Q: What do you think of working just one body part per day?

A: If you are able to get to the gym every day and if you are able to generate the intensity required to fully stimulate a body part each and every work out, then once per day training is a viable option. We all know that muscle growth doesn’t happen on the gym floor. It happens afterwards and is dependent on FULL recovery and muscle building nutrition. The body’s response to what you’ve done to it on the gym floor is to add muscle to meet the demands of the next torture session you seem intent on inflicting upon it. But it needs time to do this. Does the conventional formula that advocates hitting a muscle two or three times per week allow sufficient time for recovery? Maybe – if you’re hitting the juice. But, there is absolutely no way that a natural bodybuilder can work with maximum intensity every workout (let alone come anywhere near recuperating) on such a routine. So, ramping up the intensity and hitting each body part just once a week seems like the answer. Some training systems (such as those advocated by the late Mike Mentzer and Power Factor System creator Pete Sisco) actually advocate much less frequent work-outs than once per week. Experience seems to suggest, however, that hitting a muscle once every seven days with maximum effort is the best way to go. Train your major body parts on the first three days and your minor ones on the following days. Your weekly workout schedule, then, will look something like this:

As you can see there’s no day off here. Keep in mind, though, that your work-outs are going to be relatively short. If you are working at full intensity, you don’t want to be working out for much more than 20-30 minutes per body part. You may actually be able to do a couple of days at home if you have a minimal amount of home equipment. How about doing the biceps and deltoid workout at home to give you a break from the gym environment a couple of days per week?

One of the great things about training each body part on it’s own exclusive day, is that you are able to really get your mind involved in working that body part. What usually happens when you’re doing, say, chest and triceps and you’ve already expended yourself on the bench press, the incline dumbbell press, dips and flyes during your chest workout? By the time triceps roll around, you’re either ready to flag it altogether, or prepared to cruise with minimum effort. This is going to happen no matter how focused you are. Training each body part on it’s own day overcomes this problem and allows you to zoom in on the working muscle with laser like focus - ensuring that you are placing a greater demand on that bodypart than you did in the last workout.