How many lifting days a week

What do we learn from this? Here are three other reasons why high-frequency training is beneficial: Reduce your risk of injury — The more you train, the more you'll see improvement. Just like the saying, "practice makes perfect"! For example, when you're barely starting out with push-ups your form might be a bit sloppy and shaky. But after a few weeks of consistently doing them, you'll notice your form and technique slowly improving. Consistently lifting weights and practicing key compound exercises will improve your form, balance, and stability which in turn helps to reduce your risk of an injury.

It'll help you train smarter — Training a lift, like a barbell back squat, once a week will put a lot of pressure on you to go as hard as you can. You push yourself to top your last PR because you're only training that exercise once a week, even if you're not feeling up to it. This is not training smart. If you're pushing yourself to exceed a certain number of sets and reps even though your body isn't feeling it you'll increase your risk of overtraining.

But if you know you're going to train your legs and do squats or the leg press in two days then you'll train within your limits. It essentially promotes better-balanced training!

Help establish a good habit — Resistance training, or doing any form of physical activity, three or more times a week will help you establish a habit of working out. After a few weeks of training, it'll just become another part of your day!

This will also help you build better self-discipline which will lead to you accomplishing any fitness goals you may have. Training three days a week If your schedule is a bit hectic, you're a beginner, or if your main goal is weight loss and you want to implement some cardio into your workout plan, then consider doing three full-body workouts a week. If you want to follow a three-day full-body training program, here are two ways to structure your routine: Do two sets per movement pattern: There are four movement patterns in total, this includes squatting, hinging, pushing, and pulling.

Squatting could be doing any type of squats, leg press, and even lunge variations. Hinging involves deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts , and any movement that involves hinging at the hips. Pushing movements involve pushing a weight vertically, like overhead presses, or horizontally, like chest pressing.

Pulling movements involve pulling a weight vertically, like pull-ups , or horizontally, like rows. To be clear, this does not mean only doing two sets of squats, it means doing two work sets that involve squatting exercises with however many sets you need to warm up and build up to the weights you actually want to use. Do a single push, pull, and leg movement: If the method above seems overly complicated or you don't have enough time to do that many exercises, then try this method!

It involves choosing one pushing exercise ex: dumbbell chest press , pulling exercise ex: barbell rows , and one leg exercise ex: Goblet squats.

You can also play around with the volume of your workout. Opposed to sticking to the same number of sets, you can switch things up and do 5 sets of 6 reps one day, and 3 sets of 12 reps another day. You can also choose to rotate the exercises every session, or every week. Limiting yourself to three movements keeps the volume of your workout under control, but of course, you can throw in a few isolated exercises that target your core, biceps, triceps, or delts at the end of your workout!

Training too hard and heavy will only decrease your exercise performance the next day. Choose three big compound lifts, but limit it to two or three sets: This will also help ensure that you're not pushing yourself too hard, and remember, you'll be hitting those heavy lifts again. You'll have better days than others, but having a higher frequency training program will allow you to have another shot at it later in the week.

He has experienced the benefits of going all-out once a week personally. Not all experts agree that strength training only once a week is sufficient.

Twice a week is less of a shock to the system and allows the body to better adapt. Translation: This helps you drive the golf ball farther, hit an overhead serve harder, and see improvements in all sorts of athletic performance. For people training for marathons or triathlons, adding anaerobic strength training two times per week helps the body handle the repetitive stress of movements like running, cycling, or swimming, Tamir adds. An added bonus: Training hard twice per week gives your body adequate time to recover , Golian says.

Many people — especially those new to lifting — tend to overtrain, which can delay your progress. She has clients who train up to four times per week but cautions that stress from additional training sessions can be harsh on your body. Talk to any gym junkie and training three times per week is usually considered a bare minimum, but is this really the case? After all, a study found that there was virtually no difference in gains between those who worked out once per week compared to those who worked out three times per week.

Thomas MH, et al. Increasing lean mass and strength: A comparison of high frequency strength training to lower frequency strength training. PMID: A meta-analysis checked out 22 studies and found similar results. Grjic J, et al. Effect of resistance training frequency on gains in muscular strength: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Volume, in this case, refers to how many reps and sets you complete in a session, and how many muscle groups you target. By these studies, you may actually be able to get the same benefits by hitting the gym less, provided that you work your butt off and cover the same ground as multiple sessions in just one go.

This may not be realistic for everyone, though. I mean, most of us want to be able to walk normally and lift our coffee mugs tomorrow, right? The benefit of spacing out your workouts is obvious; it allows you to split up your routine by muscle group at least lower body and upper body , rather than working from head-to-toe all at once.

In the end, how often you work out entirely depends on your body and schedule. To get started on building a full-body fitness plan that works for you, check out our article here. Boyle squeezes in a variety of compound exercises that target different muscle groups both upper and lower body as a circuit, completing two sets of 10 reps of each exercise.

Scrolling through Instagram is definitely not part of this workout plan. Boyle also recommends doing a total-body workout that combines moves like push-ups, pull-ups, basic plank-type core work, and squats. This type of workout twice per week can build strength without requiring you to set up a bed at your local gym.

Metzl agrees, recommending a quick training circuit right when you wake up. Doing a lot of single-leg and single-arm exercises also helps keep the body balanced and minimizes injury, he adds. You can alleviate any soreness with recovery techniques such as ice baths or Epsom salt baths. Finally, proper nutrition is still king when it comes to getting the results you want.

Depending on your fitness goals, you may have to pass up the doughnuts — at least most of the time. But you do need to split up your weight routine so you don't work the same muscle group on back-to-back days.

The "split" is a technique used by bodybuilders and others who focus on lifting heavy weights for maximum hypertrophy muscle growth or strength gains; they work just one or two muscle groups per day so they can maximize time under tension for those muscles while other muscle groups are recovering. For example, if you're in the gym working out six days a week, you might use the following split:. Exactly where you put your arm, shoulder and core exercises in the rotation will depend somewhat on which exercises you're choosing to work each muscle group.

If you focus on chest day as an opportunity to work your pushing muscles chest, shoulders, triceps , that automatically recruits some muscles in your arms and shoulders, while treating back day as "day of the pulling muscles" back, biceps will recruit the others. As you no doubt notice, the above six-day split gives you only one day of rest; so it's not for a beginner, and even an advanced weightlifter needs to pay close attention to rest, nutrition and recovery on a schedule like that.

A five-day split is a little easier to maintain, because it gives you two rest days during the week:. Ultimately, the very best weightlifting program is one that you can keep up in the long term. So if your ideal training regimen is hitting the gym twice a week for a full-body workout, or doing twice-weekly circuit-training classes, you can and should feel good about the time you're investing in your own health. If you want to spend more time in the weight room, you also have all the flexibility in the world to set up your own custom splits; just keep in mind that each muscle group needs a solid day of rest before you work it again.

Fitness Training How To Gain muscle. Connect on LinkedIn. Lisa Maloney, CPT. Lisa is a retired personal trainer with more than 4, hours of hands-on experience working with a variety of clients, from sports teams to weight loss and post-rehab populations. She's also a professional writer. For most people, a twice-weekly, full-body strength-training workout gives you the most benefit. Video of the Day.

Tip For beginners, start by lifting weights twice a week, doing a full-body workout with one to three sets of eight to 12 reps of each exercise.

Start From the Beginning. Tip Did you know? Sets, Reps and Weights. Choose Your Exercises.