Make Gains With Twice A Week Workout Routine

Suggest hitting the weight room two days a week to the average trainer and right away you'll either get strange looks or arguments that its not enough training time to make any real progress towards added size and strength.

But there are times that a two day a week gym routine can be the best thing for you. Lets face it, life constantly gets in the way, and stuff happens, upsetting your plans.

Some years back, due to family tragedies and complicated personal situations, I was faced with having to make some adjustments to my life to be able to train in a way that allowed me to still make progress. I had to think of how to get the most out of the least.

What I settled on was a training split that saw me hitting my upper body on mid-week and the lower on the weekend. I kept up my conditioning with some short, intense daily rope jumping sessions at home, lasting about 15 minutes a piece or some 100 meter sprints.

Training Two Days a Week

There are actually many types of trainers out there that might be suited to this model of training on a long term basis: older trainers, people recovering from chronic overtraining or burnout/adrenal fatigue, or even those pursuing other athletic endeavors.

There are also some theories about some trainers who have an exaggerated inflammatory response to training, requiring more recovery in between training sessions.

Which is not to say that training two days a week should somehow be regarded as "maintenance", as the vast majority of trainees I've given this routine to have made steady progress and have had a lot of extra time to devote to other things, like conditioning, MMA/studying a martial art, playing their sport and so on.

Caveats

Since you only have these two sessions, its common sense that we can't make them into 2-3 hour long workouts with endless exercises.

Compounds are the focus, with just a touch of isolation movements. This is a good time to focus on the basics as well and work on your technique.

Training Parameters

Since we are seriously low on week-to-week frequency, guess what we need to crank up? Volume.

So, a lot of sets and reps of the biggest bang-for-buck movements is the way to go here. What this means is that its a good fit for us to work in functional hypertrophy/hypertrophy ranges.

What works well for the major compounds like bench, squat, deadlift and overhead press, is after 2-3 warmup sets is to hit both ranges:

3 sets of 5 reps with 80-85% of 10RM

3 sets of 10 with 50-60% of your 1RM.

Therefore, 6 working sets in total for those power movements.

For the isolation stuff like curls, triceps extensions, calf raises, etc, use a higher rep range throughout for all sets, increasing the resistance with each set. Try to aim for 3-4 sets each exercise.

Example:

10 reps with 50% of 10RM

10 reps with 70% of 10RM

10 reps with 10RM

10 reps with 50% of 10RM

2 Day a Week Routine

What follows is the exact routine I myself have made good progress at, and I suspect that you too will easily get enough stimulus for growth and strength increases with the volume as laid out.

Upper - Wednesday

Dumbbell or Barbell Bench Press

Seated Dumbbell Press or Overhead Press

One-Arm Dumbbell Rows or Chest-Supported Rows

Seated Dumbbell Curls

E-Z Bar Overhead Tricep Extensions

Lower- Saturday

Squat or Front Squat (alternate them every 6-8 weeks)

Stiff-Leg Deadlift

Lunges or Split Squat or Step-Up

Calf Raises

Hanging Leg Raises

Feeling Banged Up?

There are times when you have issues from head to toe from long periods of pushing personal bests.

One good strategy to give your joints a break is to mix it up with dumbbells and machines. Some of the machines out there have been a godsend to me whenever I've been injured. Some of the best ones are Hammer Strength, Precor (especially their leg machines), and EliteFTS.

This routine is an example of something I'd previously used with the same loading parameters as above.