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Yes, this is a thing.
Short answer, it depends on your lifestyle, commitment & goals.
If you are an athlete or competitive bodybuilder and you have all the time in the world to train twice a day (which some people do) then yeah, go for it. However, you need to make sure your recovery is on point. Can it help? Yes, it can. Provided you have had some experience under your belt, you can focus on your body parts a bit more closely, but as I said – it all needs extra recovery! You see a lot of bodybuilders and athletes treat this as their job, and as such, need to dedicate their time to working out and training certain areas of their body in the same day.
One of my favourite athletes Anthony Joshua stated he trains up to 3-4 hours per day covering different aspects of training. But he also dedicates equal time to his rest and recovery. His nutrition is all laid out, he has physiotherapy at his fingertips and has a multitude of different recovery techniques available to him.
For most us, this just isn’t the case. There is no need to train twice a day or spend 2-4 hours in a gym working out. I spend up to 45 minutes to 1 hour in total working out. I do this because I can maintain intensity and really have a solid 45-minute session and bang it out. You can burn enough calories & stimulate muscle correctly in 30 minutes or less. So, don’t worry about trying out a fancy workout that you read in a magazine or on Instagram, it’s all rubbish. For anyone who does want to spend over an hour in a gym, don’t stress about going catabolic and losing your “gains”, there is no evidence to support this. Just don’t overdo it and train your chest for 1 straight hour doing set after set after set.
Focus on progressive overload (getting stronger) and training a lagging body part up to twice a week. That way you can split up the sets and not do 20 sets in one workout – which would hinder recovery.
It actually doesn’t really exist. Rather, the issue is under-recovery. So please begin focusing on recovery. Getting in good nutrition, sleep, vegetables & protein. If you are someone who hasn’t trained before or someone who has had a good few workouts already, believe me – you haven’t overtrained yet!
Instead, you can train bodyparts twice a week. Whereby you have given your muscles a good 2-3 days of recovery before hitting them again. This is actually proven technique that is used by a lot of people. One of the benefits, which has been researched extensively, is rate at which protein synthesis occurs – that is, the rate at which protein is absorbed and turned-over. This is something i do myself and something i use with my clients as you are still ensuring recovery is in place.
