Thirty-day fitness challenges tend to get a bad reputation – often for good reason. Many promise dramatic transformations through unsustainable levels of intensity, with little consideration for recovery. But when it comes to building muscle, training frequency and consistency do matter. In fact, hitting a muscle group every other day could strike a more realistic balance between stimulus and recovery.
That’s what YouTuber Laurie Shaw and his brother Alex set out to test in a 30-day triceps-extension challenge, performing 100 reps every second day to see whether the high-frequency approach would lead to noticeable arm growth.
The 30-Day Challenge
Shaw and his brother began by measuring their starting upper-arm circumferences.
‘I haven’t done any exercise today so this is measuring without a pump,’ says Shaw.
On day one, the pair completed 100 reps of tricep extensions on the cable machine, breaking the sets up as needed and progressively lowering the weight.
‘To begin with it felt relatively easy and fun, but by the end of the last set our triceps were burning,’ admits Shaw. ‘We’re both really focusing on squeezing and trying to get a really good pump.’
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As the challenge progressed, the brothers rotated through different exercise variations including EZ-bar skull crushers, lying dumbbell triceps extensions, triceps kickbacks and overhead triceps extensions.
However, the high-frequency approach eventually began to take its toll. By the latter stages of the month, Shaw reported increasing fatigue, soreness and declining performance during workouts.
‘I’m noticing I’m dropping the weights a little bit quicker as well,’ says Shaw, adding that his muscles were ‘getting pretty fatigued probably from the last two weeks now of training’.
He also admitted: ‘My triceps are definitely feeling the burn from the last couple of days,’ while before one mid-point session he said: ‘If there’s ever a day that I don’t want to do them, today would be it.’
By day 30, Shaw said he was ‘pretty tired from the past 30 days’ and had been ‘steadily dropping weight really quickly’ throughout the final workouts.
The Results
The brothers finished the challenge feeling positive about the outcome.
‘I think overall I’m happy with my results,’ said Shaw after completing the final measurements.
According to the measurements taken throughout the experiment, Shaw recorded ‘about one centimetre of growth on average across all parameters’.
His brother Alex saw even greater changes, with ‘about 1.5 centimetres on average across both positions and parameters’ – something the pair suggested may partly be due to him being relatively new to weight training.
Still, Shaw remained realistic about the findings.
‘I’m not sure how significant one centimetre actually is for 30 days of training,’ he admitted.
Even so, in the grand scheme of things, a one-centimetre increase in arm size – even accounting for the possibility of a lingering pump effect – could still represent meaningful progress in just 30 days.
