I had a question from a client the other night that I thought would be beneficial to share with you. This young fella is a hard worker and brings a lot of good questions to the table. And I appreciate his 'can do' mentality - never any excuses - just  gets shit done.

Client: 

"How do you decide if someone recovering enough? I've always been curious if [reduced frequency] was something that would benefit me because I work construction." 

Some back and forth between him and I followed by:

"I used to train 6x per week then switched to 5x and I felt like I made better gains. Then made even better gains at 4x so I've always wandered about 3x."

His 'gains' in reducing training frequency had more to do with his strength levels than his vocation. He was simply too strong to be training 6x per week. Now that coupled with working construction certainly didn't help. But his body was already acclimated to his job, so that wasn't the main factor. Take a young 18 year old male working construction as a summer job and we can find a way to effectively train him 6x per week. I digress. Onto the goods...

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There are a host of factors that go into setting and/or adjusting your training frequency. 

In order of importance, they are...

  1. Training Age
  2. Strength Level
  3. Progress
  4. Injuries
  5. Mood

Understand frequency can be in total weekly or monthly training sessions, or even addressing a particular lift. Some examples:

Training Age

- A friend and former client, training for 40 years, took my advice and reduced his deadlifting sessions from weekly to biweekly. He felt so good that he even reduced his squats from weekly to biweekly. So he was squatting and deadlifting every other week. The result? "I think I might have one last meet in me."

-My own training partner is a teacher with two children and a very driven and successful wife. Which means he has full time dad responsibilities sometimes. He was used to training 4x a week and recovering very well, actually. Out of necessity he dropped to 3x a week and is feeling great. Now this may have to go back up to 4x, but understand that he's still making progress at 3x, and is feeling great.

If a client comes to me with less than a year of training, they're going to be in the gym 5x per week. If someone has been training for 20+ years, we're looking at starting with 4x (one being a recovery day) and adjusting from there. Everything in between will be around the 4x mark with adjusted frequencies per lift depending on their strength level. 

Strength Level

Picture Andrey Malanichev or Dave Hoff - two of the world's strongest and most prolific squatters- 1000lbs+ raw and 1200lbs in gear. Absolutely wild. Do you think they squat heavy (relative) weekly? They just can't. No matter how conditioned or prepared, they have to drop their frequency (of heavy squats at least). So that might mean a heavy squat once a month, with 2-3 other sessions of submaximal training.

If a client has a particular lift that is lagging, I will likely increase the frequency of that lift - squat and bench usually being the examples here. Rarely does deadlift fall under this category - more often than not its a technique issue not a frequency issue. So understand you can adjust frequency of total sessions, or frequency of each lift within a give time frame.

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Getting into adjusting on the fly with clients...

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Progress

If a client is stalling or seemingly going backwards, then we have to address the following- sleep, nutrition, stress. IF all of those things are being taken care of, then it's probably time to reduce training frequency. That may start with removing a squat or deadlift session. That may require removing a whole training day. It all depends on the lifter- this is where having a coach that has been there before matters. And where I see a lot of insta-famous coaches, really cheerleaders and program writers, come back with "push through bro, you got this," or "push through girl, I have faith in you!!"

Injuries

This is an easy one. If you're constantly tweaking your pec or hamstring, reduce the frequency with which you are training it. That isn't the cure, but only part of the cure. Fix your motor patterns, get tissue work done, hydrate better, etc. But lowering your frequency, at least in the short term, can be a great tool.

Mood

Yeah, mood. If you're training hard and finding yourself overly irritable, or even depressed, the gym is taking more than it's giving. And this may be another scenario where reducing gym time will be beneficial. Swap in a hike or cardio session (cardio even being a long walk). I know this will induce a certain amount of stress for some of you, but this is a good 'leap' to take and just try it when you're feeling the effects of overtraining.

 

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