Is working out on a muscle one day in a week enough?

Question

So I started working out a week ago and after taking a lot into consideration I started working out on each muscle one day in week.Right now my routine is something like this:

• Saturday = Shoulders
• Sunday = Chest
• Monday = Biceps
• Tuesday = Triceps
• Wednesday = Lats
• Thursday = legs+Abs (Friday is off)

I work in kind of a circuit fashion for 40-60 min each day(until I'm totally exhausted).It's been a week and I can see some results in right ways but What I was wondering is if working on each muscle once a week enough or should i start working on two muscles each day.?

Answer 1

Why do you need 60 minutes to work on 1 body part?

The minimum ammount of work needed for strenght and size are 10 hard sets per week for beginners. If you can do 10 sets at once then its fine but it makes more sense to split it in more days.

Answer 2

A whole day for biceps and another whole day for triceps is not efficient at all, not only speaking about time (You don't need 60 minutes to train your biceps), it's not efficient recovery wise. First of all, your muscles do not need a whole week to recover, so to maximize hypertrophy and strength you should train them atleast twice a week, some smaller muscles like your arms and calves can take even more punishment.

Standard bro split x 2 times a week:

Chest/tricep

Back/Bicep

Legs/shoulder/abs

Push Pull Legs x 2 times a week:

Chest/Shoulders/Tricep

Back/Bicep

Legs/abs

Arnold Split x 2 times a week:

Chest/Back

Shoulder/Arms

legs

Abs everyday

Answer 3

Following your routine, you are working a standard split-training program. This is the training of a single body part/area eg legs, shoulders etc. on a single day, allowing a week for recovery and retraining the body part the week after. This type of program can be very robust and has been the mainstay of resistance training routines for decades.

I would recommend a good book to reassure you, The encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Its a classic yes, but it has a lot of information on basic split training, and then as you progress, it has different routines and advanced training methods. You say you are starting out - so I seriously recommend this resource. Its not about making you like Arnie, but it will give you a solid understanding of the basics and how to progressively change and improve your training.

To pick up on a point, you say:

I work in kind of a circuit fashion for 40-60 min each day(until I'm totally exhausted)

Now, there are different types of exhaustion. Roughly speaking muscle, tendon or cardio exhaustion, and you reach these all by very different mechanisms, and this has an impact on how you train, how you recover, and how you grow. For example - you may be doing very high reps (20's) with a light to moderate weight and having short rest periods. This will lead you towards cardio exhaustion with the weights, but not necessarily muscular exhaustion, or even hypertrophy, which is what you want to be able to hit with your training if you want to grow muscle. This is commonly assumed to be achieved by using 50-75% of your 1RM weight, with 8-12 reps per set.

I'm going to avoid giving more advanced information here as there are too many variables to consider e.g. how often can you train?, what are your ultimate goals?, how do you eat? etc.

That said, I think you can reorganise your training to be more effective. Personally I would do this (also doubling abs work):

1. legs/abs
2. Chest
3. Shoulders
4. Arms/abs
5. Back
6. Compound day/Olympic day/Functional day (your choice)

Comp = big movements, more than one muscle group Olympic = Olympic lifts Functional = Sport specific

Then for the next step, when you are 6 months in and strong - look at doing double split training, i.e. body part trained twice per week:

1. Legs/abs
2. Chest and Arms
3. Back and Shoulders
4. Legs/abs
5. Chest and Arms
6. Back and Shoulders

There are many other techniques that are more advanced, e.g. super-setting, antagonistic training, forced reps etc. etc. but they are all for another day. Seriously, don't run before you can walk or you will get injured and not be able to train at all.

Use Arnie's book as I say. A great place to start for information, and good luck with your training.