High-Frequency Training Concepts and Strategies

An Essay on HFT Ideas for Achieving Your Physique Goals

     In my recent article High-Volume, High-Frequency Workouts for Quick Mass Gains, I outlined a training routine that uses high volume as the primary training variable with high frequency the 2nd.  For anyone who likes to train with a lot of volume and particularly loves getting a “pump” while training, I would suggest giving that regimen a chance, especially if you’re new to training with both high volume and frequency and aren’t quite sure where to even start with high-frequency training (HFT).  In this essay, however, I want to present some different ideas for other ways that you might utilize HFT, notably if you like the idea of experimenting with new and/or different training strategies that you haven’t utilized before.  If you’re new to training, you probably need to get on a more detailed, regimented program, one where you don’t have to put a whole lot of thought into your workouts but just show up at the gym, do the program as outlined, and not think about it.  However, if you are a little more advanced—at least at the “intermediate” stage of training—and know your body well enough, what follows should be of interest.  Even if you are a beginner—if you have yet to build any appreciable muscle or strength (whatever your goals might be) but have been training for several years, you’re still a “beginner”; sorry, but there are a lot of those guys walking around in gyms these days, unfortunately—I would still encourage reading this so that you can see what might be in store for you down the lifting road.

     If this is your first time reading one of my articles or essays, then pay attention to this paragraph.  Long-time readers can skip ahead to the next one.  There are 3 training variables and they are: frequency, volume, and intensity.  “Intensity” here is defined as a percentage of your one-rep maximum.  Basically, the heavier the weight, the higher the intensity.  This is the opposite of the way that it’s typically defined in American gyms, as how “hard” you train.  In order to achieve your goals in training, whatever those goals may be, you must properly manipulate these variables.  Generally, 2 of the variables should be high (or one high and the other moderate) and the remaining variable should be low.  The only other option is if all of the variables are “moderate.”  A training program won’t work—or won’t work over the long haul—if all of the variables are high or if all are low (or if 2 are low and the remaining variable is high).  However, even a “good” program that properly manipulates the variables may not work for you, if your body doesn’t respond well to that specific “mode” of training.  For example, the most common form of training seen in today’s gyms are ones that use high volume, high intensity, and low frequency.  Any workout routine where you train on a multi-bodypart split with a lot of sets and heavy weights (“heavy” for the individual) but infrequent training (working each muscle group once every 5 to 7 days) fits this mold.  I bet if you walk into any gym anywhere in America then at least 90% of the trainees workout in such a manner.  (I was discussing this subject with my son Matthew, who trains regularly at a commercial gym, and he pointed out that the percentage is probably even higher.)  A majority of the big, strong, or well-developed lifters in gyms are simply the ones that respond well to that mode of training.

     Many lifters—perhaps the majority—who don’t respond well to the high-volume, high-intensity, but low-frequency approach think that they are “hardgainers” because that kind of training doesn’t work for them.  Unfortunately, they just haven’t been exposed to other training systems.  I think this same majority would no longer be “hardgainers” if they attempted some of the various HFT programs that I often recommend.  So, let’s start by some ways to train that put frequency first among the training variables within a program.

The More Frequently You Can Train, All the Better

     Notice that I did not write that the more frequently you train, all the better.  Doing nothing other than increasing the amount of workouts for each muscle group every week is not the answer.  This is, unfortunately, exactly what a lot of lifters have done throughout the decades and it’s the reason that I surmise HFT gets a “bad rap.”  Now, there could be some cases where simply increasing the training does produce results.  Let’s say you’ve been training with a “H.I.T” style program and have only been training each muscle group once per week.  That doesn’t work, so you decide to keep your workouts the same but increase the frequency to twice per week.  That just might be a good idea.  But it also might not, because the training itself might not be what you need to produce hypertrophy gains.

     Always keep in mind the words of the Russian strength coach Vladimir Zatsiorsky who said that the key to results is to (paraphrasing his words) “train as heavy as possible and as often as possible, while remaining as fresh as possible.”  It’s that last part in regards to “fresh” where lifters derail their HFT attempts.

