How Many Training Days?
and the merit of the good, not great
There are certain inevitable questions that arise whenever someone begins to exercise seriously.
One of the common fitness questions I receive is the “How many days should I work out?“ inquiry and its variants.
If you struggle to work out, any number of days is better than zero. But it’s very relevant if you are of the health mindset and lifestyle (which many of you are).
But is “more” better?
Are five days superior to three days?
Should you be working out every day?
Doing something is always better than doing nothing.
The “more is better” principle certainly applies to many areas in life: practicing an instrument, playing a sport, learning a new language, and making money.
Of course, it should apply to lifting weights. Training 6 days a week should double your gains, shouldn’t it?
WRONG.
The human body is not a perfectly knowable, linear instrument. When you train people, you swiftly realize that response to training follows a curve, and not a bell curve either. People have can varying degrees of recovery, of strength, of speed of adaptation, of muscle tissue, of nervous system, and certainly of size, height, shape, and structure.
This is all to say that there is “optimal” answer for how to train, simply as the human body is too unique. What you learn are principles, but they themselves can only be learned by application.
For the individual, your lesson is that you are your greatest experiment. Your training will change as you change, and what works for you is a process of self discovery.
For those reasons, I suggest MODERATE schedules to people, and establishing a baseline before adjusting to more or less. For those reasons
I recommend 3-4 days a week of lifting as an Ideal Schedule to begin with
Why?
For the following reasons
1. Most classic-age bodybuilders trained only 3-4 times a week, and they achieved peak muscularity.
Classic age refers to bodybuilders pre-1960s who were natural (no steroids). Despite training only 3-4 times weekly, they were no smaller than the natural bodybuilders of today. Modern natural bodybuilders are no longer muscular than those men from 80 years ago, despite often training twice as much.
While there is no comprehensive singular source on training from this time, the routines still exist. Steve Reeves is the most famous example of a three-day-a-week routine. This was one of his full-body schedules.
2. There is a great deal of research on the most optimal training frequencies and volume, and strength training 1-3 times a week produces surprisingly similar results at least in beginners) 5 years ago, I read this scientific analysis on training frequency. I encourage you all to read it.
The author, Paul Ingraham, examines multiple strength training studies with similar conclusions. There was no significant difference in results between training once a week, twice a week, or three times a week.
Does that mean you should only train once per week?
No.
Adaptations happen faster with more training, but this analysis demonstrated how even ONE DAY of hard strength training can produce adaptations.
Keep that in mind, any amount of training is better than no training.
3. You need less sets than you think
Research by Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., showed 10 working sets per week, per muscle, built more muscle than five sets per week, which is strong evidence that higher volume is superior to lower volume for hypertrophy.
But adding more sets beyond that is rapidly diminishing returns, with 20 sets in a week being the upper limit.
Meta analysis has also shown that if you sets to failure each time, you need LESS sets to get a training adaptation. So anywhere from 5-10 hard sets to failure could be equivalent to do 10-20 moderate sets. Again, you dont need that much training to get great results
4. Training consistency matters more than schedule
You dont grow based on how much you train, but how much you can recover from. Would it make a difference if the ten sets were done in one workout versus two? Considering that you can find examples of both training splits delivering successful training outcomes, it would not appear so.
The difference in outcomes becomes one of individual response and preference: every trainee is different, and whether someone gets better results from higher volume versus lower volume or 1x weekly or 2x weekly depends on their genetic responsiveness to training.
Again, what do you recover and adapt from.
5. On a long enough timeline, all program splits are equal.
Arguably, training with more frequency could build muscle more, and it would seem probable that more volume (10+ sets) equates to more muscle growth, but you will find case studies that prove every kind of training model.
Whether anyone trains a muscle once a week, twice a week, or every day, everyone ends up maxing out at their genetic or enhanced limit for muscle growth.
6. Bro Splits Work
It’s currently popular to criticize 1x frequency bro splits as being stupid, but they are good programs if you analyze them. They use high volume for each muscle group, usually 12-20 sets, and they do that in one workout. A week later, they train the same muscle again.
