How to approach irregular weekly gym sessions

So, life being life, I am only able to regularly hit the gym twice a week. Other competing interests such as being outdoors, bjj, wrestling and friends tend to make it difficult to get more sessions in per week with regularity. However, sometimes more training slots open up for gym, ranging from bad weather to missing a bjj session to a night shift week where I’m unable to do any martial arts. This happens everywhere between once a month to every second week.

Usually I’m doing some variation of squat, bench, deadlift, pullup/row and some core assistance on my two gym days. Not competing in powerlifting, and no interest in doing so. Current BW: 75kg. Lifts: High bar squat ATG: 115kg. Bench press: 85kg. Deadlift: 165kg. Training goals for gym are currently: 1. Improved strength for the sake of it in the Big Three mostly. 2. Increased and maintained performance on the mat. 3. Aesthetics, where I want to increase upper body size mostly at the moment.

Questions:

  1. I’m assuming increased accumulated volume from throwing in an extra session when I’m able to is likely to increase strength and hypertrophy gains over time, even if it is irregular?
  2. If adding an extra session, should I stick to the exercise variations I’m already doing or can I throw in things I feel I’m lacking in my previous sessions (like hypertrophy focused isolation work for example)? I seem to recall Jordan saying somewhere else that it takes a few weeks of regularly performing an exercise before it produces gains which would favour sticking to more volume of variations I’m already doing.

And most importantly, when is that two day a week BBM program coming out? Been waiting for it!

Thanks in advance!

I think if we were comparing someone doing ~ 12 sessions (2-4x/wk) vs 8 sessions (2x/wk) a month, the former is likely to do better from a gainzZz standpoint, all else being equal.

As far as how-to program that, it depends on the program and what you want. For example, I’m working on a new Powerbuilding 1 Template that has options for 2 to 5x/wk lifting, though the volume is the same between different frequencies. Rather, it lets people bounce back and forth between different schedules or choose different ones if they need.

If your goal is Big Three strength, I can’t see a good reason to dedicate lots of precious training time to isolation work. However, seems like this is your off season given all the other activities, so if there were a time to do something like that, it would be now.

Alternatively, you could split your current training program up into 3x/wk (up from 2x/wk) and do an extra set or two for each exercise since you’re splitting it up into more days. Since you can’t do this every week, it’s unlikely you’re going to ratchet up stress too quickly.

Lots of different options here!

Thanks for the reply!

As I’m just a recreational “athlete” I don’t really have on/off seasons. I just enjoy staying active doing grappling, running, biking, lifting and as long as numbers slowly go up in big three I’m happy to sacrifice a little bit of Big Three strength on the vanity altar of bigger biceps and side delts. When numbers stop going up with current plan I might switch ideas (currently numbers going up easy as I’m recovering strength from after a broken hand earlier this year). I might end up focusing on big three strength though, I’m still planning my next training block and haven’t really decided firmly on anything yet.

But a way to approach this would be to maybe think of total monthly volume instead of weekly volume, allowing for more flexibility, where more volume is better (assuming recovery works)?

Followup questions then: Is there a lower boundary of frequency or (total volume) at which doing an exercise doesn’t really get useful? As an example, I would hazard to guess that doing bicep curls once a month could add some useful total volume to biceps in context of doing regular pull ups and rows, but I could see doing lateral raises once a month being so low frequency that they would have time to be de-trained until next session.

Honestly, worst part of all this is that I’m going to have to find a way to log my training differently if I introduce flexible volume. And I hate changing a good, solid working routine :slight_smile:

I also have to say how much I appreciate the free advice and everything else BBM keeps putting out there for zero cost. Makes me come back as a paying customer as well!

But a way to approach this would be to maybe think of total monthly volume instead of weekly volume, allowing for more flexibility, where more volume is better (assuming recovery works)?

I think that’s reasonable, though would not want to go to the extreme and jam in 12 sessions in the last 14 days of the month, for example. Maybe a 2 -week average frequency is an even better way to think about it, albeit still arbitrary.

I think every exposure is likely to be useful for preserving strength and size, but infrequent exposure and/or volume is probably not going to work well for improvements. Detraining rate in those who are healthy, previously trained, but not training, seems to happen in ~ 3 weeks or so, where strength decreases first before size. So, 1x per 3 weeks for preservation? Seems reasonable…

Maybe some constraints on a “monthly” program would be helpful:

  1. 12 sessions per month, where the workouts are labeled A through D before repeating
  2. You can do as few as 2 sessions or up to 4 sessions in a single week
  3. Minimum time between two of the same workouts, e.g. A 1 and A 2, is 5 days. Max is 10 days So, you could program the workouts that way, or we could do it for you!

Yeah, I like those ideas. I’m going to experiment with them the next six months or so and see where I end up :slight_smile:

Thanks!