Most people think that they should go to the gym more often . For example, they think that switching from an exercise routine of 3 days a ...
Most people think that they should go to the gym more often . For example, they think that switching from an exercise routine of 3 days a week to an exercise routine of 6 days a week should be for improvement. However, when we examine it scientifically, the situation is a little different. What if we told you that going to more salons won't always make you more profitable?
In this post, I'll take you through research to answer an old question, "How many days a week should you train?"
The answers may surprise you. Does training more often automatically lead to better results, or can people who go to the gym 5-6 days a week and those who go 2-3 days a week get the same benefit? We're going to talk about questions like: In addition, we will evaluate how often strength and cardio training should be done, how we can make the training a habit, the importance of rest days and sleep in terms of muscle development. If you're ready, let's start.
The first question on many people's minds when considering starting an exercise routine first is how many days they will need to train. In fact, like most things in the fitness world, there is no single answer to this question. Here is the clearest answer we can give you; You Should Exercise As Often As You Can Cope. The best training frequency will always be the one you follow.
How Many Times A Week Should Strength Training Be Done?
A 2018 meta-analysis checked 22 studies and compared the gains of people who hit the gym 3 times a week compared to those who went less . The results of the research revealed that those who go to the gym more do not necessarily earn more than those who go less. If this has confused you, continue reading.
As you try to build your muscle mass, you need to increase your strength to prepare your muscles to carry more weight. Strength training is a very important way to keep your body functional for a long time. In other words, these exercises have many benefits other than physical expectation. However, if you want to see these benefits effectively, you need to do your training regularly. The question of how many days a week you need to go to the gym for regular training is a confusing issue. First of all, we would like to start by questioning your training routine.
- Is the volume of exercise you will perform during the week sufficient for you?
( Training volume shows all the work done during the entire workout. The total weight lifted during a workout and the duration of the workout are the total volume.)
- Do you perform each set with enough effort and intensity to fully stimulate your muscle fibers?
Researches; He emphasizes that adapting your training program by answering these questions is more important than how many times you go to the gym. From another point of view, it is stated that the rate of muscle growth will be similar no matter how many days you choose to work out without providing enough volume and intensity. Let's question the subject a little more with science;
If you are just starting out with training, let's include a little bit of work done for you in our article. In a 2018 study, researchers conducted a trial on beginners. Both groups were doing the same total work throughout the week, but one group did all the work in one day and the other in three days. The degree of perceived effort was taken into account when evaluating the trainings. In the study, those who trained in 3 days found it easier to do the training in a short time. As a result of the research, both groups made gains. But with more frequent training, the men got a little stronger. This method can be one of the very effective strategies that beginners can apply.
Another study was done in 2015. The researchers examined the effects of how long muscle-protein synthesis took in beginners compared to those who were "trained." Muscle-protein synthesis (MPS) is the physical process of moving protein into muscle and making them bigger and stronger (as opposed to muscle protein degradation or muscle breakdown).
In this study, you can see that after just ten hours , those who are experienced in training have almost finished the muscle building process. This means that if they want to get back to building muscle, they have to train again.
For starters, you can see that their muscle protein synthesis continues to be high even after about 24 hours , and they still continue to grow properly after 36 hours. (Remember, splitting your days can make your workouts feel easier and cause less pain, so a beginner can try working out 4-6 times a week as long as they spread the workout evenly throughout the week.)
Let's move on to another study; In 2007, researchers looked at ten competitive weightlifters who were about 20 years old. They were all training daily, but they had one group spread the training over two sessions a day versus just one session.
The group that trained twice a day included:
- increased testosterone levels
- a better T:C ratio (testosterone to cortisol)
From this point of view, we see the positive effect of exercising more frequently (in relation to hormones) on muscle development.
Finally, let's talk about the research that will answer the question of whether doing fitness for two days improves strength . Examining studies with the same training volumes and targeting muscle groups 1 to 3 days a week, it shows that twice-weekly training frequency provides more hypertrophic results than once a week, as expected. Therefore, it can be concluded that to maximize muscle growth, the main muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week. Based on this, if you have a busy life, do not stay away from training by thinking that you will only do sports for two days. From another perspective, it has not yet been determined whether training a muscle group three times a week is superior to the twice-weekly protocol.
How Many Times A Week Should Cardio Training Be Done?
