Regular training two to three times a week is more effective than daily overloading of individual muscles, says a personal trainer in an interview with WELT.
Building muscle requires the interaction of training, nutrition and sufficient sleep.
Progress comes from small, constant increases – not from overtraining.
If you want to build muscle, you don’t have to be in the gym every day. On the contrary: less can be more – as long as it is implemented consistently and in a structured manner. This is what the Hamburg personal trainer and sports scientist Nima Mashagh explains in an interview with WELT.
What is important is not maximum training frequency, but rather consistency. Training five times one week and only once the next is significantly less effective than going reliably twice a week, says Mashagh. Regularity beats activism.
Fitness: Why less is often more
The focus is on setting the right goals. Most amateur athletes wanted to achieve a combination of building muscle and losing fat. This requires more than just weights: training, nutrition and regeneration must work together. Sleep in particular is underestimated, Mashagh explained to WELT.
Anyone who trains six times a week, works a lot, eats well, but only sleeps four to five hours should not be surprised by stagnating results. For visual goals, nutrition is even more important than the training itself.
The training frequency per muscle is also crucial. “If I just train my biceps every day, the muscle doesn’t get bigger.” The muscle does not grow during exercise, but rather during the recovery phase. Without sufficient regeneration, a system that has not yet been fully restored will continue to be put under strain.
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As a rough guide, according to Mashagh: “Each muscle should be trained two to three times a week to improve.” For advanced users, this usually corresponds to ten to 20 sets per muscle group per week. Beginners, on the other hand, need significantly less because their bodies adapt strongly to even minor stimuli.
The keys to building muscle
According to Mashagh, another central principle is the so-called progressive overload – i.e. a continuous, small increase. This can be done with more weight, more repetitions or more controlled execution. It is crucial that an upward spiral remains visible over weeks and months. If this doesn’t happen, a reset could help: a week’s complete break, then a reduced, structured return to work.
Anyone who goes into training constantly exhausted could find themselves in a state of so-called overreaching. Typical signs are persistent fatigue, lack of motivation and the feeling of having to struggle through every session. Muscle soreness is not a reliable indicator. Athletes who have optimally regenerated are more likely to have the feeling of being able to “uproot trees” before training.
Especially when it comes to sleep, Mashagh encounters resistance in his work with around 2,500 training sessions per month. Many are willing to change their training and diet, but do not want to shorten their evening “me time”. He organizes his free time consciously, but prioritizes getting enough sleep.
If you watch series until midnight instead, you risk a worse mood, poorer diet and weaker training performance – a downward spiral. The basic maxim of successful strength training is therefore not “a lot helps a lot”, but rather: structured, regenerated and constantly getting better.
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