Can high-frequency training quickly add inches to your chest, back and arms? Our fitness editor thinks so

If you’ve hit the gym hard and heavy but don’t feel like you’re building the superhero physique you’re aiming for, despite your best efforts, it might seem unlikely that just an extra five or 10 minutes a day will completely transform the look of your chest, back and arms. But since we’re only suggesting five to 10 minutes, our fitness editor asks: What have you got to lose?

Heavy Lifting vs. Lifting often

I’m a big fan of lifting big heavy fans. I’ve competed in strongman contests, worked up to a triple deadlift, and regularly pick up hundreds of kilograms for a walk in the form of various different carries. I’m also a firm believer in progressive overload, the hard-and-fast rule that says that in order to build bigger muscles, we have to work those muscles harder and harder, and usually, that means bigger, heavier weights.

But long, hard sessions of heavy lifting take a toll on your body, meaning days of recovery are needed before you can hit those body parts again. That’s not necessarily ideal, especially with new research suggesting that training each body part more often is optimal for adding size to your frame.

High frequency training

When it comes to rapidly adding mass to particular muscle groups, especially in the upper body, I am a firm believer in a high-frequency approach. This is where we hit the targeted muscles with a huge amount of volume (sets and reps), but instead of concentrating that volume into one giant, heroic workout that leaves us sore for the next few days, we spread it out over the entire week.

But if we want to do that, we have to be smart. As I mentioned above, the heavy iron sling requires an even heavier retrieve. So hitting that chest with a heavy bench press day after day is a recipe for slow gains at best and injuries at worst. Add to that, we only have limited hours a week if we’re already trashing our heavy lifts, accessories, conditioning and cardio, do we really have the time to spend in the gym, focusing on dozens of extra reps daily to pump up our chest and back?

No, what we need is a handful of movements that we can do daily, that won’t break us in half with heavy weights, and that we can do quickly, almost anywhere.

What we need are push-ups, pull-ups and their extended family of bodyweight movements.

What movements should I do every day to get bigger chest, back and arms?

Pull-ups, bodyweight rows, push-ups and dips are ideal for adding extra muscle-building volume to your pre-existing training regimen. And not only because their inherent lower resistance allows you to recover faster, but because they’re also easier to perform outside of your regular gym sessions. Plus, they require far less warm-up than equivalent balance wheel movements, meaning you can get stuck before going out again.

Adding a simple doorway pull-up bar or parallel bars may only set you back a few pounds, but could potentially add inches to your torso. The first time I experienced this type of high-frequency training, I was living from paycheck to paycheck in a top-floor apartment, unable to afford a gym membership. I removed the loft hatch to perform my pull-ups on a ceiling beam and, in disbelief, procured a cheap Zimmer hoop from a charity shop to perform my dips.

When choosing the movements you will perform each day, it’s important that you are realistic about what you can actually recover from. With this type of high-frequency training, we want to avoid movements that feel “heavy” from the first repetition. For example, if you could only do 5 pull-ups with a gun pointed at you, then endless sets of daily pull-ups probably aren’t the answer. However, band-assisted pull-ups may be. If, on the other hand, pushups are a little too easy and you’d need to perform long sets of 30-40 reps to get any benefit, then resistance band pushups may be the solution.

A good rule of thumb is that we want to use movements where we could reach 10 or 20 reps, then do sets of about half that. I am personally a fan of dips and chin-ups as they also hit biceps and triceps quite effectively. But you need to experiment and find the exercises that get you pumped enough after consecutive low-rep sets that won’t leave you too sore to train the next day. Or, even worse, they start leading to joint pain and discomfort.

Longevity is the father of consistency and consistency is king here.

Frequency Training: How Many Reps and Sets Should I Do Each Day?

Once you’ve figured out the moves that are best for your body, the next thing to do is keep exploring until you find a sweet spot or “minimum effective dose” that will allow you to hit a decent amount of daily repetitions without wasting the rest of your training sessions and leaving you sore for days. While studies on the “optimal” amount of sets to perform each week for muscle growth are often conflicting, somewhere around the “20-30 sets per body part” range appears to be the Goldilocks zone. Divided each day, do somewhere between 3-5 sets of each movement each day. It’s not the largest investment in the world for a potentially substantial return.

In the beginning, try to only get each set to about 50-75% of what you think you can do it all. For example: If you can do 20 dives, work in sets of 10-15 max. Got 15 pull-ups in your locker? Work in the 5-8 rep range. The first few sets may seem easy, maybe even ineffective, but keep rest to a minimum and the difficulty will creep in. Also, remember that your goal here is to rack up a lot of work over the week, not crash into the ground in the first five minutes.

One of my favorite protocols is simply doing 5 pull-ups and 10 push-ups every minute, for five minutes every morning. Whenever I spend just a few weeks on this regimen, I am always amazed at how quickly visible changes occur.

If that’s too challenging, try using resistance bands to help you with pull-ups, and employ regular or close-grip pushups instead. The key here is consistency. In just one week, you’ll have racked up around 500+ reps of chest and back in exchange for just five minutes a day.

How long should I do frequency training?

Einstein famously quipped that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But when it comes to building muscle, doing the exact same thing over and over will eventually lead to no result.

As I mentioned earlier, “progressive overload” is the inevitable key to gaining muscle mass. So while this type of training will very quickly overload your muscles and lead to growth, doing the same thing day after day will quickly lead to stagnation. Sure, you can add a few additional reps to each set or wear a weighted vest for a few sessions throughout the week, and I recommend you do. But eventually, you’ll reach a point where you either don’t have time to do the ever-increasing work, or you simply can’t recover from it. The law of diminishing returns eventually gets us all.

I would recommend using an approach like this for 4-6 weeks or until you notice a plateau in your gains (or any nagging joint pain). At that point, your best bet is to take a week off, significantly lowering the volume so your body can recover from the barrage of pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and chin-ups you just put it through and come back bigger and stronger than ever.

Is there anything else I should think about to maximize my earnings?

While this kind of high-frequency approach works well on its own, and it certainly did for this author, the real magic is in using it as a concentrated period of “extracurricular” work. If you can continue your regular lifting sessions at the gym along with this approach and still recover adequately, then you have a ticket to get on the gain train.

However, to avoid overuse injuries, you should reduce or even eliminate any movements from your gym regimen that are too similar. If you’re already doing 200 reps of dips each week in your backyard, sets of heavy dips in the gym are probably not necessary or even recommended. Listen to Your Body If certain movements in the weight room are interfering with your daily push-up and pull-up ritual, consider eliminating them.

Remember, this is just a short phase. Your love affair with heavy bicep curls isn’t over, it’s just a break.

To build muscle optimally, no matter what style of training you’re performing, you need to focus on getting adequate rest and fueling your body flawlessly. This becomes doubly true when you only have 24 hours between sessions, even if they’re only five or ten minutes long. So, be sure to move the big rocks of muscle-building recovery:

• Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night.
• Aim for 1.5-2g of protein per kg of body weight.
• Consume adequate calories to fuel your exercise sessions. 30-40 calories per KG of body weight is a good goal, at a minimum.

So what do you think? Got ten minutes to spare to build the best body of your life?