Should You Lift Six Times a Week for Maximal Muscle Gain?

To maximize your muscle gain, you must participate in frequent, high-volume weight-training workouts. High-volume training means that you perform a relatively higher number of exercises, sets and repetitions. The key is to exhaust and overload your muscle fibers after each workout. The more exercises and sets you complete, the greater the stimulus for muscle gain. Therefore, training six days per week is ideal for maximizing muscle gain.

When training to build muscle mass, allowing your muscles rest is just as important as participating in high-volume workouts. It’s during your rest periods that your muscles heal and increase in size. At the end of your training sessions, your muscles are left damaged. The minor tears throughout your muscular fibers stimulate the muscle-building process. Your body attempts to prepare itself to better handle the stress from weight training. Your muscles need about 72 hours of rest between high-volume workouts.

To train six days per week and still allow your muscles enough rest, you must split your muscle groups into separate workouts. For example, target your chest, shoulders and triceps on Mondays and Thursdays, your back and biceps on Tuesdays and Fridays, and your legs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you were to work out your muscles without providing enough rest, your muscles are never able to heal, so they won't grow.

Training six days per week maximizes muscle gain because it allows you to perform a greater number of exercises, sets and repetitions for each muscle group. Because you’re only focusing on a couple of muscles per workout, you can really hit those assigned muscles with multiple exercises. In each of your workouts, pick three to six exercises for each muscle group. For example, on chest, shoulders and triceps day, you want to complete three to six exercises that target your chest, three to six that target your shoulders, and three to six that target your triceps.

Calories are necessary for fueling the muscle-building process. Training six days per week is going to increase caloric needs significantly. The American Council on Exercise recommends taking in 500 extra calories per day to support muscle building. Each 3,500-calorie surplus you create will equate to 1 pound of muscle mass gained, so taking in 500 extra per day will set you up to put on one pound per week.