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Do you even lift, bro?

Well, perhaps the question should now be, do you even lift at the right frequency, bro?

There are still a few questions surrounding the most effective way to work out, particularly around how often and for how long one needs to exercise in order to see results.

Those are questions for the gym bunnies because the rest of us are still trying to muster up the strength to get out the door and into the gym in the first place.

According to a new study, you’ll have to frequent the gym more often, but for shorter stints, if you want to see your muscles get stronger, as opposed to a hectic lifting session once a week.

In a nutshell, it’s less about the length of your gym visit and more about how often you go.

Over to Fortune for the nitty-gritty:

Researchers evaluated muscle strength and definition or thickness, following a four-week training program in a study published in August in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.

The 36 participants had not completed any resistance training of their arms in the past six months and were asked to follow one of three training plans: one set of six repetitions for five days a week, one set of six reps once a week, and five sets of six reps once a week.

The participants performed “maximal eccentric contractions” on a machine, which is essentially lowering a heavy dumbbell in a bicep curl.

If frequency is the name of the game, you’ll have figured out that the group doing one set of six reps for five days a week saw the most gains, with muscle strength increasing by 10% compared with no change in the group doing 30 reps once a week.

The high-volume group doing 30 contractions in one session didn’t show any increase in muscle strength, but their muscle size grew by close to 6%, per Runner’s World.

Ken Nosaka, the author of the study and exercise and sports science professor at Edith Cowan University, said it’s a misconception that doing a lengthy session of resistance training in the gym is the best bet, adding that “just lowering a heavy dumbbell slowly once or six times a day is enough”.

A rest day or two in between is also recommended, but a whole week between sessions won’t give you those gains. The key, it must be noted, might also have something to do with the type of exercise you do.

Eccentric workouts are better than concentric workouts in this instance.

An eccentric contraction is also known as a lengthening contraction, which kicks in when your muscles are elongated – AKA slowly bringing the dumbbell back down to the floor during a deadlift on a count of four.

Concentric is the opposite. For a bicep curl, it’s the portion of the workout where you’re raising the dumbbell up towards you.

“Previous studies showed that eccentric contraction could exert greater muscular force than concentric contraction,” Nakamura said, adding that other research indicates eccentric exercise has greater effect on muscle strength than concentric.

“Therefore, we believe that it is important to focus on the eccentric contraction in workouts.”

It might even be more worthwhile to use some weights in a short session at home every day instead of heading to the gym for a full-blown session.

You don’t need to push yourself as hard as possible to see results.

I can get behind that.

[sources:fortune&runnersworld]