I’m reducing my training to 3 days per week. I do upper lower and really don’t like full body workouts. Ideally id like to keep my 2 upper days per week and just smash my legs once a week.
To be clear, I understand this would not maximize leg growth. I’m not concerned about that. I just want to make consistent progress even if it’s slower than hitting them 2+ times per week.
Has anyone here built decent legs on just 1x per week?
Yes
Short popped up in my feed yesterday with Platz talking about how he only trained legs ever other week. Now, he's a bit of an unreliable yapper so take that with a mountain of salt, but it *does* come from the quadfather himself.
He took steroids, and I think he's open about it? I mean, it would be silly if he wasn't. You can take steroids and not work out at all and you'd still build muscle. Do not take advice or make inferences from people who take steroids if you don't take them yourself
It's always a little bit funny to me when bodybuilders who take gear talk about their training: like, how can they know with any degree of confidence that the changes they are making in their training is whats giving them results. How do they know it's not just the increase in their dosages? Or the changes they make it what they're taking? How can they honestly look at themselves and ascertain the sole or approximate cause of what's really making them grow? Take Jordan Peters for example. He's very smug about his training and going balls to the wall - but at the same time he takes an escalating amount of gear that would kill a horse in a week - and just looking at his face and skin you know it isn't exactly healthy for him either (he's in his 30s, mind you)
Sad you got downvoted for this. It's the truth. Your training doesn't really matter that much if you're on gear. Workout programs that come from people on steroids don't apply to natural lifters.
I don't doubt that it took that long to recover from. I've done a lot of high rep squats myself and the DOMS you get from that are crazy.
I've done 100kg x 50 and my quads were sore for 5 days. I can only imagine what it'd be like with 3-4 plates on the bar.
will your hack squat and rdl 5-15 rep max with good form keep going up over time if you do it once a week? most likely until a decently advanced point….
mechanistically would you likely get most of the benefit of frequency doing squat pattern and leg curl one day and hinge and leg extension the other day? likely and it would not imo bloat the warmup time nearly as much as full classic fb 3x frequency
Yeah I’m not concerned about ever really getting “advanced” leg development. I don’t really like the modern X-frame aesthetic compared to the silver era physiques. So as long as I can get to a point where my legs look decent and not obviously out of proportion I’d be happy.
Definitely would consider doing some simpler isolations on one of the upper days, but there’s something I love about a pure upper day. My entire workout is antagonistic super sets, shortish rest times, crazy full upper body pump and I end exhausted. Maybe I could add in some very easy leg isolations at the end but I’d definitely half-ass them lol
Is this the natty version of ‘I don’t want to get too big and bulky’?
Huh? No. I’m not concerned about getting too big. I’m saying I don’t care if I will never reach my genetic potential on leg size because that’s not my goal.
My point is that people work hard for an X-frame aesthetic. You’re not gonna accidentally achieve it, don’t worry about that.
He’s saying he doesn’t want to work hard to get it
What if your doing hack squats on one leg day and the other your doing hinge focused movements like RDL’s hip thrust etc? Will my hack squat be susceptible to progress even if I’m doing them once a week granted I train within my (“5-15” rep max?)?
that’s something you should see for yourslef depenent on a million variables you dont need permission to try
From experience, yes I think so. I can only attest to my split im doing - quad focused leg day and a hammy/glute leg day. With every thing else, this ends up being a 4-5 day split in a week.
This includes me doing a hack squat on the quad focused day. I’ve progressed decently, but I’ve also tried to really lift to failure with legs, which has always been a challenge for me. And making sure you’re training to 6-10 reps
I did this because A) I have smaller legs, and B) less taxing/more targeting that I could put more effort and energy into lifts later into the workout
Yes. My coach had me do this and I was shocked with how much I continue to make gains just training them once a week with relatively low volume.
If your intensity is high one day a week is plenty for legs.
What does it tell you that plenty of guys on drugs with massive legs still make a conscious choice to only train them once a week? I guarantee you aren't recovering faster than they are natty...
