How Many Days A Week Should I Work Out?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could ask a question like ‘how many days a week should I work out’? And be given a straight answer I.E ‘work out 4 days per week to build muscle’ or ‘train 5 days per week to lose fat’.
Unfortunately, in the real world, things are not that easy or straightforward, and if they were, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that a fair deal more people would be in much better physical shape than they currently are at this moment in time.
If you’re asking how many days a week should I train, if you’re hoping for a clear and straightforward answer, you are going to find yourself feeling pretty disappointed and let down. The reality is that there is no one true answer for a number of reasons.
To begin with, every person is different and so, whilst one person’s genetics and body type may allow them to work out for 3 days per week and still builds muscle and/or burn body fat, another person may need to work out 4 or 5 days per week to achieve the same results.
On top of that, when asking the question, you also need to know what your overall goals and objectives may be. If you’re looking to maintain muscle mass, you obviously won’t need to train as frequently as you would if you were trying to gain muscle mass.
The same principle applies to fat loss, to strength gains, to endurance and stamina boosting, and much more besides.
If you are wondering how many days a week should I work out, you will almost certainly find the following article incredibly enlightening and useful, so sit back, relax, and prepare to broaden your mind.
Low Intensity Exercise
As mentioned, every person trains with a different goal and objective in mind, and if you are simply looking to maintain your physique, and perhaps your physical endurance and stamina in the process, low intensity exercise may be more to your liking.
Low intensity exercise, is, as the name implies, a form of physical exercise that is performed at a low intensity.
Low intensity exercise keeps the heart rate low so you should never find yourself overly exerted and tired when performing this exercise.
Walking and steady state cardio on the treadmill are great examples of low intensity exercise, as, although exerting yourself and burning calories, you don’t push the body too hard.
Because the exercise doesn’t burn off as many calories as any of the other examples of exercise we’ll be looking at shortly, if much of your exercise and physical activity is based upon low intensity exercise, you should ideally aim for 4 – 6 days of exercise per week in order to reap the most rewards.
Not only will you strengthen your heart and tone your muscles, but by performing low intensity exercise more frequently, even though the total calories burnt off per workout are not all that impressive (generally around 200 per hour) if you total that up at the end of the week, you can potentially burn off 800 – 1200 calories, which will, providing your diet is in check, result in fat loss, not to mention an increase in stamina.
High Intensity Exercise
At the exact opposite side of the spectrum, we have high intensity exercise, which, as you can probably guess, is a form of exercise that is performed at a high intensity.
With high intensity exercise, you push your body much harder and exercise at near 90% of your max capacity.
With cardio for example, HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is a great example, as you will alternate between slow and steady periods of exercise, and incredibly fast periods of exercise.
For example, some users will speed a treadmill up so that they are close to sprinting, and will sprint for 40 seconds, before slowing it down and walking for around 60 seconds.
Some users keep the speed at full whack and simply hop onto the sides of the treadmill where they will rest and then begin sprinting once again.
With weight training, high intensity training involves explosive movements, little rest, and relatively heavy weights.
Former Mr Olympia Dorian Yates was a huge advocate of high intensity training, and if you’ve ever seen pictures of him, you can see all too well that high intensity training worked pretty darn well for him.
With high intensity exercise, you are pushing the body beyond its comfort zone and are forcing it to perform unnatural forms of exercise, which give it quite a battering.
Because of this, it needs plenty of time to recover, so for high intensity exercise programs, around 3 days training per week is ideal.
A typical high intensity workout will burn off around 300 – 500 calories, but on top of that, it also speeds up the metabolism due to the ‘afterburn effect’ which means that your body burns off even more calories than usual, whilst in a rested state.
So, with the working out alone, you have around 900 – 1500 calories per week, but on top of that, with the afterburn effect, you can also burn off an additional 100 calories per day, by doing absolutely nothing.
Moderate Intensity Exercise
Finally, we have moderate intensity exercise, which is right in the middle of the two aforementioned forms of training.
Whether performing cardio, lifting weights, swimming, cycling, or anything else for that matter, with moderate intensity exercise, you burn calories and exert yourself physically, without absolutely destroying yourself and tiring yourself out in the process.
Most typical bodybuilding workouts will be performed at a moderate intensity in which they will perform around 4 – 6 working sets on average, comprised of 8 – 12 reps, all with a moderate weight that begins to test them towards the end of each set as the muscle begins to fatigue.
At first glance, an exercise may seem easy, yet towards the end of each set, we begin to realise that, perhaps the exercise wasn’t quite as easy as we may have initially believed.
With cardio, moderate intensity exercise is generally a steady jog on the treadmill that tires you out, without leaving you absolutely exhausted, unable to speak, absolutely dripping in sweat, and feeling as if you are going to throw up at any minute.
Because of this, you will need to increase training frequency slightly, so for optimal results, 4 – 5 days of training in the gym, or anywhere else for that matter, should be sufficient enough.
Each training session will burn off roughly 250 – 350 calories, meaning that each week, a potential 750 – 1050 calories could be burnt off.
Generally speaking, most people who do exercise on a regular basis, will train for 4 – 5 days per week, and will follow a moderate intensity exercise regime.
So, How Many Days A Week Should I Work Out?
In reality, the amount of days each week that you train, will depend on what you are training for, how you are training, and how much intensity you put into each session.
Some people train 3 days per week and build muscle whilst burning fat, whilst others looking to do the same, have to train 5 days per week to emulate the same results.
The amount of days per week you train will be decided on how you wish to structure and plan your workouts, so just bear that in mind.