     To make HFT work, I would advise you that you train, at the very least, each muscle group 3 days per week.  That’s correct.  Three days is the minimum number of workouts weekly for a muscle group or a lift if you’re more concerned with strength.

Daily Training

     One of the best ways to take up HFT, I believe, is to pick a few exercises—no more than 5, perhaps just 2 or 3—and train them almost daily.  6 days might be best for a lot of trainees.  Perhaps 5 would be better for others.

     If you’re after strength first, then you can go the “easy strength” route.  I’ve written about this method of training before, and have numerous prior articles covering it on the blog.  If you are unfamiliar with it, however, here are the basic “tenets” of easy strength training:

1. Train with full-body workouts using a limited number of basic barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell lifts such as squats, bench presses, overhead presses, chins, dips, curls, cleans, snatches, or deadlifts.

2. Lift 5 to 6 days per week.

3. On average, keep your reps per set in the 1-5 range.  Doubles and triples are probably the perfect “sweet spot.”  Occasionally, you can do higher rep sets in the 8-10 range but only for 1 set.

4. You should also average around 10 reps per lift per workout.  Pavel, in his and Dan John’s book Easy Strength, recommends these set/rep combos: 5x2; 2x5; 3x5,3,2; 3x3; 3x3,4,3; 3x4,2,4; 4x1,2,3,4; 4x4,3,2,1; 5x1,2,3,2,1.  When training with only singles, drop your total reps down to 6.

5. Train between 80% to 95% of your one-rep max.  Always leave a couple reps “in the tank.”

6. Go for a PR on either singles or reps on days when you feel particularly strong but don’t go “all-out.”  Instead, go for a “near max.”

7. Vary the intensity throughout a training cycle.  Here is Dan John’s recommendation for varying your training loads over the course of several sessions: 3x3 (heavy), 5x2 (heavier), 2x5 (light to moderate), 6x1 (working up to a “near max”), 1x10 (very light for “tonic” recovery set), 3x5,3,2 (moderate).

     I have other articles on the blog—do a search for “easy strength” and you can find quite a few—that outline workout routines in detail for applying the above “rules,” but there’s also something almost joyful about just taking the rules and playing with different workout routines.  Those 7 tenets, believe it or not, can be used for your training over the next year or two, and you really wouldn’t need anything else.  No additional information.  No pre-programmed routines.  Just you, the barbell, and the joy of discovery that awaits you in the gym if you have a “lifting as adventure” spirit.  Which, I think, in the end, is one of the best ways to approach your lifting, anyway.  It’s what makes lifting so different from so many other forms of “exercise” or just “working out” in general.

Muscle Growth the “Easy Muscle” Way

     Almost two decades ago, I discovered the benefits, and potential for muscle growth, that comes with minimalistic, high-repetition, at-home training.  In 2009, I separated from my wife of almost 13 years.  In our garage, which I no longer had access to at the time, I had a complete home gym, just as I do now, replete with a power rack, a Forza bench press, a lifting platform, some York 1,000 pound capacity barbells, plenty of dumbbells, a sandbag, a chinning/dipping station, a sled, almost 1,500 pounds of free weights, a couple of multi-angle benches, and a few other assorted implements and oddities.  I moved in temporarily with my parents (who owned a house that they were going to turn into a Bed & Breakfast) and only took with me a few dumbbells, a pair of “Fat Gripz” and a chinning bar.  I feared losing muscle.  Instead, I gained muscle, doing little other than push-ups, dumbbell curls, chins, bodyweight squats, and some thick-bar work with 80-pound dumbbells.  I trained daily, and primarily just did push-ups, the dumbbell curls, and some thick-bar rows, farmer walks, and deadlifts with the Fat Gripz wrapped around the 80s.  It was almost freeing in a way.  I didn’t think a whole lot about my training and just did something every day, or almost each day.

     Now, to do what I did, you do have to be fairly in tune with your body.  You need to have enough training experience that you can “auto regulate” based on how you feel each day, and know when to push it and when to back off.  If you’re not capable of such intuitive training, you need something a bit more regimented.  I think you have two options with how to approach this.

