My fitness magazine says that working a muscle two times per week is the best way to make gains — should I ditch my current routine?

1. Force the muscle to contract
2. Give the muscle a little more work each time

Now, if that were going to be published in a magazine, it would get pretty boring, no? So magazines must take these fundamentals and then hype them. You'll read a previous issue that says you can train the muscle only once per week. You'll find another issue that hypes 3 times per week.

Here's the catch ... the body is fairly adaptive. If you are doing the same routine ad naseum, then changing it is bound to provoke a response, whether in strength gains, soreness, or actual muscle mass.

So what happens is people read the magazine, think they are training great, see some new technique and try it out and find they get results. Suddenly this is “the way” to train and they tell everyone about the “key” to success. Of course, after a few months, the gains start to slow, they try a new routine, and then the cycle starts all over again.

There is no optimal frequency to train muscles. The reason why studies vary so much is because they simply compute an average response due to the study. Some groups will respond one way, others a different way. When you first start training, you can see a response with as many as 3 - 4 times working the same muscle each week! After you've been training for years, you might work the same muscle every 10 days.

There is no "simple" answer. The magazines have to package a "lowest common denominator" article so they can appease the masses. If you want average results, go with the status quo "average" that is copying the articles from those magazines. You want unique, distinct results, keep a detailed journal, experiment with a variety of methods and find what works the best for you!