Transcription
So, I trained pretty hard with a three-day high-intensity foot called naturally intense high-intensity training. And these workouts are blisteringly intense. Even though they only last 10, 15, max 20 minutes, but the workouts are so intense that after a leg day, I can barely walk. And after a back and shoulder or chest and arm day, my upper body is stopped. But as hard as the training might be, it allowed me to go from this to realizing my dream of becoming a successful natural bodybuilding champion and looking like this well into my 50s.
But one very important question that keeps coming up from people out there is, does it make a difference to spread out your workouts? And if so, by how much? Now, it would make complete sense since I'm training so intensely and my class training is so intensely, and you would expect that to get the most out of your training in terms of building muscle mass, recovery, and also performance, that you probably need to have as many days as possible in between those three days. And that sounds like a good idea, but without testing, how can we really know?
And here's the thing, the majority of all the information that you get out there in terms of fitness and bodybuilding or building muscle in general tends to be something called conjecture. It's not AB testing. It's not someone going out there and seeing what happens with this particular group versus another group. And in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly what happens when you have a group of people training three days a week with highly workouts with one group training with no rest whatsoever, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, versus another group that's training with at least one day in between, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Which one do you think is going to have the most in terms of increasing muscle mass and also having the most in terms of performance? Here's the deal. It's most likely not what you're thinking. So stay to the end of the video to find out what the answer is.
So I've been training with highly workers the last between 10, 15, maximum 20 minutes for the past 34 years. And I have trained hundreds, well over a thousand men and women with this particular training protocol. And what I found over the years is that the sweet spot in terms of building muscle, increasing strength, and also increasing overall performance comes from a 3-day split. And here's my training split. Day one is legs. Day two, back and shoulders. And day three is chest, arms, and abdominals. And like I said, this has been the sweet spot that I've used now for the past 34 years. And in this video, I'm going to tell you not what I think is best, but what I've seen to be best practice over the past three decades plus, and it's going to surprise you because it certainly surprised the heck out of me.
So, let's start at the beginning. When I first started naturally intense high-intensity training for myself, I would train three days a week and I would space it out such that I would train on Monday, I would train again on a Wednesday, then I'd train again on Saturday. Now, that's a lot of rest time in between, and I got some absolutely fantastic gains. And when I became a personal trainer and started training clients with this particular protocol, it made sense to me that you have as much time as possible in between your workouts. Given the fact that the amount of stress that your body is going to go through during a high-intensity workout, not only in terms of stress on your muscles, but also stress on your central nervous system as well. And in terms of not even let's say muscle mass increase, but for performance purposes, you probably should have as much time as possible in between your workouts. That was my thinking. And so I would recommend to my clients at all times to make sure they would have at least one to two days in between, which would be ideal.
But the problem is, life isn't ideal. Most of my clients were very busy people, and they simply weren't always able to get a day or two days in between the workouts. So I'd tell my clients to try and do a split with training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. One day in between, not two days, one day in between. And some of them could do that, but the problem is, a lot of them couldn't. A lot of them would only have a certain amount of time to get their workouts in, and they would train sporadically, training on a Monday, a Thursday, a Saturday, or a Sunday. Sometimes lots of time in between, or sometimes they would have to train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And here's the other thing. There was slowly becoming a group of clients who would only be able to train three consecutive days. And I told them that if you're training three consecutive days, you're probably going to be at a disadvantage because, like I said before, muscles get bigger and stronger not while you're training, but while you're resting.
But scheduling is scheduling. Life is life. And these individuals didn't really have much of a choice, but they wanted to do the training. And so again, five recommendations, they were training three days a week, usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And like everyone else, doing legs first, then back and shoulders, then chest and arms. Now, you may think right there that I should put legs in the middle. And the reason why I wouldn't put legs in the middle is because I had what I call sporadic clients. People would just show up and they'd probably only get one or two workouts for the entire week sometimes. And since you get the most out of a leg workout, I would always make sure even if they came in one time, that they would train legs. Now, look for a video on the importance of leg training. That's coming up soon. But getting back from the story, they were training legs day one, like I said, back and shoulders, then chest and arms.
Now, the muscles worked in a back and shoulder workout and a chest and arm workout are some of the same muscles. Your biceps, your shoulders, and your triceps are pretty much worked both times, and you're training them back to back. And so, you would expect, of course, some degree of a decrease in performance. And in terms of overall muscle mass and let's say fat loss as well. And this was more or less for me, a bit of an informal test. One of the first tests I actually had in terms of naturally intense. And back in those days, I took meticulous notes of everything that I do with my training and also with my clients. And so I was able to see in terms of their muscle mass increases, in terms of their body fat changes, and their overall performance. And I was trying to group them in in terms of, all right, this group is training two days in a row, and this other group here, at least one day in between. And to make sure I wasn't falling under the error of small numbers. Because if you have a group of individuals and the number is too small, you can't really extrapolate whether or not what you're seeing is an anomaly based on the individuals or whether something applies to the general population. And so I didn't really put too much into my ratio results, because I wanted to see if it kept on working with a large number of people.
