One Workout a Week

Q: Because of my work schedule I can train only once a week, on Wednesdays. Is it a lost cause? Can I make any gains with once-a-week training?

A: It’s tough to make gains working out only once a week, but if you stress the muscles enough and you’re consistent, you should gradually see results. You’ll have to use full-body workouts, which will take some time and energy, but with stoked motivation that shouldn’t be a problem.

To get the most out of every set, we recommend that you emphasize the negative strokes. The negative—like lowering the bar on a curl, bench press or squat—causes the most muscle microtrauma, and by slowing down that aspect of the rep, you force the need for more recovery.

So for standard work sets we recommend one second on the positive and three seconds on the negative. Use a semi-explosive drive out of the turnaround of each rep—like at the bottom of a bench press.

We also recommend using negative-accentuated sets as your second warmup, but go to failure. For NA you take a lighter weight than you use for a work set and do one second on the positive and six seconds on the negative till failure—which should occur at around rep seven. Here’s the drill:

Set 1: Do a light set at normal speed for 10 reps (three seconds down/ one second up). The10th rep should be easy.

Set 2: Increase the weight and do one NA set to exhaustion for seven reps (six seconds down/one second up).

Set 3: Add weight and do one heavy set to muscular exhaustion, which will be about nine reps (three seconds down/one second up). On some key exercises you can do two heavy work sets.

Rest 1 1/2 to two minutes between sets. Use that progression for every exercise, and you should increase your muscle size.

—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com