“How Often Should I Work Out?”
There’s a short answer to this question and a long answer…
The short answer is: often enough to see results, not so much that you can’t be consistent or that you feel run down/injured.
The longer answer is: it depends. First, let’s define training broadly. We’re talking about going to the gym or working with a coach or getting in some kind of workout. We’re not talking about deadlift day or biceps day. Second, there are a ton of options for training frequency, and they all have trade-offs. Here are a few things to consider in your approach…
Once a week
Training only once each week absolutely works. Your body (and brain) don’t hang onto adaptations forever, but they also don’t know what a week is. Seven days is not enough time to lose all the progress you made last week. Once weekly training is great for people who are very busy and just need to make sure they’re doing something. It’s also great for people who have other movement practices or highly physical lifestyles but want to have a little bit of focus.
The main drawback to once weekly training is that while progress does happen, it’s very, very slow.
For most people we work with, the biggest obstacle to results is consistency. A big driver for consistency is motivation. And a big driver for motivation is seeing results. The results from once weekly training come so slowly that it’s hard for them to be motivating and therefore it’s hard to stay consistent.
Once weekly training works. But, in general, we don’t recommend it.
Twice a week
Twice weekly training is loads more effective than once a week. Results come much faster and it’s easier to gain confidence with new movements because it’s only been a few days since the last time you worked on them. This is also a good option for people who are especially busy. Most busy people who feel like adding training is important can usually find two days in their week when they can spare an hour or so for fitness. The drawback is that while results come much faster than once a week, they don’t come as fast as they could.
Three times a week
Over many years of training people, this is what we’ve found to be the sweet spot for most adults. This yields significantly faster and more dramatic results than training twice a week, but is not so much training that there’s high risk of overtraining, overuse injuries, or feeling like you have no time for anything but the gym. (The tradeoff here is that if you’re not also looking at things like nutrition, sleep, and stress management, results will be slower and it will feel like it’s a lot of effort for not much reward – but this is true to some extent with all training).
Four/Five times a week
There’s a certain level of diminishing returns at this training frequency. Someone who trains five days each week will definitely end up fitter after a year than someone who trains three days each week, but not a lot fitter. The main reason to train this much for most adults is if you genuinely enjoy the training and/or the people you train with.
The tradeoff here is that there is an increasing risk of overtraining. Your body needs recovery. And not just to avoid injury; it’s during recovery that your body can adapt to the training stimulus, which means that it’s in the recovery, not the training, that you’re gaining strength and muscle tissue. Without recovery, adaptation (i.e. results) don’t happen. Training three days each week has a lot of recovery built in. Training 4-5 days each week means that recovery (rest, stretching, low-level cardiovascular efficiency training like walking or hiking) becomes more important.
Five+ times a week and/or multiple sessions per day
We do not recommend this except for in very special circumstances. Multiple sessions per day are mostly appropriate for high-level competitors or for people who are going after events or jobs that require elite levels of fitness. Even in these cases, training sessions should be varied. Doing a workout in the morning and repeating it in the afternoon is less effective than doing a pure strength or cardio effort in the morning and a general conditioning or skill effort later in the day.
This volume may be workable for months, or even years at elite levels, but is generally not sustainable over a lifetime. And at this level, recovery, quality sleep, appropriate nutrition, and stress management are non-negotiables.
So what’s right for you?
Experiment! In 95% of cases, we recommend starting with 2-3 sessions per week. If you feel good mentally and physically and you’re happy with your results, then you found the right frequency! If you really, really like it, try adding a day and see what happens.
If you’re training 1-2 sessions per week and are unhappy with your results, try adding a day. If you’re training 3 sessions per week, check your diet. Then your sleep. Then your stress management. Get those in line before adding a fourth session.
Ultimately, the best training frequency is an answer that’s going to be different for everyone and will be different depending on the season of life you’re in. Find something you like. Find something that makes you feel good. And find a frequency that you can maintain consistently.
And if you still need help sorting it out, we’re here for you!