They are always fully recovered between workouts.
These programs do not work because of “steroids!” but because all other factors are equal, they have sufficient volume and complete recovery. Remember when we said training even 1x a week can produce results. Training a muscle hard once a week lines up with that.
7. Does training with greater frequency and volume get you there faster? Sort of.
Muscle growth for natural trainees happens on a curve of diminishing returns. The first year of training yields the most muscle, and gains decrease by half each subsequent year. By year 4-5, a natural trainee would have hit his genetic limits. Any gains after that will be prolonged.
The following is credited to Lyle Mcdonald
1 Year Of Proper Training = 20-25 lbs of lean muscle per year
2 Years Of Proper Training = 10-12 lbs of lean muscle per year
3 Years Of Proper Training = 5-6 lbs of lean muscle per year
4+ Years Of Proper Training = 2-3 lbs of lean muscle per year (not worth calculating)
Higher volume and frequency training could facilitate reaching one’s upper genetic limit in a shorter time.
I believe this, and it’s why most of my programs are higher volume and why they deliver exceptional results for the men that follow them.
But you still end up in the same place. It might happen in only three years, not 4, but eventually, everyone hits their respective limit where gaining additional muscle mass becomes a slow, incremental process.
Additionally, the more advanced one becomes, the more intense and damaging workouts are on the body. Performing a set of hack squats with 400 lbs is a much greater effort and digs a deeper ditch for recovery than hack squats with 100 lbs.
Advanced trainees who have been training with progressive overload and gotten substantially stronger with time learn by experience that they need to be more expedient and efficient with their workouts and training volume if they want to keep making gains.
8. Enjoyment matters Most
The vast majority of fitness enthusiasts like to train a lot because they like to train a lot. Working out is enjoyable. They don’t do it for pure efficiency of results but because they love being in the gym.
They like feeling a pump and making a muscle burn; getting stronger, going longer, using their body to move .
Exercise should be enjoyable, after all. We can analyze training and attempt to be emotionless and objective, but this is a false approach. Ultimately what keeps people consistent is the joy of the process, the satisfying of the psychological and physiological.
9. Respective of efficiency-minded athletes (or at least try to be at the elite level), powerlifters, and strongmen, training 3-4 times per week is the most popular and widely proven schedule.
The historical and scientific evidence lines up within the context of strength, i.e., the ability to express very high levels of muscular force. Strength athletes will train a particular lift only once weekly with great success. The most proven powerlifting programs have athletes squatting, benching, and deadlifting only once a week. The occasional 4th training day is an “Accessory” day in which other lower-intensity lifts are done for hypertrophy work.
10. What Does All This Add Up To, Then? Something like this
All programs work on a long enough timeline if they are done correctly and consistently. The best program is contextual to the individual trainee, their personality, experience level, how they like to train, and the execution of proper technique, loading, and recovery. The arguments over the best way to train and any mythologizing about an ultimate program are pointless: everything can work.
If you want to work out purely for “health,” you can get results in 2-3 weekly sessions. Even one day a week is better than none.
If you want to work out for “fitness” and have more aspirational goals, 3-4 days a week works excellently in the long term, although it may not suit your desire for speed in the short term.
You can train 5-7 days a week if you want to train a lot. It might get your goals faster, and it suits certain personality types. Psychology and physiology are a strange loop.
Training volume matters as much as frequency, and training intensity with progressive overload matters as much as volume. The person who gets stronger and bigger over the long term is the person who is trained objectively to get bigger and stronger over the long term. Progression is not an accident. If the weights never go up, your training is not working.
The reason people lack results in the gym is multifaceted: ineffective exercise selection, non-consistent workouts, poor understanding of how to progress, and insufficient recovery (sleep, calories, protein, etc.)
Training goes in stages, and training is dynamic as life is dynamic. Promoting continuous adaptation requires periodic changes in stimulus (periodization, i.e., scientific planning of workouts in the long term), and no serious athlete trains the same every day and every week. The gym and resistance training is no different. Training will change with you through your personal evolution.