I recently watched Scott Herman's "5 Reasons You're NOT Growing | STOP KILLING YOUR GAINS!" video and the 5th reason he discusses how frequently you need to train each muscle group, which had me wondering if my routine is not sufficient. So here's my routine - Monday: Chest, Triceps and Abdominals (Obliques included), Tuesday: Back and Biceps, Wednesday: Legs and Abdominals (Obliques included) Thursday: Shoulders and Chest. Any feedback would be appreciated.

The routine looks OK.. but why are you training chest twice but everything else once? If you're hitting chest twice, why not continue the routine so that legs, back and shoulders get another day of training too. Take a look at my PPL program - that will have youy hitting everything twice a week, and there are fewer exercises but few more sets in order to make sure you still get enough volume. http://muscularstrength.com/Push-Pull-Legs

I agree with Scott. A recent study that I saw on YouTube showed that people who do PPL or PP full body workouts get better muscle growth than people who do traditional muscle splits like you are doing. The study theorized the difference was due both to more frequent training of body parts (twice per week) as well as more gene activation for muscle adaptation for growth. This makes sense to me as the body works and moves as a whole unit not individual parts. Training more muscle groups across your whole body at once creates more of a muscle stimulus than just doing one or two body parts together.

John

I had a similar question after watching the same video. I currently work at a restaurant and during my shifts I'm constantly going back and forth between the kitchen and tables and as a result I'm reluctant to train my legs more than once a week, unlike chest, arms, back and shoulders which I now do twice a week.

If you're active at work, does that make a difference on how you should train at the gym, or am I just looking for excuses?

Ironically, this is why legs are such a hard muscle group to grow outside of the few genetically blessed people. The "work" your legs endure when you are working are not enough of a stimulus for either growth or hypertrophy. Your legs are designed to handle constant use as they support your body and provide mobility. To make your legs grow, you need to hit them hard at least a couple times per week with a combination of both higher reps and medium to heavy weights. Therfore, unless you are constantly squatting and lifting heavy things at work your job will have no impact on how you should train legs.

John

John is right. Walking (even if you are carrying plates etc.) isn't the same as actually training your legs. Would it be working them? Of course, but not to the point of muscle breakdown. It's just going to be a case of pushing through to hit those legs hard. Maybe take a break to sit down after work for a bit so they can recover, even just slightly, before your workout.

Thanks for the reply. Will do legs again later this week (I just did them yesterday).