Winning WNBF Worlds In 1998 Training 3-4 Days Per Week
“In 10 months I gained nine pounds of muscle, and that was more than I had gained in the previous five years combined” - Natural Bodybuilding World Champion, Dave Goodin
Troubleshooting My Training Frequency For Better Progress, More Muscle & A World Championship Title!
Kenny: Hey Dave, Did you ever experiment with training body parts two times per week throughout your career?
Dave: I did. For 10 years I would hit body parts twice per week, but my progress had slowed down.
Kenny: Was that a six day split?
Dave: Yes!
Kenny: What did that look like?
Dave: I got it out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia. I trained chest and back on Monday, shoulders and arms on Tuesday and legs on Wednesday. I would repeat that and take Sunday off. I did this split in 1994, and I got smoked at the WNBF World Championships. So, the first thing I thought was, well I gotta switch things up. That’s when I switched to a four-day training split.
Kenny: What did that four-day split look like?
Dave: I would work legs and back on Monday and chest, shoulders, and arms on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, and then repeat Monday’s workout on Thursday, and Tuesdays workout on Friday, rest Saturday and Sunday. After a month of doing that, my joints hurt so bad that I thought, this isn't it. This isn’t my solution. I gotta do something different. That’s when I went to the three-day split.
Kenny: That four-day split is a very old school split. Bodybuilders in the 60s and 70s were doing that in the off season, but a lot of them were enhanced.
Dave: Exactly, and that makes all the difference. When you're taking the bodybuilding drugs you can recover so much faster. I think the recovery aspect of taking drugs is probably the biggest part of the benefit. You just recover so much better and faster. You can do more volume, and you can train with more frequency. As a drug-free bodybuilder myself, you're limited.
Kenny: That makes sense, and i've had my fair share of experiences with that as well. Throughout your entire career, is there a specific training frequency that you found worked better for you?