5 things you can train every day The advantage of frequency

I am a firm believer in training frequency when it comes to gains in strength and muscle mass. That's not surprising when you look at my background as a personal trainer. I started training for football and our strength coach was a firm believer in training the three big basic exercises three days a week. Our program basically consisted of power cleans, squats, bench presses and pull-ups three days a week. After football, I moved on to Olympic weightlifting, where I trained squats, snatches and deadlifts pretty much every day. A training program with a higher training frequency worked well for these exercises too.

The truth is, you can train pretty much anything at a high frequency once you've technically mastered the exercises. Of course, you need to plan volume and intensity properly, but it is possible.

Are you not sold on the idea of training squats every day, or snatches every training session? There are a few things that are less complicated than others to train every day. And these things will also make it quite easy for you to compensate for a few weak points. Here are five of them.

1. forearms

Forearm exercises cause little - if any - muscle damage, which is especially true for exercises with little eccentric load such as training with the Wrist Roller or exercises like Thor's Hammer(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_ZiMx1fds). But even forearm curls will cause little damage.

In addition, these exercises have very little effect on the nervous system as they are very simple and are performed with very light weights. Energy consumption is also low as the range of motion is very small and only smaller muscles are involved.

None of the factors that make more recovery time necessary are involved in forearm training. As long as you don't completely overdo it with the volume, there is no reason not to train your forearms every day.

Why would you want to do this? Because muscular forearms look cool. After all, they're the only muscles that are fully visible when you're wearing a T-shirt!

However, having well-developed forearms will do more than just make you look admirable. Bigger and stronger forearms make it easier for you to build bigger biceps. This has been known for over 20 years and the body hasn't changed since.

By building bigger and stronger forearms, you will be able to move more weight during curl and pull exercises, which will increase the stimulation of your biceps and back muscles.

Bigger forearms and a stronger grip will also help you with the bench press. Look at the best bench pressers in the world - they all have big forearms. To bench press heavy weights, you need a strong grip. The harder you can grip the bar, the less your wrists will tend to tilt and interfere with the correct movement of the bar. (The bar should be directly above the wrist. If the wrist tilts sideways, the bar will no longer move on the optimal line). In addition, large forearms form a larger "body" on which the weight of the bar is distributed. This can reduce the load on the shoulder joints.

However, there is one thing you should be aware of: You shouldn't develop one part of the forearms more than the other. The wrist flexors, for example, tend to be trained significantly more than the wrist extensors (the flexors are heavily involved in curls and pulling exercises) and the wrist supinators are often dominant over the pronators. Just like other imbalances in the body, this can lead to problems such as tendonitis. So if you want to progress your forearms and train them in every training session (or every day), you should train flexion and extension in one training session, supination and pronation in the next and your grip strength in the third. On the fourth day, start again from the beginning.

As forearm exercises only have a short range of motion, you must either use a higher number of repetitions or a slower pace to generate sufficient fatigue and stimulate growth. Sets that last 30 to 60 seconds should be your goal.

I don't usually count the repetitions when training my forearms. I start a timer and train until I reach muscle failure, or at least get close to it, and try to achieve this within a 30 to 60 second period. For the sake of simplicity, however, I will give repetition numbers for the following example training units.

Training session A: Flexion/extension

	Exercise	Sets		Rest
A1	Wrist Roller	3-4	30-60 sec.	1 min.
A2	Forearm curls	3-4	10-12	90 sec.

Training session B: Supination/pronation

	Exercise	Sets		Pause
A1	Thor's hammer inward rotation (4 sec. negative repetition)	3-4	10-12	1 min.
A2	Thor's hammer turn to the outside (4 sec. negative repetition)	3-4	10-12	1 min.

Training session C: grip training

	Exercise	Sets		Break
A	Pinch-Grip Deadlift (30-60 sec. hold) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbW1gcRskHY)	3		90-120 sec.
B	Fat-Grip Hold (30-60 sec hold) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib18uOglxPw)	3		90-120 sec.

You can also use other exercises, but you should now understand the basic idea.

Abdominal muscles

My strategy for abdominal training? I use blocks of intense ab workouts where I train these muscles every day for 4 to 6 weeks.

You can recover from pretty much any ab exercise quite quickly - except for full range of motion GHD sit-ups as used in CrossFit. (This exercise generates a powerful stretch of the rectus abdominis - especially when performed at high speed - which causes a lot of muscle damage that requires a longer recovery time).

