Do you want to pack on serious mass and strength in the quickest time possible? If so, we’ve got you covered. Two-a-day workouts – working out twice a day – can be extremely hard, but done right, they can lead to tremendous muscle and strength gains.
Some people love training so much that they are willing to go to the gym twice a day without any mental effort whatsoever. However, the majority of people don’t exactly have a specific plan on what they should be working when following the twice-a-day approach. Get it right, and you can speed up your gains. Get it wrong, and you’ll only be wasting your time and effort.
What Are Two-a-Day Workouts?
Two-a-day workouts simply mean training twice on the same day – usually one session in the morning and one in the evening, with several hours of rest in between. Athletes have used them for decades, especially in pre-season training, and many bodybuilders and powerlifters use them to add more training volume without making any single workout too long.
You’ll have two main objectives when you work out twice a day:
- Push your body hard enough to trigger super-compensation – coming back bigger and stronger after recovery
- Manage your fatigue so that you stay rested enough to keep lifting heavy.
Is Working Out Twice a Day Good for Muscle Growth?
Even though this is one of the best ways to ramp up the intensity and start harvesting greater gains, not everyone can endure it and very few have enough free time on their hands to make it work. That aside, training twice per day is one surefire way to step up your game and achieve your muscle building goals faster. Splitting your training into two shorter sessions lets you do more total work while keeping each workout fresh and high-quality, and it gives you two post-workout meals to fuel muscle growth instead of one. Eat properly after each session, and your gains can really pick up.
However, be warned, when working out twice a day, there is a very thin line between overtraining and making gains. Here’s how to do it right:
How to Do Two-a-Day Workouts Right
Working out twice per day is a double-edged sword – if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you can easily shoot yourself in the foot instead of making progress. Do it right and you’ll make faster progress. Do it wrong and you’ll massively increase your chances of overtraining and burning out, which isn’t only counterproductive to your training goals but can also be dangerous to your health.
In order to avoid the pitfalls of overtraining, you need to focus on proper warm-ups, hydration, adequate nutrition, good quality sleep, and giving yourself enough rest between training sessions in the same day.
Two Training Approaches
There are two general ways to approach this type of training:
- You can train the same muscle group in both training sessions
- Or, you can train different muscle groups in each session
For example, if you apply the first approach, and need to train legs, you’ll train them both in the morning and the evening. With the second approach, if you trained legs in the morning, you’ll switch to training your back in the evening.
Both approaches work, but many lifters find the first approach better for building muscle. And there’s a trick to how it’s done. In the morning, you’ll do strength training with low reps and in the evening you’ll do classic bodybuilding style training with higher reps.
Again, let’s assume we’re training legs. The morning workout would look like this:
- Squats, 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps. Rest 3-5 minutes.
- Deadlifts, 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps. Rest 3-5 minutes.
- Calf raises 3 sets of 10 reps. Rest 2 minutes.
As you can see, there are only three exercises where you lift relatively heavy weights using low reps.
In the evening workout, you’ll do the following bodybuilding-style workout:
- Front squat, 4 sets x 10 reps. Rest 1.5 minutes.
- Walking lunges, 4 sets x 15 reps with each leg. Rest 2 minutes.
- Romanian deadlift, 3 sets x 8 reps. Rest 2 minutes.
- Leg extensions, 3 sets x 15 reps. Rest 1.5 minutes.
- Hamstring curls, 3 sets x 15 reps. Rest 1.5 minutes.
- Seated calf raises, 3 sets x 20 reps. Rest 1.5 minutes.
In summary, you’ll do strength training in the morning workout with 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps and in the evening workout you’ll do bodybuilding-style training with higher reps.
Two-a-Day Workout Split
As we previously said, regarding this type of training, one of the main objectives is promoting super-compensation. This basically means pushing your body hard for a few weeks, close to the point of overtraining, then stopping at the right time and taking a deload week.
During the deload week, the only thing you’ll focus on is recovery. Proper recovery entails eating lots of quality food, quality sleep and resting as much as possible. Don’t worry, you won’t lose any muscle. On the contrary, your body will take the time to repair the damaged muscle tissue and you’ll come out stronger than before. This is called super-compensation, and it’s why many lifters see their best progress right after adeload week.
