Great Question! For all you guys out there reading, I'd love to get more training questions. Gear is great but there are only so many ways to tell a guy how to do their first test cycle, so lets get some more training and nutrition questions in! :)

There is no one size fits all training method that will work for everyone equally. Some guys will do better with more volume. Some will do better with less. It's all about how fast he can recover. If he were to improve his nutrition, the same guy may be able to train even more. Or as this guy ages, he may find that he needs more time to recover. And there is also a mater of homeostasis. I hate the phrase "muscle confusion" Every 130 lb kid thinks they need to confuse their muscles now days, but there is some truth to the fact that your body will eventually get used to what you are doing and progress will slow down. 

For most of my years of training, I have trained everyting 1x wk. You have to first remember that you are not growing in the gym. You are gorwing while you recover and rest. As I've gotten better at training, I've learned to tax the muscle much harder in the gym. When I first started, I may have been able to get away with training everything 2 or even 3 times a wk, but now days, with the level of intensity I use, I know I need a full week to let my larger muscle groups recover. 

There are times that I will add more volume. I find that I can add more volume to smaller muscles more easily as they tend to recover faster. For larger muscle groups, I can give you an example of what I did for back last year. I wanted to put more into my back training, so I did one normal, heavy back day, then came in 3-4 days later, and did some additional back training, using higher reps and movements that would not tax my joints. The main point of this additional back work, was to bring more blood into the muscle and speed recovery. Nothing about this additional back work was "balls to the wall" hard. 

So anyway, whats better? Answer is, it depends. I can tell you whats better for me. And I can tell you that in my experience with others, most people that are working a muscle hard enough, only need to hit a muscle 1x a wk, 2x at most. If you find you are able to recover faster and can train 2x wk, go for it. But listen to your body and go from there. Worst case, you are NOT going to lose gains by going to 1x wk. Just make sure you get in there and do some serious work when you do train

Thanks again for the great question. I wish I could go into more detail here. I feel I'm just scratching the surface, but I have to stop somewhere