What is more useful when it comes to building muscle strength: train more often, but for a shorter time, or only once a week, but for a longer period of time? A new study got to the bottom of this question.
Just recently, a study result gave people with little free time hope. It actually said you could do sports on the weekends can “catch up”..1 It was about the effect on health, more precisely: on mortality. But what about doing sports to strengthen your muscles? Is a one-time workout a week enough? Or is it better to train daily for more muscle strength? A study by Edith Cowan University (Australia) in collaboration with Niigata University and Nishi Kyushu University (Japan) found a clear answer in this regard.
Study with 36 students
For their study, the scientists recruited 36 subjects – 24 men and twelve women. These were students who had no orthopedic arm disease, neuromuscular disease, or chronic disease. In addition, none of them had regular in the six months before the start of their studies Strength training for the arms did.2
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course of the study
The study participants were divided into three groups of twelve people each. All subjects performed eccentric biceps contractions as a workout. Eccentric contraction is when the muscle lengthens. So in this case, if the weight at the bicep exercise, e.g. B. in the form of a dumbbell, down and so the arm is stretched. The men and women completed the exercise on a machine that measured muscle strength during movement.
While the bicep exercise was the same for each group, the researchers assigned each group their own workload for the four-week study. In this way, they were able to compare which training frequency brought the greatest success in terms of muscle strength. The participants in two of the three groups performed a total of 30 contractions in one week. The first group trained five times a week (i.e. daily with the exception of two days) with five contractions each. The second group only trained one day a week and completed all required 30 exercise repetitions on this day. The third group was also only active once a week, but not with 30, but only with six contractions.
Exercising briefly every day increases muscle strength the most
At the end of the four weeks, there was a clear winner in terms of training workload if more muscle strength is the training goal. It was shown that the group that performed six contractions once a week did not show any significant change in muscle size and muscle strength. The group that also trained once a week but did 30 repetitions increased muscle size by 5.8 percent but not muscle strength. Similarly, the muscle size increased in the 6 × 5 group – i.e. in the subjects who trained six times a week with five contractions each. In contrast to the 1×30 group, the participants in this group also did a lot in terms of muscle strength. This increased by ten percent. So the study provides the clear answer: If you want to increase your muscle strength, you should train every day.
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New study supports earlier study
The current study result also confirms the result of an earlier study, which was also carried out by scientists from Edith Cowan University. She was also able to show that the frequency of training is more important than the number of repetitions within a workout for effective muscle training. The study came to the conclusion that just three bicep curls a day, five days a week for a month could surprisingly increase overall muscle strength by 11.5 percent.3 (FITBOOK reported).
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Conclusion
“People think they need to do long strength training sessions in the gym, but that’s not the case,” said Ken Nosaka, sports science professor at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in a press release.4 Instead of sweating for hours on fitness equipment once a week, just a few repetitions of strength exercises are enough to make a difference – provided they are done several times a week, preferably daily.
“In our study, we only have that bicep curl applied, but we believe that the result can also be transferred to other muscles to a certain extent,” Nosaka summarizes the findings of the two ECU studies. “Muscle strength is important for our health. This (the study results; Note d. editor) could help prevent the loss of muscle mass and strength with age. The breakdown of muscle mass leads to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetessome types of cancer, dementia and musculoskeletal disorders such as osteoporosis.”
Sources
- 1. Dos Santos M, Ferraro G, Lee DH et al. (2022). Association of the “Weekend Warrior” and Other Leisure-time Physical Activity Patterns With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality. JAMA International Medicine.
- 2. Yoshida, R., Sato S., Nosaka, K. et al. (2022). Greater effects by performing a small number of eccentric contractions daily than a larger number of them once a week. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
- 3. Sato S, Yoshida R, Murakoshi F, et al. (2022). Effect of daily 3-s maximum voluntary isometric, concentric or eccentric contraction on elbow flexor strength. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
- 4 Edith Cowan University. (2022). Exercise answer: Research shows it’s how often you do it, not how much. EurekAlert! (accessed on August 15, 2022)