Is it best to work on the same muscle once or twice per week in order to gain mass?

Question

I'm quite lean with some unwanted fat on my belly and breasts (they are hanging a bit if you know what I mean). I've got quite big arms and legs, but my shoulders are a bit too small and my chest is as I mentioned. I just want to feel comfortable when I take my shirt off.

I currently work on the same muscle group twice per week. For example, I work on my chest, shoulders, and arms for one day; then I rest for 2 days and rotate like this. Some say you should only work on a particular muscle group once per week to grow muscles. I'm quite confused. I don't want to waste time working out the wrong way.

Also, I do 4 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise with the same weight on each set. Should I vary the weights for each set?

Some also said that you must increase the weights and change your routines regularly to manipulate your muscles. Exactly how does one do that? For example, how do I change how I do a bench press exercise? Do I vary the speed or something?

Answer 1

Hey... you do what works for you. Seems obvious but fact is.. what works for me may not work for you.

If you are attending gym twice a week.... then you fit in what you can.

To add mass I work on, for example, biceps once every 6 days. (I have a 5 day rotation plan plus a day of rest). So I do Biceps and shoulders on day 1 of my plan. But for example, I do a lot of exercises.... preacher curls, reverse grip cable curls and then seated dumbell curls.... just for biceps... 4 sets of each exercsie in a session (12, 10, 8, 6 reps incrementally increasing weight to point of failure). For back I do the same number of sets for chin-ups and close grip pulldowns (super set), seated row wide grip, lat pull downs wide grip and bent over rows. The back work also works biceps... so I get a huge workout from this and I stay sore for a while.

To mix up your chest exercises... here is a web site that shows you what you can select from to put into your workout.

http://www.exrx.net/Lists/ExList/ChestWt.html

Answer 2

2x a week is best.

to effective exhaust all of the muscle fiber types you need to alternate your training intensity. to exhaust the fast twitch fibers you need to lift heavy and explosive for the slow twitch you need to exhaust them with high reps. high reps is a rather subjective term to some it's 10-15 reps for me it's 20-50 reps per set. typically i will use 2 compound exercises in the 8-10 rep range for each major body part and supplement that with at least one isolation exercise where I drop the loads down to where I can do high reps to really exhaust the muscle