@itsjoseph Sure, to each their own. I do exactly what you suggest in my Shoulder day anyways, always progressing the total volume for that movement. Otherwise, I find that the extra 4days x ~3sets = 12 sets of Lateral variations throughout the week is nice, fun, probably helpful, certainly not harmful, and not a huge time investment anyways. Maybe people are overestimating what this means.
Another thing to consider, look at gymnasts. They don't get an "off day" for their biceps (always doing Pull up type motions, rings, hangs, etc) and look at their biceps - they put most of us to shame! And they don't even care about that muscle per se.
@patdude832 I don’t think anyone is overestimating what you mean. You asked for our opinion. Doing an exercise 5 days a week is not a good idea in my opinion. Post a pic of your physique and we can tell you if it’s an actual weak point.
@jmercer I've experimented with both 3 and 5 times a week, quite similar results. Better than once or twice. I'm still adding a rep every week or every other week on my lifts, which is solid. Usually test for an AMRAP at the beginning of the week.
Relative weight jumps are pretty huge for any lateral exercise (e.g. dumbbells going up 5lbs, cable stacks, etc) so my double progression tends to be between 8 to 20 reps. I'll hit the 20 before upping the weight and restarting the reps progression.
Note - I wouldn't recommend higher than 3x frequency on anything else. But for small side delts, it's fine, and imo better.
Just bro science myths. There's no data to suggest they recover faster. The recovery is mostly down to fibre type, not size.
Once a week isn't optimal but just spamming it every other day isn't optimal either. Hitting it 2x a week with enough volume and proper recovery just like any muscle is going to be the sweet spot.
If we could just spam movements to bring up lagging muscles everyone would be doing it, but this does not work.
@helen2002 My statement was meant to be more of an individual data point than an absolute declaration. But it seems to be a trend that many find it recovers quick enough to be hit quite frequently (another similar example may be calves). Maybe most people on average have more slow twitch in that muscle than, say, hamstrings or chest.
I've seen some pro (enhanced) BBers doing it 2x a week, once on shoulder day, once on chest day or something similar. Though most of them do it 1x a week and blow up due to gear, so who really cares what they're doing..
@helen2002 Honestly I did 6x a week for a period of time and it started blowing up. But then all the time and effort it took started cutting into other things, so this is me scaling it down lol.
In general I agree with most science-based training principles, but I really think some (smaller) muscles can do with a lot more frequency, if one is really obsessed/cares about it.
@patdude832 hypertrophy = stimulus - whatever your muscle is adapted to. if you're just doing some random volume at the end of every workout, you'll get some stimulus but likely it won't be much more than what your muscle is adapted to. then, every day your side delts are adapting so the stimulus required to get more hypertrophy will be greater and greater - but you're not actively increasing it.
my guess is that this kind of setup will work for a few weeks (and how much muscle can you really even build in a couple weeks) and then you'd just be wasting time. to make it work you'd probably have to be more intentional with the daily volume being progressive to stay ahead of the adaptation, but that's very hard to do in practice after a while. also, i'd guess your shoulder day would be less effective since all week you're adapting to shoulder work, and unless your shoulder day's progression from the previous session is quite large - it likely would've created more hypertrophy if you didn't do that additional work.
@patdude832 The only thing I'd probably mention is that at the end of a workout you're not going to be putting in a lot of effort because you've already fatigued yourself so much. If you want to prioritize it you should move it up in your work order to like the 2nd or 3rd exercise. If you do that you will probably only need to do it like 2 or 3 days a week depending on how often you go overall.
@patdude832 Muscle grows when you rest - hence why sleep is so important. I'm sure people have done documented training-a-muscle-group-every-day style training and the results were sub-optimal. Personally, if I were trying to bring up a muscle group I'd go every other day, assuming recovery is on point. But that's just me. YMMV. If you try every other day and if you can get an extra hour's sleep a night, I bet you'd see fantastic gains in your shoulders.
@patdude832 Try it and see how it works for you. I don't think anyone is going to be able to philosophize there's way into knowing how your body will respond as an experienced lifter.
@patdude832 I used to do them a lot, 3-4x a week, they barely get sore. But if you do them with cables, I think you need less volume, especially if you do the Egyptian lateral raise variation.
Once you think they are aesthetically pleasing, then tone down volume. Get 2nd opinion on how they look though..
