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Can You Train The Same Muscle Everyday?

Yes, and here's why you should.

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MuscleWiki SEZC
June 26, 2024

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You absolutely can train the same muscle every day. A whole lot of smart people train just that way. One research review of 42 studies found training a muscle more often was better for muscle growth than one time per week.

It’s a common thought you need to let a muscle rest in order for it to grow, which is true. However, the amount of time a muscle needs to rest is often misunderstood.

Typical muscle growth programs have 12–20 sets for one muscle, and then training that muscle again seven days later.

Even at these high amounts of intra-workout volume, 7 days of rest is still a bit long. Probably more like 3-5 days for a beginner. But what if you don’t do nearly 12 sets for a body part within one workout? Would you need the same amount of rest?

Based on recent research, we know training a muscle once per week and with SO many sets (12–20) is sub-optimal.

“It can be hypothesized that increasing the training frequency would allow for more frequent elevations in muscle protein synthesis and more time spent in a positive net protein balance.

We hypothesize that increasing the training frequency, as opposed to the training load or sets performed, may be a more appropriate strategy for trained individuals to progress a resistance exercise program aimed at increasing muscle size.”

- Frequency: The Overlooked Resistance Training Variable for Inducing Muscle Hypertrophy?

^ That ^ study even called doing more than 4 sets for a body part in a given workout a “waste.” You hit a point of diminishing returns with volume in one workout. That point seems to be about 4-6 sets per body part per day.

Conclusion

Yes, you can train a muscle every day. You just have to do less volume in a given workout. Instead of doing 12–20 sets for that body part. Do 3–4 sets. 3-4 is probably where you have maximized the amount of growth you’ll get in one day anyway. And this will shorten your recovery time, letting you hit that muscle again far sooner than otherwise. Maybe even every day.

And, slight sidenote, one recent study found that full body workouts were better for body fat loss than bodybuilding splits are 🤷🏾‍♂️

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