Since super-compensation is the main goal, you’ll need to train each muscle group more frequently. This is the generally recommended split:
- Monday: Chest and arms (AM strength, PM bodybuilding)
- Tuesday: Legs (AM strength, PM bodybuilding)
- Wednesday: Back and shoulders (AM strength, PM bodybuilding)
- Thursday-Saturday: Repeat the same cycle
- Sunday: Rest
This means you will train each muscle group in four sessions a week – two strength sessions and two bodybuilding sessions.
A Sample Two-a-Day Training Day
- 7:00 am: Breakfast with protein and carbs
- 8:00 am: Workout 1 – heavy strength training, 45-60 minutes
- 9:00 am: Post-workout meal or shake
- 12:00-3:00 pm: Regular meals and as much rest as your day allows
- 5:00 pm: Pre-workout meal or snack
- 6:00 pm: Workout 2 – higher-rep bodybuilding training, 45-60 minutes
- 7:30 pm: Post-workout dinner
- 10:30 pm: Bed – aim for 8 hours of sleep
Adjust the times to your own schedule. The key is about 8-10 hours between sessions, and never less than 6.
7 Rules for Two-a-Day Workouts
Here are some basic guidelines that will help you get the most out of two workouts a day:
- Hit it heavy first thing in the morning
Do your heavier training in the morning, while leaving the higher-rep sessions for the evening. For example, do heavy sets of 3-6 reps in the morning workout and work with 10-20 reps in the evening one.
- Hit the same muscle twice
Yep, you’ve read it right. Train the same body part or muscle group in both sessions – hit it heavy in the first workout and hit it again with a lighter load and higher volume in the second one.
- Leave 6 hours between workouts
If you leave less time, say only two or three hours, your body won’t be able to properly recover in time and eventually, cumulative fatigue will hinder your progress. This is absolutely crucial – if you can’t stick to it, don’t do this at all.
- Strength or mass?
Different goals call for different measures. If your main concern is strength, you should do the same exercises for both sessions. However, if your goal is to maximize hypertrophy, you’ll achieve more of that by using different variations of the exercises for the second workout.
- Take regular breaks
To prevent overtraining, every ten days take a 5-day break during which you go back to your standard once-a-day training. On those days, train for about 40 minutes in the morning. After 5 days of normal training, do another ten days of twice-per-day training, followed by another 5-day “break”, and so on.
- Keep your nutrition optimal
You can train as smart as you want, but no amount of training can replace the benefits of adequate nutrition nor can it negate the effects of poor nutrition. If you want to grow, don’t skip your post-workout meals and fit in an extra protein shake on your training days. Two workouts burn a lot more calories, so you’ll need to eat more – especially carbs to refuel between sessions.
- Prioritize sleep
Two hard workouts a day means double the recovery demands. If you’re sleeping less than 7-8 hours a night, two-a-days will break you down instead of building you up.
Training twice per day can help you build mass and strength faster, break frustrating plateaus and allow for more intense workouts each time you grab the weights.
Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Do Two-a-Day Workouts?
Two-a-days aren’t for everyone. They’re a good fit if you:
- Have at least a year or two of consistent training behind you
- Have hit a plateau with your regular routine
- Can sleep 8 hours a night and eat enough food to recover
- Have a schedule that lets you train twice with 6+ hours in between
Skip them if you’re a beginner, if you’re already struggling to recover from once-a-day training, or if your job and life leave you short on sleep. A beginner will make great progress with a solid once-a-day program – here are the best muscle building exercises for beginners.
Not ready for full two-a-days? A simpler option is to lift in the morning and do light cardio or mobility work in the evening. You get some of the benefits without doubling your recovery demands.
So, to summarize
Working out twice a day can take quite a toll on your physical and mental state. It isn’t easy and you’ll have to push yourself harder, both physically and mentally, than ever before. When you start losing your appetite and dread the very thought of going to the gym, that’s a sure sign you are getting pretty close to becoming over-trained.
This is the exact time you need to take a deload week. During this lighter week you still need to eat the same amount of food you usually eat during the training week – that’s when your body does its repairing and growing.
Done right, two-a-day workouts are one of the most effective ways to break through a plateau and speed up your gains. Just remember: train smart, eat a lot, sleep well and listen to your body.
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