A daily abdominal workout at an adequate intensity is one of the fastest ways to improve the appearance of your midsection - assuming you are lean enough to show off your abs. The "abs are made in the kitchen" mantra isn't really accurate. Abs are made visible in the kitchen: you need to be lean enough. Building them up with direct training will increase the likelihood of them becoming visible. It will also make it easier to see abs at a slightly higher body fat percentage.

For example, if I have a body fat percentage of 13 to 15%, I can still see a clear six-pack because the rectus abdominis muscle bellies are so thick that they create a contrast between themselves and the tendon areas that divide them.

In contrast, I know plenty of competitors in the figure class who do not perform abdominal muscle training with additional weight (or no abdominal muscle training at all) in order to prevent the development of a "wide waist" and do not show any separations in the abdominal muscle area, even with a fairly low body fat percentage. Training your abs with additional resistance - so that your abs fatigue after 6 to 12 repetitions - is the way to increase the thickness of your abdominal muscles and strengthen the divisions between the abdominal muscles. But you also need to do abdominal training the right way. Use this approach when training your abs:

1. Start tensing your abs as hard as you can before you even begin the repetition. Imagine that someone is punching you in the stomach.
2. Initiate the repetition while maintaining this tension. Don't move upwards too quickly. Concentrate on being able to maintain the tension.
3. At the end of the concentric repetition range, try again to tense your abdominal muscles as hard as possible. They should already be tight, but you can probably increase the contraction a little more.
4. Perform the concentric (negative) repetition while trying to maintain maximum muscle tension.

I like to perform an ab exercise with added weight in a superset with an ab exercise without added weight. Do three of these supersets a day. Here are a few suggestions:

OPTION 1:

	Exercise	Sets
A1	Cable crunches sitting facing the machine	3	6-12
A2	Swiss ball crunches	3	6-12

Note: The goal is to make each repetition so heavy that it is impossible to complete more than 12 repetitions.

OPTION 2

	Exercise	Sets
A1	Cable crunches seated facing away from the machine	3	6-12
A2	Hollow body hold (maximum time 30-45 seconds) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQCdzRPE9Ao&t=4s)	3	45 sec.

Note: If you have other ab exercises that you respond well to, feel free to use them.

3 Pulling and pushing the weight sled

When I trained Daryl Gee for the Mr. Olympia, a specialty of his training consisted of daily "eccentric-free" training in the form of various forms of weight sled training.

Remember that the eccentric phase of an exercise is usually the lowering phase of the movement, during which the muscles lengthen and stretch. "Eccentric-free" training eliminates this part. And if you imagine pushing a weight sled, then each step forward against the weight is a concentric repetition. There are no negative repetitions.

I also used regular training with the weight sled with a 63-year-old bodybuilder who was preparing for his comeback. He wanted to start competing again, but his knees were shot. He couldn't do traditional lower body exercises - no squats, no leg presses, no lunges, no leg extensions, etc.

He came to me three times a week and we did different variations of pushing and pulling with a weight sled for his lower body He ended up winning the overall competition against athletes half his age and his legs were the best part of his body! He was then able to resume regular leg training because his knees were back to normal.

Two lessons from this:

1. Training with a weight sled is effective when it comes to increasing mass or strength if you use the right parameters.
2. This type of training can be used very often.

Training with a weight sled is almost completely free of eccentric load. For this reason, the resulting muscle damage is very low. This means that you can recover quickly after this type of training.

Since you cause little muscle damage, for hypertrophy you need to rely on other parameters to stimulate growth. By this I mean muscle fiber exhaustion, lactate accumulation and the release of growth factors. All of these factors are maximized when the time under tension is significant, but not so long that the weight has to be light. Thus, 30 to 45 seconds of work seems to work very well.

If strength is your goal, then you should aim for very heavy sets of 10 to 50 meters, with the ideal distance being 30 meters.

And obviously you can also do weightlifting workouts to improve your fitness. You can go up to 2 minutes per set. I prefer to stay in the 50 to 70 second zone - either with a challenging weight or a challenging speed.

If you are doing regular (or even daily) training with the weight sled, you should do 3 to 4 sets per day of one version. Even if very little muscle damage is caused, you will still use a lot of energy, which means you can release a lot of cortisol if you train too heavy or use too high a volume.

Note: the 63 year old bodybuilder used 2 to 3 variations per workout, but that was all he did during those workouts. If you add weightlifting to your training, choose one variation per session.

4. side raises

Although getting stronger with sets of 5 to 8 reps of basic pressing exercises is the key to great shoulder muscles, there's no doubt that properly executed side raises can help you achieve this faster.