     The first is to take the “everything moderate” route.  Do the same workout every day that you train, and make it one that’s not too high in volume or too low—it’s the “Goldilocks” approach.  You want everything to be in the middle.  “Just right.”  Let’s say that you only do push-ups and chins for your upper body, and are capable of 20 push-ups and 5 chins on each movement where you reach failure at those numbers.  In this case, you might decide to do 60 push-ups and 15 chins daily.  Do sets of 10 reps on the push-ups, or something around that number, and sets of 2 reps on the chins.  Do however many sets you need to until you reach your daily number.  If a set ever approaches “hard,” reduce the number of reps on the next set.  Train 6 days per week, and once the sets start to become easy at your sessions, increase the number of daily reps.  By the 3rd week, you might be doing 80 push-ups daily and 20 chins.  A few more weeks after that, it could be 100 push-ups and 25 chins.  Just keep pushing up the numbers until you feel like switching over to some new exercises.

     You don’t have to do push-ups and chins.  I just chose those because they are something almost everyone can do at home without going to the gym.  You can also train with several more movements at the gym.  You might select bench presses, barbell curls, and squats, for example.

     The 2nd approach is to cycle your workloads.  If we take our trainee who can do 20 push-ups and 5 chins until failure, for instance, he might do a “hard” session of 200 push-ups and 50 chins on Monday, then do only 40 push-ups and 10 chins on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Thursday, he does 100 push-ups and 25 chins.  Friday, he does his lowest workload by just doing 20 push-ups and 5 chins again.  Then, on Saturday, he returns to another hard session of 200 and 50.  Notice that this follows a wave approach of oscillating between hard, easy, and medium sessions.  If you go this route, do between 1 and 2 hard workouts, 1 or 2 medium sessions, and make the remainder of them easy.  This does require that you understand your body at least somewhat, but as long as you cycle workloads in such a manner, or something similar, you’ll get good results.  (For more on how to use this with free weights and heavy training—such as how a powerlifter might train—then read my 2-part series on “High-Frequency Grease-the-Groove Training.”)

Multiple Movements, More Free Weights

     I’m typically a fan of minimal movements combined with multiple sets, particularly for low reps when it comes to building a combination of strength and hypertrophy.  However, if you want to use HFT for building muscle mass solely, or at least primarily, then I don’t think you can go wrong with a routine that uses between 8 and 12 exercises for only 1 or 2 sets each (possibly 3 for short periods of time) and 6 days a week of training.  This is exactly the kind of program that the legendary Vince Gironda utilized when he needed to whip someone in shape fast.  Hollywood, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, went to Gironda if they needed an actor to get in quick physical condition for a role, and this is the sort of program that he put them on.

     Here’s an example of what Gironda used:

1. Dumbbell incline bench presses: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

2. Wide-grip chins (or lat pulldowns): 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

3. Behind-the-neck presses: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

4. Triceps pushdowns: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

5. Barbell curls: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

6. High-bar, Olympic-style squats: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

7. Stiff-legged deadlifts: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

8. Calf raises: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

9. Ab exercise of your choice: 1-3 sets of 10-12 reps

     For the first week, do each exercise for 1 set of 10-12 reps.  The 2nd week, 2 sets for 10-12 reps.  The 3rd week, 3 sets for 10-12 reps.  In the 4th week, go back to just 1 set of 10-12 reps.  If you want to continue after the 4th week, then repeat the 4-week training block, but add weight to each exercise, or switch over to some different exercises.  If you choose the latter route, just remember to think same but different when selecting new movements.

The Sum of Things

     I probably could have gone on and on and on here about various other strategies for HFT.  I’ll save some of my other thoughts for future essays.  In the meantime, if you’ve never given HFT a serious go before, then consider trying some of my suggestions here, or look through the blog for various programs if you are in need of something more concrete (or just looking for something different outside of what I’ve discussed).  You should really consider trying HFT if you’ve used some of the more conventional, low-frequency programs and didn’t get much results out of them.  Is HFT the best method for the natural bodybuilder in search of quick muscle gains?  The only way to really know is to try it for yourself and see.  Seeing is believing, as the saying goes.