I don't think I'd survive leg day if I had to slam more volume or movement patterns in.
Many of those enhanced lighters do high volume. You can always tweak variables like volume, RIR and rep ranges before sacrificing frequency, especially since frequency is more important for naturals, due to the lack of external stimulus to keep muscles growing instead of atrophying after the response to the workout's stimulus.
Unless you are in a hospital bed, your legs don't lack "external stimulus" the rest of the week until your next workout. You use them every day to exist
If that stimulus were relevant for the maintenance of your gains, you'd be able to quit the gym without losing muscle mass, which is evidently false.
You could also make a biweekly schedule doing ULU week 1 and LUL week 2. But this way you'd drop to 1.5 times upper a week on average, instead of the 2 you'd like.
This is a good idea. Frequency is every 4-5 days hitting a body part. Otherwise training legs once a week is fine. I just wouldn’t want to at my age of 43. Don’t feel like being sore for days with kids.
FWIW I came in here to say this. ^
My favorite split of all time.
I won 10 natural bodybuilding shows (3 were Mr Australia) from only training each muscle once per week). Short sessions (under 45 mins) are key, as are high carb shakes immediately after.
Plenty of people have built good legs on a bro split, training them once a week. Even if it’s not ‘optimal’ it’s certainly enough to make progress.
Don’t have progress photos from that period but anecdotally I took my squat from 200kg-235kg (440lbs to 520lbs) training quads once per week (did some posterior chain work with deadlifts another day), some of that was technique/neurological adaptations but I certainly grew my legs in that time.
Yes this is fine, a bro split is only 1x frequency and many people have made great progress running it
If you don’t care a ton about your legs but would still like to make progress over a bit longer time than this is completely fine
Bro split bratha! Once a week is fine. It’s what I do since switching from powerlifting to a physique focused program with more volume.
I train them once a week and I take every set to failure for the most part except bb squats. Intensity if the name of the game and muscle doesn’t break down and go away as quickly as people think.
Yes
Yes - go hard with intensity
I've put on good size to my quads training legs roughly every 10 days
yea it's perfectly fine, only reason i split mine into two days is because of doms if not i'd have it done in one day as well.
You can, it’ll just take more time. I built decent legs on a bro split training them once a week, but I can say with 100% confidence that if I’d trained them twice a week, they’d be at least 25% bigger right now
Yep !
Yes. I train legs once a week.. But...it's not a "typical " workout . Squats are 100 reps. Usually 10x10. Along with some isolation also. Then stairs after.
Yes
I would just add light work on a second day, even a home workout.
Just body weight squats and Bulgarian are more than enough. Add a few one leg deadlifts.
Legs respond very well to twice a week volume. There’s more muscle than chest and back combined, so good for overall conditioning.
Absolutely, training legs once a week can absolutely work if you're hitting the right intensity and volume. Many lifters find that focusing on heavy compound movements with proper form leads to solid leg development, even with lower frequency. As long as you're pushing your limits and allowing for recovery, you can definitely build respectable legs.
Yeah. For legs, focus on high load with moderate volume. Once a week is fine, it's not like you're hitting shoulders.
Calves are half your legs, they're easy to work and they recover quickly.
Working legs in general will increase full body gains, from what I can tell. So maybe another question would be: If I workout legs twice a week, will my upper body strength increase more than if I only did legs once?
I'm going to try. I'm running 4-5x per week right now and my thought process is that 1x full quality lower day is better than spreading it across 2x days with one day compromised... We'll see what happens after a couple blocks.
At 4-5 days a week, you’re either not hitting them very hard at all, or you’re way overtraining. And I highly doubt you’re overtraining that much.
You want to tear down the muscles. If you’re not making noises when you go to sit down and up after a workout, you didn’t work out hard enough.
Without a doubt. I train legs with high intensity and they need 5 to 6 days to fully recover
Tom Plarz certainly did. Once every 2 weeks.
No. Absolutely not.
Train harder then bro.