Doing cardio keeps your circulatory system working at its best, helping you recover faster and increasing your stamina. In addition, cardio not only burns calories, but also raises your mood and helps you to relieve your daily stress. For this reason, it is a very important type of exercise. However, you should not consider cardio only as very heavy workouts. If you hate cardio workouts, I suggest you question your perspective on it. Exactly what you do for cardio depends on what you like to do. You have a lot of options for good cardio: walking outdoors, cycling or more functional movements and agility work that you will do in the halls,
As we mentioned above, the cardio we do with good expectations does not always give positive results. This was analyzed in a study by LR Gettman, ML Pollock, CA Milesis, L. Durstine, MD Bah, and RB Johnson. In the study, the risk of injury was compared between the subjects who jogged 5 days a week and those who jogged 1-3 days a week. Individuals who jogged for 5 days showed a higher risk of injury. This corresponded to a lower injury rate for those who jogged 1 or 3 days a week. All these results mean that practicing more training can leave you with the possibility of injury rather than improvement.
As we mentioned, the biggest mistake made in cardio work is to put the body under a serious load every day and force it to lose weight. Such a load will take your general health back. If your goal is just physical fitness, doing cardio once a week will suffice. However, if you are an athlete or if your expectations from your body are beyond physical fitness, you can include cardio exercises several times in your training. In addition, although cardio does not prevent muscle gain, it can slow down. If you add more than 3 cardio sessions of 20-30 minutes of exercise per week, you'll likely experience slower muscle building progress.
Let's talk a little bit about what might change the order we prefer on the days when we will practice cardio and strength training, which we have been paying attention to for the last few years. Yes, doing cardio before or after strength training can make a big difference. A 2016 study found that a 20-minute cardio session before strength training caused participants to do fewer reps. This shows that aerobic exercises tire your muscles and make it difficult for you to perform at the highest possible level. So if your goal is strength development, it's better to do cardio after weight training.
Another thing to consider is the type of cardio. Because your muscles need to rest after a weight training session, the cardio you do after strength training shouldn't work the same muscles any more. For example, after doing leg press exercises, you should not continue with running exercises. This will work your leg muscles more.
Apart from these, cardio are not exercises that will force you to the point that you will pass out. Surprisingly, a study published in the Journal of the American Physiological Society showed that a daily cardio program with lower-intensity exercise was more effective than high-intensity exercise. In the study, overweight men who exercised for 30 minutes a day lost more weight than those who exercised for 60 minutes a day.
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week. How you split it up will depend on what kind of workout you do. However, remember this; The higher the intensity, the shorter the workout time, If you want to work out longer, go for a lower intensity.
How Can We Make Training a Habit?
A recent study by researcher Diane Klein shed some light on the subject.
Athletes were asked about their training expectations and what motivates them. Contrary to popular belief, the participants were not interested in having strong chest muscles and great abdominal muscles, as they wanted to feel good and be healthy.
Study participants listed their motivations as follows:
- Fitness
- feelings of well-being
- feeling more energetic
- Enjoy your workout
- Making exercise a priority
- sleep better
- feeling mindful
- be comfortable
- Appearance
Workouts require a lot of determination and discipline to stick with it in the long run. In short, getting your expectations is a long-term job. For this reason, you must be patient and ensure the continuity of training. Even though your business life is a bit more difficult with your general fatigue, it is not something you can't do when you position sports correctly in your life planning. For this reason, let's make some suggestions to ensure your training habit;
- Do a variety of activities that you enjoy; Include whichever workout you like to do in your planning. Don't choose activities like jogging or weight lifting at the gym because you think that's what you should do. Instead, choose activities that suit your lifestyle, abilities, and tastes. Various sports activities added in between (hiking, cycling, swimming..) will be very good for you.
- Make exercise a priority. Let sports be an indispensable part of your life instead of free time. Remember, there is nothing more precious than your body. You will probably feel better after exercising.
- Create a notebook for your activity. Write down how much exercise you do, how many steps you walk, how far you run or bike, and your goals each day. Writing these can be a visual element that increases your motivation. Some people play a game of it. (You may have heard that runners calculate the miles needed to run from their home to Boston (home of the famous marathon), calculate how far they run in an average week, and set a target date for their "arrival" in Boston.)
- Consider the benefits of sports for you; These; having more energy, increased focus, seeing your resting heart rate drop over time, better cholesterol, blood pressure in short everything that can be good for your body. Exercising regularly is one of the best things you can do for your health. Shortly after you start exercising, you will begin to see and feel the benefits of physical activity on your body and health.
- Get rid of the all-or-nothing attitude. Once you cancel the workout, go eagerly for the next one.
