Fitness Industry Scams

[khrazz]

While I agree with most of what you say, nothing is a 'law' when it comes to building muscle. 

The only point I really disagree on is where you say that a person hitting each muscle group twice a week will not reach their full genetic potential (because they not doing it three times a week).

I train my traps on Monday (directly), Tuesday (indirectly), thursday (directly) and Friday (indirectly). They never feel overtrained and are becoming one of my best body parts. According to Dr... My traps should be getting smaller from overtraining. I aslo train my forearms indirectly on the same days I do traps. I have favourable genetics for traps however, which is why they are responding, if I didn't, no amount of training would matter. 

My chest has always been a strong body part .I train it with two push days a week (and I guess it gets some small stimulation from pullups on my two other pull days but its minimal). Although back in college I remember I only used to train it once a week, and it never got smaller, it just remained the same size (fairly big for a skinny natural).

At the moment I only train biceps directly once a week and indirectly twice a week (triceps twice). My arms have been between 39cm - 41cm (40cm at the moment) for the last 5 years. I've been in the bodybuilding game for too long to know that training them three times a week won't make a measurable difference (not if I want to stay lean). I started lifting weights when I was about 10-13 (I forget, but I do know the first exercise I ever did were dumbbell curls with my dads old dumbbells, which I still use today) but my point being its been a long time and I've tried everything.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just accept your body for what it is and stop obsessing over the perfect amount of reps and sets and frequency. There is no getting beyond your genetics. We can argue until we blue in the face, but sooner or later your gains will drastically slow down on a full body (3 times a week program) just like they would on any other program, and then you might reconsider training each muscle group less times a week for your own mental health (unless you enjoy it and the muscle responds well to it like traps to me).

I did not say you wont reach your genetic max. All i said was that it will take twice as long, or maybe even more . Does it matter if you just want to be healthy and fit? Not really. It only matters for people who wish to maximize their gains for their personal improvement or for their athletic endeavors.

By the way, full body has its drawbacks also. Its very tiring especially when the total workload increases and there are a lot of compound movements and very few isolation movements.

I have found that full body 3 times a week works best for building general fitness and increasing your work capacity. Its also great for cutting, cause you get 4 days off from training and can focus more on cardio/rest. Obviously, full body is nothing magical and you wont get steroid like results. Its just a different training method to follow.

At the end of the day, all roads lead to Rome. Some might get you faster there some might get you slower.