How? By developing the shoulder muscles directly and by improving your capacity to recruit these muscles so that they are better stimulated when you perform heavy presses. When side raises are used to develop a solid mind-muscle connection, they can be performed pretty much every day. Here's why:

First of all, side raises cause very little muscle damage. Muscle damage occurs when you stretch your muscle fibers under load and tension. This happens during the eccentric phase of the movement.

In side raises, only the top quarter of the movement is performed with significant load. Let's say that your arms form a 90 degree angle with your torso in the end position of the movement. Your shoulder muscles are only under significant load when your arms reach an angle of 70 to 75 degrees. Before that, they are not moving against the source of resistance (which is pointing directly downwards). You move your arms more sideways and upwards.

It's the same when you move them down - the shoulder muscles (especially the middle muscle head) will only be under load during the first quarter of the eccentric movement when the muscle is shortened. When the muscle is stretched, there will be almost no tension on the shoulder muscles.

In addition to this, if you perform side raises correctly (no momentum at the bottom of the movement where there is little resistance and you can easily pick up momentum), you will not use much weight, which further reduces the amount of muscle damage.

Also, since the exercise is not particularly neurologically demanding, it will not significantly affect your neurological recovery.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of side raises:

1. Start the movement by trying to push the weight away from your body rather than up. This will put the focus more on the lateral head of the shoulder muscles than the trapezius. Putting tension on the trapezius instead of the shoulders causes frustration for many exercisers.
2. Do not use any momentum during the first half of the movement. From the bottom to slightly higher than two-thirds of the range of motion, the resistance is very low. You could easily perform the first half of the movement with 30 kilos of dumbbells if you can only use 10 kilos over the entire range of motion.
3. As there is very little resistance there, it is very easy to generate acceleration in the lower range. The problem with this is that if you generate enough momentum, you will reduce the muscle contraction work that occurs during the last part of the range of motion. Therefore, perform the first half of the movement in a controlled manner and focus on not accelerating the weight.
4. Hold the weight at the highest point of the movement for two seconds per repetition. This is helpful for two reasons. Firstly, the active range of motion is quite short - the shoulder muscles contract for a maximum of the last 15 to 20 degrees. This is not a lot of time under tension to generate muscle fiber exhaustion and force adaptation. By holding at the highest point of the movement, you increase muscle fiber exhaustion. On the other hand, holding helps to develop the mind-muscle connection.
5. While holding the weight in the highest position, try to push outwards. This will shift even more of the load to the middle head of the shoulder muscle, which is the part we want to develop.
6. Aim for a set duration of at least 40 seconds. Since we are not causing muscle damage, we need to focus on muscle fiber exhaustion and an accumulation of lactate and growth factors to stimulate growth. This requires a little more time under tension. With holding for 2 seconds, this means about 12 repetitions per set. You can easily do 3 to 4 sets of 12 reps per day this way to develop the mind-muscle connection and stimulate muscle growth.
7. Training with bands

Pull Apparts with bands, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnDpmNYUjbc) tricep presses with bands, bicep curls with bands, leg curls with bands and pull-throughs with bands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuKowDpVVXM) are just a few examples of exercises that can be performed daily to improve the mind-muscle connection and allow you to compensate for weak points.

The reason for this? When the muscle is stretched/lengthened, there is no tension. This leads to minimal - or no - muscle damage, which means you'll recover from it quickly.

And there is something about the strength curve of banded exercises that seems to improve the mind-muscle connection and the capacity to contract a muscle. This is a very effective way to compensate for a weak point because it makes you better at contracting that muscle. I made some of my best gains on the bench press by doing daily tricep presses with bands after Louie Simmons recommended it.

When I travel the world giving seminars, I always take bands with me. I don't always have the time or energy for a full training session, but thanks to training with bands I don't have to worry about atrophy.

Training with bands is the only workout where I like to use higher repetitions. In my opinion, 20 to 25 repetitions are more effective than lower repetitions for exercises with bands, which is perhaps also due to the shorter duration under maximum tension per repetition. In terms of the number of sets, 3 to 4 is optimal for a daily workout with bands, although some trainers simply recommend reaching a target number of repetitions for the day.

Growth and frequency

A high frequency of training is key to compensating for weaknesses. And more often than not, problems with getting a muscle to grow are related to your lack of capacity to contract that muscle to its maximum.

But just like any other motor skill, frequency is the key to learning. The more often you work on something, the faster you will improve - provided you have the right recovery. Do you want big forearms, defined abs, round shoulders or a firm gluteus? Then increase the frequency.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/5-things-you-can-train-everyday

By Christian Thubaudeau