- Check your expectations . Expecting too much will only lead to disappointment. For this, you need to know your body well. You should know what you can and cannot do and create a program accordingly. Focus on your continuity rather than obsess over results. For example; You may want to train 5 times a week, yes it can improve you a lot. But how likely are you to continue? The further your goal is, the more likely you are to fail, feel bad, and give up. Make sure that your training goals are specific to you, not necessarily practical. And don't forget to increase the targets.
- Reward yourself. When you get a good result or maintain training continuity, make yourself happy with something that will motivate you.
- Sometimes we need to be inspired by individuals we like or look like. With a clear focus on training and nutrition, we can better motivate ourselves.
- Another important consideration is determining when to exercise. Some people feel more energetic in the morning, while others drift. Matching your workout time to when you feel your best can increase your odds of sticking to it.
Rest Days
Taking a break allows your body to recover and rebuild, so you can return to your workouts refreshed and ready. If you don't get enough rest into your training program, you put yourself at risk of overtraining, which can increase your risk of injury. The best thing you can do is listen to your own body; If you need more rest, don't take it as a failure. The rest day should actually be considered active recovery. You can go for walks or do light stretches to better perform active recovery.
Rest is an important part of fitness, and the hard work you put into reaching your goals can be what makes it so important. You may need rest if you are facing the following situations;
- Depression
- Loss of appetite
- severe fatigue
- Slower recovery and longer recovery times
- Changes in mood and inability to focus or concentrate
- Pain and aches in the joints
- Depressed immune system – increased chance of catching colds and other infections
- You may not be able to lift the weights that you normally lift very easily. This is due to fatigue, not your strength.
How Important Is Sleep?
As you know, glucose is the primary compound used to generate energy in your cells. During sleep, blood sugar is stored in the muscles as glycogen . While you sleep, its excess glucose is converted to glycogen and then stored in your muscle and liver tissues. This allows the contraction-relaxation process of myocytes (i.e. muscle cells) to be maintained more efficiently. If you don't get enough sleep, this whole process is disrupted. In other words, slow glycogen storage takes place in our body. In short, not getting enough sleep leads to poor performance and negative muscle development.
A 2011 study looked at how sleep deprivation affected muscle gains and recovery. The study followed individuals who were on a strict sleep schedule for 72 hours. During this time, the Researchers divided the subjects into two groups:
- Those who sleep 8.5 hours a night (this is within the range most experts recommend)
- Another group that only sleeps 5.5 hours a night (as previously mentioned is pretty standard for many Americans nowadays)
All individuals followed a calorie-regulated diet. Both groups were then given a regular calorie deficit for two weeks. As expected, both groups lost the same amount of weight because the calorie deficit was equal.
But what was interesting was the content of the weight they lost.
What the researchers discovered was that individuals who slept for just 5.5 hours had 60% less muscle mass at the end of the study , while those who slept 8.5 hours had 40% more muscle mass.
Thus, it indicates that sleep has a powerful effect not only on muscle recovery and growth, but also on fat loss.
In short, with adequate sleep, your ability to gain muscle quickly improves by increasing your circulating testosterone levels. Except those; It's critical to overcoming size and strength plateaus by raising our IGF-1 levels and allowing us to better recruit satellite cells into our muscle fibers. Getting enough sleep chronically better sleep reduces chronic inflammation, speeds up muscle repair, reduces our risk of injury, and improves our overall health . It has been shown in studies to increase lean mass gains by about 30% (as well as reduce fat gain).
Dr. According to research by Bert Jacobson, insomnia will hamper energy levels and make us susceptible to mood swings. There is a lot of research showing that our emotional state can directly affect our athletic performance .
In short, sleeping 7-9 hours every night is very important especially for changing your body composition, increasing muscle mass and being ready for training. Sleep enhances muscle recovery through protein synthesis and human growth hormone release. Without adequate sleep, muscle mass decreases .
Less Is More Enough
According to the guidelines recommended by the American College of Sport Medicine (ACSM), your exercise intensity should be 60-85% of your maximum heart rate. The training session should last between 20-60 minutes, 3-5 times a week. However, as we mentioned, if your goals are far beyond these, it is possible to change your training intensity accordingly.
In short, don't get hung up on the day and training time for strength training. A 2018 study showed that less than an hour of training produced similar functional results to five times more training. But the point we want to remind you here is that it all depends on your fitness history, available time and personal goals.
However, if you have high expectations from your body, you should also have high expectations from training. The best exercise routine for you and how many days you work out may seem quite different to someone else than a solid routine. The type of training you do depends on your ability, your goals, your likes and dislikes, the equipment available, what injuries you have, and how much time you have. REMEMBER; Doing something is better than doing nothing. But good things are earned with great effort.
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