessions per week have given you your best gains? In the last five weeks I've gone from 17kg flies to 30 kg, for example.
I'm doing a full body workout twice a week. I'm not a beginner.
I recovered from a long illness and feel I am making good gains from twice a week. However, training more than twice would probably lead to injury due to my joints, tendons and ligaments not being able to take the punishment. I'm assuming that I would be better off sticking to what appears to be working for the moment and wondered if anybody else has had a similar experience.

 

[ethan]

It depends on your goals. If you're going for gaining size, more sessions might be better as you need higher volumes to maximise hypertrophy. If you're going for strength, then a two or three day split can be plenty. Question is, are you training so you can fight back against any more shelves that decide to assault you?

Haha Cookeh. That's where all the talk of jutting out and deltoids came from
@ Freefaller, sometimes I'm having two days rest and if really weary three days. Full workout: legs, chest Biceps, triceps, back and shoulders as hard as I can and as varied for 90 mins two times a week. It's working and I am starting to put the size back on with the weights being as heavy as possible.

Finally, if you have dodgy joints/tendons/ligaments then it's worth looking at the mobility thread which I just bumped. In most cases you can perform some remedial work that will help with this

Yes, I will do as right delt is overly tight and can sometimes bother me for 3 to five days, though I have to say this is improving. I'll give it another four to six weeks before adjusting the routine again, I think.

 

[ethan]

Thanks for mentioning me - but did you mean to?!

Oops. My bad. So used to you giving helpful and friendly advice

 

[ethan]

I've had much more success splitting a routine up over more days to focus on individual components. Ideally legs, back, chest and shoulders with slightly shorter sessions than a full body in one week. This also worked better for me than upper/lower split. For me it seems more is better!

The twice a week has been allowing me to hammer the 90 min sessions but I do think I will add another session if my recovery rates improve (beyond what they are now). Alternatively I would be looking to add a third session if I feel I wasn't making enough progress anyway? How many sets are you doing per body part a week ?

 

[ethan]

2 sessions is perfectly feasible.

As long as you hit this criteria:

Intensity
Volume

I personally would do upper and lower workouts on each day. And split it Mon & Thu - it gives 3 days of recovery between each session.

Day 1 could be something like:

Squats
Bench
BOR
Pull ups - optional
DB Shoulder Press - optional

Day 2

Deadlifts
OHP
Walking lunges / DBSS
Incline/Regular DB Bench Press - optional
Rows (t-bar, cable, DB) - optional

for the main exercises I'd aim for at least 3 sets at around 6RM, with perhaps a AMRAP final set. The optional sets would be more volume centric - so 10RM with a AMRAP for final set.

Each session would be at least an hour or so, and hard work - but perfectly feasible. Supersetting is also a good way of getting volume/intensity.

Sorry for the late reply. Plenty of useful ideas from everybody. Thanks.