I got to a point of about three years into my training. That point I said, okay, I think I have enough data. Now, again, that's three years of looking at people. Not a couple of weeks, not a couple of months, three years. Because in the real world, as well, we don't know a particular protocol that probably sounds fantastic in a 6-week or 3-month study is something that's going to keep on giving us gains and or the best result over the course of several years. And why you should never look at any short-term study as something necessarily going to work the same way over time. And so I have 3 years worth of data. And again, because my workouts only lasted my clients for 10 minutes, I had a lot of clients. The end number was significant for both people who were training with at least a day in between and those who were training with no time in between as well.
And here is what I found. The client that trained Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or some variation thereof, compared with the standard recommendation of those training with one day of rest in between the workouts, which sounds completely logical, had the same degree of increases in muscle mass, had the same decreases in body fat, had the same increases in overall strength, and most importantly, had exactly the same degree of performance. It makes no sense whatsoever, but that's exactly what I found.
And in keeping with the idea of trying to decide more about my training protocol, I decided I was going to start training three days in a row, chart my progress, and see what happened. And so I went from training, like I said before, on a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Saturday to training Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I did that for a couple of years to see what would happen with the heavy weights and the blistering intensity if I trained those three days in a row. Would there be a decrease in my overall performance and in my gains? And here's initially what I found. I was actually able to get some PRs from training three days in a row. Again, it makes absolutely no sense that there was not some form of a hit in my overall performance. And if you had come to me, like I said before, and asked me what would be the optimal spread for your workouts, I would have certainly not have said that it didn't make a difference.
Because what I found is essentially, as far as spreading out your workouts are concerned, it doesn't make a difference. But I want to find out even more what would happen if I would take the leg day and not have it on the first day, have it in between. Because again, logically, it makes sense. You're training upper body on one day, back and shoulders, and the other day, training chest and arms. Bit of an overlap there. So, it makes sense to have that one day in between. That should somehow or the other make an increase in the overall performance. And so, I did that for myself and for a number of advanced clients to see what would happen. And again, I didn't just get data from doing it for a couple of months. I saw what would happen over the course of a year or two. And what I found was those who were training with legs first, then back and shoulders, then chest and arms, compared to those who are training their back and shoulders first, then legs in the middle to give the body a little rest, and then immediately training afterwards with chest and arms. Again, no difference whatsoever in performance and overall muscle gain. It makes no sense.
And this comes to a very key point of science in itself. I believe it was a science fiction writer Isaac Asimov who said that the most important and intriguing words in science isn't "eureka," the idea of "I found something new." It's more, "That's funny." And that seems to be the case with a lot of things about high-intensity training that I found over the years with a large number of people. There are a lot of things that you would never in a million years think might be a best practice, and the only way you can really find out is by doing a type of AB testing over the course of several years.
And so, that being said, most of the content on this channel is exactly that. See, I believe in the idea of, to whom much is given, much is expected. And having all the data I've had from training so many different forms of training over the past several decades, I feel like it's really important I don't keep it to myself. I try to share as much as possible to help as many people out there who don't have the ability to do these kinds of tests. And unfortunately, on social media and back in the days in the magazines as well, you would have one person who would look at their own experience or what they think should work and extrapolate that into some sort of universal theory, but it's not a theory at all. It's a hypothesis, an untested one. And unless you go out there and really do the testing for yourself, there's no way to know whether something really works or not.
And so I challenge every one of you out there watching this video to always look at your bodybuilding information with a grain of salt. Be skeptical and don't just take anybody's word for it. Go out there and do the test as much as you possibly can. And I hope the information on this video helps a lot of busy people out there who don't have the time to split their workouts up and who probably need to condense everything and train back to back are able to do so. Not thinking there's going to be any sort of a penalty for doing that. It doesn't make a difference. What matters the most, like I said before, is that you always have that six to seven days in between individual workouts.
Now, if you've seen this video and want to learn a little bit more about my high-intensity training protocol, watch this video over here, as it'll give you a little more insight as to what I found as the best practices for making a workout splits as a natural athlete doing high-intensity training. So again, thanks for tuning in. Nor did I believe in you, and as always, excelsior.