Question: My friend and I are starting to get serious about working out. We were working out yesterday and I was on my second exercise for my triceps. She asked why I was working my triceps again after I just did some dips.
She wanted to know what the point was to doing 2-3 different exercises per muscle group when it just works the same muscle. I didn’t have an educated answer, and all I told her was that it was what I was taught and read in books and articles, but didn’t know why for sure.
So could you tell me why it’s suggested or the benefits to working 2-3 exercises per muscle/muscle group? Or why it isn’t or its disadvantages.
Please educate me! Lol. Jacklyn / Aurora, Colorado
Answer: Neither way is right… but neither is wrong. Doing one or multiple exercises per muscle group each has pros and cons. Allow me to explain.
Look at it like this: your muscles (triceps for example) can only tolerate a certain amount of work or stress per week.
If you train your entire body each time you train, then you definitely do not need more than one direct triceps exercise per workout. But, you will be doing at least 2 if not 3 of those whole body workouts per week. So your triceps would be doing less work per workout but multiple workouts per week
On the other hand, if you decide to split your body into groups and only train a couple of muscle groups per workout, then you will need to do more exercises for each body part during each workout in order to compensate for the reduced frequency.
For sake of illustration let’s say that you should do 9 sets of triceps per week. You could do 3 sets, 3 times per week, or you could do all 9 sets in a weekly triceps workout.
Since you are new to training, however, I would encourage you to do 3 whole body workouts per week as opposed to a body part split.
Assuming you go with this recommendation, you will only need to do one triceps exercise per workout.
I hope this helps.
Dr Clay
