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Strength, muscle mass increase proportionately with training frequency regardless of experience

PainSci » bibliography » Wirth et al 2007
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Tags: exercise, self-treatment, treatment

One article on PainSci cites Wirth 2007: Strength Training Frequency

PainSci commentary on Wirth 2007: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.

This study shows that strength and muscle mass increase with training regardless of experience. The increases are described as proportionate to training frequency, and this is a notable exception: most such studies show that increased training frequency does not deliver proportionately greater results. However, in this experiment “all groups showed significant gains in muscle mass with a tendency of better training results when doing two or three training sessions a week. No difference could be found between the groups (beginners/advanced) with the same training frequency.”

~ Paul Ingraham

original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

The major goal of this study was to find a training frequency that promises optimum success in the proliferation of muscle mass by measu- ring muscle size before and 2 weeks after an 8-week training cycle. 30 men with at least half a year (beginner = A) and 30 with at least 2 years (advanced = F) of strength training experience participated in this study. The subjects were divided into six groups of 10 individuals each, who had to go through a hypertrophy training program for arm bends with a frequency of one (A1 / F1), two (A2 / F2) and three (A3 / F3) training sessions per week up to 8 weeks altogether. The size of the elbow flexors was determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 96 transversal images with a thickness of 1.67 mm were collected per subject. Thus a region 16.03 cm of the upper arm was examined. The statistical handling of the data consisted of an analysis of variance (with a repetition of the measurements) and the Scheffé-test (p < 0.05) as a post-hoc test. Except for the group of advanced athletes and a training frequency of once a week, all groups showed significant gains in muscle mass with a tendency of better training results when doing two or three training sessions a week. No difference could be found between the groups (beginners/advanced) with the same training frequency.

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