Not gonna lie (or NGL as the young people say), I was worried that last week’s post was way too long.
Honestly, I’m not so sure why I’m constantly worried about the young people on this blog. It’s not like any of them read it. They’re too busy watching Tik Tok’s about how to braid their hair or whatever.
Speaking of older people, as I was fretting about the length of last week’s piece, I was reminded of Bruce Springsteen.
Bruce had to cancel a bunch of tour dates due to a peptic ulcer (if that doesn’t sound like an old person’s problem I don’t know what does!) but that’s not what was on my mind.
When Bruce is fit enough to play, his shows normally last three plus hours. And I’ve never seen people heading to the exits early. It’s not like he’s in the middle of playing his second encore and an old-timey vaudevillian character with a giant hook appears from the wings to pull him off stage.
No. People stay as long as he plays because they love him and his songs and the experience.
So, hopefully, you see me as the aging rock-n-roller of fitness blogs (and I know you do!) and you stick around for even the long ones. And I appreciate that. So thank you.
OK, I’ve filibustered long enough but my preamble here does - as it always does! - loosely tie into today’s topic.
Very, very loosely.
Today I’d like to talk about how many days per week you should be training.
Because, unlike a Springsteen concert (or insert your favorite trendy mid-tempo auto-tuned rapper here if you are under 35) more is not always better when it comes to training.
How often should you be training? Well, just like it seems to be with all fitness topics, the answer is: it depends. So let’s do our best to overcomplicate this as much as possible.
If you are someone who likes to train seven days per week you are either:
* Someone who likes to vary their training quite a bit. You strength train three days per week, run two days per week and practice yin yoga twice per week. * You only have a 25 minute window to train but you have that 25 minutes every day. * You are following a bullshit program * You are a high level athlete. And by high level I mean you actually have a shot at the Olympics. * You are more addicted to going to the gym than you are to getting results from the gym.
Let’s break these down.
The person who is varying their fitness is probably fine. I’d argue that they are actually training 5 times per week and are performing active recovery (the yoga) twice per week. It still may be more than they need, honestly, but as long as their intensity is in check and they have the other factors dialed in (sleep, nutrition, etc.) they’re probably fine.
The 20-25 minutes per day person is probably fine as well. It adds up to 3 hours of training per week and I’d say that’s actually average for people who are taking training seriously.
The person who is following a bullshit program is likely doing a ton of junk volume that isn’t helping them at all but maybe it makes them feel like they are “on their grind” and superior to everyone else who just gets efficient and effective work in in half the time. Or perhaps they want to make sure they are getting a sweet pump every time their gym crush walks in. Hard to say.
(I have VERY strong feelings about people who justify going to a group fitness program every day because they have an unlimited membership and they think this is a value play. That’s such an upside down way of going about training and, I hate to break it to you Billy, your results are going to be horseshit. Let me know if you want me to break this down further in a future post. /rant)
A high level athlete who needs to develop a lot of skills may be in the gym more than seven times per week but ideally they are heavily monitored and dialed in and their scholarship or Olympic spot relies on them getting fractionally better and that is job number one.
I’m never going to convince the gym addicts that a rest day (or two!) would actually help them much, much more in the long term and drive better results, but this is my feeble attempt. I feel you, addicts. I've been there.
I get it. I love going to the gym and lifting, too. And I believe that training can actually be a good tool to drive mental health. But if we are just talking about physiology here, days off are really helpful for adaptations and training enthusiasm.
I feel like I should take a quick pause to address the title of this blog. The truth is that most people suffer from training too little rather than too much. But if you are a long-time reader of Monday sermons I am going to assume that you have more than just a passing interest in training and your training frequency might be on the high side.
But that's just a guess.
OK, so now that we know what not to do, how often should you be training?
This is a loaded question as training experience, age, size, goals, lifestyle factors and a whole host of other factors come into play. Which can make this more complicated than Britney Spears' love life.
But in an effort not to use the “it depends” excuse twice in one post, here are some overly simplified guidelines.
Unless you are taking one muscle group to absolute failure and that is the only muscle group you care to train, training once per week is just not enough. Sure, giant biceps and tiny everything else is intriguing. I get it. But that’s probably more attractive in theory than in practice.
Twice per week is the minimum effective dose for most people and for certain you should be training total body on both of those days. If you are only getting after it twice per week (and you aren’t a beginner) you are going to want intensity of effort to be very high on those days.
Three to four times per week is the sweet spot for most people. It gives you enough exposure to drive adaptations - whether that is strength or hypertrophy or endurance or some combination - with enough recovery time to make those adaptations stick. Total body is still going to be the best bet for most people here but upper/lower splits can work as well or, if you are really interested in bodybuilding-style training, you can start exploring body part splits.
Five days per week is the upper end for most people and I’d argue, unless you are doing true body part splits, you need to start diversifying your training at this frequency. A day dedicated solely to conditioning or learning a new skill like Olympic lifting with very low intensity (ie. moving the empty barbell for an hour in order to perfect technique) could work. This is also a good time to explore having an active recovery day that enhances the rest of your training week rather than an intense workout that detracts from it.
When you remove the emotions from it (“I don’t want to train too often cause I don’t want to get bulky!” “If I don’t train everyday I won’t maximize my gains!”) training frequency isn’t really that complex of a topic. However, as human beings, it’s very rare that we completely remove the emotion from anything.
So take a good hard look at what makes sense for you and be certain that you are training at the frequency that keeps you excited to train and allows you to put a good effort every time you walk in the gym.
Ok, I think I nailed it on the length. And since I don’t have a “Born To Run” in my back pocket to keep you engaged, I’m gonna wrap it up.
I wonder what I should do with all this free time!?!
Maybe I’ll see what Britney 's been up to.