Achieve Greater Results In Half The Time
Starting your fitness journey may have you wondering how much life you will have with the amount of time you will spend in the gym. Luckily for you, it is far less time than you have likely imagined!
The internet is riddled with influencers who are spreading messages such as “team no days off,” “lift weights every day,” or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” All those messages are toxic and, unfortunately, will lead to a long-term lack of results. It is possible if you are in your teens, early twenties, or even early thirties that you can work out up to five days a week and recover naturally. After that, chances are that recovery will take longer. We believe at Formal Fitness Training that the optimal number of days of training per week ranges from two to five days. Let’s explain.
Two days per week is perfect for someone who is older (say, over 55) and hasn’t exercised much for years. These folks will be sore no matter how little they do early on. After six months or so, they can add a third day; anything beyond that is unnecessary.
Three days per week is fine for more people; it gives twenty-four hours between workouts, and it also allows you to not commit most of your free time to the gym.
Four days per week is the sweet spot if you are in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or maybe even your 60s, assuming you have been active most of your life and have spent an appropriate amount of time allowing your body to get used to lifting weights and working out. This is the framework where you can afford one or two cheat meals a week without destroying your progress.
Five days per week is possible only if diet, sleep, supplementation, stress, and programming are optimized. Overtraining and injuries can easily occur on a five-day-per-week split.
Six or seven days of training per week is not recommended.
It is difficult to understand why individuals think that after they have spent ten years gaining weight or five years doing nothing and getting out of shape, somehow magically, they can go to the gym and outwork hundreds of weeks of mistakes in a few short weeks by overexercising. You can’t. Expectations are made worse by coaches and trainers who overpromise and underdeliver. Being honest with the client is paramount for a long-term relationship (partnership) to ensue.
What is the perfect amount of exercise for living life and progressing performance?
The sweet spot structure we will talk about below has a few assumptions. It assumes you are relatively active with seven thousand steps per day, you sleep at least seven hours per night, and your stress is minimal. If any of those items are out of whack, you may want to address them before embarking on a body-recomposition journey through weight training. Those three items—steps, sleep, and stress—are non-negotiable. It also assumes that you have spent one to two years working through two and three-day per week programs and have gone through the adaptations of the central nervous system (soreness and recovery cycles).
How long and often do I need to be in the gym?
Forty-five minutes of weight training, ten minutes of warm-up and cool-down (five-minute warm-up and five-minute cool-down), and ten minutes of stretching—4 days per week!
One hour and five minutes, four days per week. That is all you need to get great results. Things that will amplify the results mentioned, along with prioritizing protein and matching your carbohydrate intake to your activity level (hard workout days; more carbohydrates; laying on the sofa days; less carbohydrates).
Picking the appropriate amount of time in the gym will allow you to recover and give maximal effort when you are in the gym, thus amplifying your results 10x.
Michael Hartman
My mission is to give personal training participants a safe and effective workout designed specifically for their goals. Dealing with many sports injuries over the years taught me how to come back stronger every time. The competition is with yourself... Strive to bring out your best self and get better every day!
