Two times a week vs three times a week: How much you should workout to gain strength

Two times a week is a misnomer. I mean to say you workout two times in a row with forty eight hours rest between them.  Then after seventy two hours rest workout again.

That's the basic workout strategy. Workout however many times in a row you want evenly spaced between forty eight hour rest periods. Then after you think you've provided your body enough of a training stimuli to elicit a strength gain, you rest seventy two hours to give your central nervous system  the time it needs to recover.

Why forty eight hours rest and then a seventy two hour rest you ask? It's widely accepted that forty eight hours rest between workouts is the baseline necessary time the body needs to replenish glycogen reserves. The seventy two hours rest is a widely accepted timeframe to allow the central nervous system to recover.

Of course this all hypothetical based on personal anecdotal evidence. Who's to say that you can't workout with less than forty eight hours rest to replenish your glycogen reserves? Perhaps you may only need twenty four hours rest between workouts to replenish your glycogen reserves in your muscles. Again who's to say you need seventy two hours rest to allow your central nervous system to recover? Perhaps you may need ninety six hours to fully recover.

The concept of a weekly workout schedule is a simplification of strength training.  Surely if you're doing two times in a row workouts and then the seventy two hours rest, some weeks you'll be working out three times a week.  So it violates the weekly workout concept. In contrast three times in a row workout schedules fit  neatly in a week and will enable you to workout on the same days each and every week.

Who's to say you can't go beyond the three times a week workout schedule?  Hypothetically you can do four or five or even six times in a row workouts and then cap it off with a seventy two hours or more period of rest to allow your central nervous system to recover.  When you're working out however many times in a row with forty eight hours rest between, you're trying to elicit a muscular development response which means you're trying to make your muscles grow bigger.  Why
can't you just repeat that cycle  of forty eight hours rest between workouts however many times you want, and then cap it off a seventy two hours or more rest period to allow your central nervous system to recover?

Three times in a row workout schedules tend to crush the human spirit.  If you're doing any of my full body workouts you're spending a minimum two and a half hours in the gym each workout day. That's almost nine hours a week you're training. You're missing a lot in life with a training schedule like that.  You're in the gym while everybody else is having fun.  That kind of thought may make you resent strength training.

Three a week workout schedules also tax the structural integrity of your body. Joints  get stiff and painful.  Limb movement and body coordination  get somewhat degraded. After a couple months of a three a week  workout schedule, the simplest tasks like reaching out to grab something across a table become jerky and non-fluid.

But obviously it's up to you, as with all things in a life lived in a free society, how many times you want to workout in a row. I've crushed many a plateau with working out three times a week. Even the most stubborn of muscle groups are forced to elicit a strength gain after beating them up three times a week provided that you blast them with the right combination  of movements and complementary accessory movements. The main thing is don't quit and expect to jump right back into training with ease. You might end up like me.