If fitness enthusiasts have learned anything from legends like Mike Mentzer, who swore by high-intensity workouts, it was to focus more on recovery. This meant that these training schedules, dedicated about 48-72 hours per muscle group, just to allow them to recover and gain mass. But Arnold Schwarzenegger recently questioned the true purpose of this period.
In his recent newsletter, Arnold addressed how high-intensity training often called for extended recovery time and considered an alternative. Highlighting some studies, he claimed that one didn’t have to spend as much time to recover if individuals trained under specific conditions.
The prerequisites were laid down by the research quoted by Schwarzenegger – participants of this study were not beginners or even intermediates since they would still need time to recover. The experiment was focused on advanced gym-goers who were used to training intensely.
Additionally, the researchers laid down their terms for the number of sets and reps that the individuals had to perform. The goal was to not go to failure at any given exercise, reserve some energy at the end of each set, and reduce the number of sets to a minimum.
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“The first set consisted of 10-12 reps, and the second focused on doing as many reps as possible…By the end of the four days, many participants did more reps on day 4 of the workout than on day 3.”
More reps, fewer sets, and not pushing to failure allowed individuals to train for a longer time at the gym. This step gave them more strength and did not hamper one’s performance despite going intense on the exercises.
“Despite working out multiple days in a row, training every day did not harm performance and even led to some improvements.”
Therefore, one did not need extended breaks while working out and could easily go for a few days in a row, even with high-intensity training. As long as they were advanced-level athletes working on their strength and keeping a check on the number of sets, they should be good.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was challenged by Jay Cutler on this theory
While Schwarzenegger believed one did not need extended periods of recovery in between exercising a group of muscles, bodybuilding elite Jay Cutler thought otherwise. Being one of the most ripped athletes, even at 50, he grew his size and got better conditioning by keeping his recovery time in check.
He believed one needed more hours of recovery to ensure hypertrophy, especially during high-volume training. That was the only difference between the prerequisites of Schwarzenegger and Cutler’s case, where they drew the line at the number of sets and reps throughout the session. In the end, Cutler even admitted that one simply needed to experiment around to see what worked for them.
