I was wondering if anyone is doing PPL x4 a week, and want to know is it better than twice a week, gain vs risk of injuries, how they feel throughout the day etc.
I've been doing PPL for a while, and I like it a lot. I usually do:
@primsroses I personally can't do legs 2 days in a row, as it takes the most out of me and usually struggle the next day. I usually do legs HARD once a week and maybe mix in some light stuff later in the week just to burn some calories.
To answer your question more directly, I'd agree with the previous comments. Seems like the increased chance of injury wouldn't be worth the benefits (if any). Adding in some volume in the form of free weights, especially the "Big 4", to your 2/week routine would probably be more beneficial in my opinion.
@primsroses Sorry I haven't personally done it, but it seems unnecessary. I feel like you wouldn't be giving your muscles enough time to recover which would result in overtraining. When you give your muscles time to heal, you are giving them time to grow. Even if you aren't sore, your muscle fibers are being broken down during a lift. They need time to repair themselves.
@primsroses Cut all your volume in half per workout and you should be fine doing this. Will you make more gains? Probably not. Will you use up a lot more of your free time. Yes.
If you do not drop your volume and just try to do twice as much, you will most likely make less gains, and then hurt yourself.
@primsroses While machines are useful at times, if I were you I’d probably focus on PPL 2x / week and have heavy barbell/dumbbell compound exercises as the primary focus. You also give more rest time to Pull by nature of your (legible to me) timetable. It potentially could work, but you’d have to divvy out the volume accordingly. Better to focus on the basic compound movements first I’d of thought though instead of all machine work.
@primsroses I've been trying to do a PPL the same for a few months now. While I enjoy the compound workouts and the muscles it attacks in each session, I can't help but get worn out after about 2 weeks.
Could just be me personally, but even trying to mix up the workouts I do between the two different days a week didn't help. It's really a killer on your body. I think I'm just gonna go back to a brosplit and focus on compound lifts that overlap relatively well.
That seems to be the only thing that makes sense if you wanna work out that much but not destroy yourself
@primsroses Why? What is the point of doing this? Unless you can only workout a few minutes here and a few minutes there, I don't see a reason to do this. Are you really doing that much volume that warrants 12 workout sessions? I doubt that's the case.
If you want to work out more increase your workload slowly to avoid injuries. Count how many sets you are doing per week per body part and each month add 2 additional sets. As the total number of sets increase you can add more sessions throughout the week. But it will come a time where more sets will be counter productive.
@primsroses If you have that much time then why not try an advanced Arnold Split? Chest/Back/Legs then all of arms, then repeat for 6 days. Will allow better muscle recovery than what you listed.
