How many times a week should we train?

Good morning!

Welcome to another edition of the “Train For Life” newsletter.

In today’s edition we are going to discuss how many resistance training sessions we should be doing a week.

OR perhaps more importantly how often we actually NEED TO TRAIN each week.

A more technical description of this subject is what the optimal training frequency is for YOU.

And of course this is going to be different for everyone and dependant on a few key factors, which are:

• Your age

• Your fitness and health levels

• Your goals

• Your stress levels (or total allostatic load)

Lets have a quick dive into each one and how/why it should have an influence on how often you get into the gym….

Your age:

There is a biological ageing process called senescence meaning all living organisms experience less ability to repair and regenerate cells over time.

This affects everything from the skin, brain, muscles, cardiovascular system and so on.

While we MUST exercise and train regularly in order to slow this process down and age more gracefully…

We must respect our age and recuperative abilities as doing too much and too often can become detrimental.

This means we might start to lose out on some of the positive benefits of resistance training.

Your fitness and health levels:

This should be fairly obvious but it still needs to be said…

If you are out of shape, overcoming an illness/injury or getting back into training after a “lay off” then this must dictate your training frequency, at least at the start.

Getting to the gym once a week might be best to start with and what you can tolerate safely, and then slowly build up from there.

Whenever any health issues are present it pays to be a little more risk averse.

I sign off a lot of my social media posts with “play the long game”, and its exactly how I approach exercise with ALL my clients.

Your goals:

If you are simply training to maintain muscle mass as you get older (50+) then you do not need to be in the gym 5 days a week.

Plenty of research supports 2 times per week as a good starting point for maintaining muscle mass and help offset age related muscle loss.

If you’re using resistance training to assist you with a sporting endeavour, then factor in the TOTAL amount of exercise each week you need to recover from.

Twice per week is enough depending on how much sport you play, but could argue once per week will still be useful if that ‘s all you have time for.

Especially as you’re already active throughout the week.

If you’re looking to gain muscle or drop bodyfat and you’re otherwise healthy, then you can certainly try 3 sessions each week.

The extra weekly volume can be beneficial for improving body composition, providing your nutrition and food intake supports your goals!

You can do more as long as you can recover, but understand this newsletter is targeted to busy people aged 40 and over, not 20 year olds with minimal stress in their life!

I will avoid going into rehabilitation based goals as its out of the scope of this newsletter, and a very broad subject…

However if you are using resistance training for injury management (after rehab), then 1-2 specific sessions a week might be a good starting point.

Your total stress/allostatic load:

Stress is a BIG factor when it comes to training recovery and how often you should train.

Training is another stress on the system in the same way as poor sleep patterns, poor food choices, toxic load, work stress, family stress and so on.

The total combination of ALL your stressors is what is known as your allostatic load.

Training too often or too hard when you’re already stressed can lead to the following:

• Injuries

• Illness

• Burnout (mental and physical)

I will leave it there but I cannot stress enough (pun not intended…) that you have to LISTEN TO YOUR BODY.

Some of the warning signs that you likely need to back off and reduce your training frequency can include:

• Lack of motivation to train

• Sleep disturbances

• Not making progress OR regressing

• Onset of muscle or joint pains

• Getting colds, infections, cold sores etc

It is hard to give specific advice on this as everyone’s situation is different, but start by cutting back ONE SESSION per week and see how you feel?

When it comes to training frequency Its all about YOUR lifestyle, age, overall health status and whether you are making progress over time!

NOT what the fitness industry or an article deems is appropriate.

To wrap up…

Today’s newsletter is not aimed to give you definitive or generic answers on the best training frequency.

But to hopefully educate you on how to set up a weekly schedule that suits YOU RIGHT NOW and works for your unique needs and time of life.

There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to resistance training, only what is best for you.

If you want to know more about how I can help you set up an exercise program that is suitable for you.

Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or email me on [email protected].

For now thanks for reading today, and stay tuned for the next edition of Train For Life next Saturday!

Daryl