How many days per week should us normal people train?

How many days per week should us normal people train?

“Normal” people are considered those who aren’t bodybuilders or competitive strength athletes. Their needs are much different.

Normal people are average everyday Joes and Janes who want to build some muscle, burn some fat and get strong without having their lives revolve around training.

So how many days per week should you train for optimal results?

Two days per week?

Four days per week?

Seven days per week?

It’s going to depend heavily on a number of factors, including the following:

1. Training age (the length of time you’ve been working out seriously)

2. Biological age

3. Time dedicated to train

4. Goals

5. Injury history

Notice gender isn’t included on this list. Men and women shouldn’t train different based on their sex. Instead, they need to be trained according to individual differences.

If you’re a beginner, as in you haven’t trained intelligently for more than a few months, you’re going to be best served to start with two to four full-body workouts per week.

If you’re younger and/or you can tolerate more training, you’re best served to begin with three or four times per week. If you’re older and/or you don’t tolerate training as well yet, you’re best served to begin with two or three times per week. These are guidelines, but aren’t set in stone. It still depends highly on you as an individual.

***Note – you’re still considered a “beginner” if you’ve been working out consistently for 20 years, but not doing so in an intelligent manner

Strength is a skill, and it needs to be practiced often for you to improve. Constantly switching up what you’re doing as a beginner is a recipe for disaster.

When you’re a newbie or relative newbie, focusing on progressive overload and training a muscle group as often as possible are going to yield the best results.

Progressive overload involves gradually increasing the stress you place on your muscles over time. You increase the stress by adding either sets, reps or weight.

***Note – before you increase the stress you place on your body, ensure you have proper form

Once you’ve been training intelligently for at least a few months, you’ll need to make adjustments to your workouts to continue making progress because you’re not going to be able to add stress in a linear manner to your body forever!

You can do things like manipulating your set and rep schemes (i.e. performing five sets of three reps instead of three sets of five reps) or increasing the number of days you workout.

Let’s be honest, as we get older, our bodies don’t run as efficiently as when we’re younger and recovery becomes increasingly important.

As you age and have accumulated a high amount of stress on your body via physical activity, you’re going to need to focus on quality more so than quantity.

While you may have been able to train hard five or six days per week in the past, you might need to back off to three or four days per week as you get older and focus on efficiency during each workout.

With that being said, someone who’s 65 years old who hasn’t trained much throughout his/her life may be able to tolerate more training than someone who’s 35 years old but has beat his/her body to shreds.

That’s why lifestyle factors must be taken into account as well when determining the number of times per week you need to train.

The amount of time you’ve made available for yourself to train must be factored in as well. Your workout program is going to look different if you’ve allotted four days per week for yourself to train versus three days per week.

When considering the amount of time you need to spend training, you’ve got to consider your priorities and goals, which we’ll discuss below.

A bodybuilder stepping on stage at a national competition is going to have completely different training requirements than a mother of three kids who wants to look toned for an upcoming family vacation.

Different goals are likely require different amounts of time dedicated to training. If your goal is to become as strong as possible, you’re going to need to train more than two days per week. If you’re a parent who works more than 40 hours per week who wants to drop a little body fat, you’re probably going to be better off training three or four days per week instead of six or seven.

If your goal is to get a six pack, you need to understand three hours per week of training isn’t going to be enough for most people who aren’t blessed genetically.

You need to be willing to put in many hours in the gym each week and dial in your nutrition and recovery to exceptional levels.

The goal for which you’re training factors into how often you need to workout each week.

The nice thing about strength training is, unless you’re paralyzed, you can always do something. If you’ve got a broken arm, you can still train your legs doing exercises like leg extensions, leg curls and leg presses. If you’ve got a broken leg, you can still train your upper body doing exercises like seated bicep curls, seated overhead press variations and bench press variations.

With that being said, you need to factor in previous injuries when deciding on your training split. If you have an injury, avoid exercises and/or movement patterns that cause pattern and replace them with suitable alternatives.

When building a workout program, the first thing many people do is workout as often as possible. You’ll see individuals who go from not working out at all to working out seven days per week.

Let’s discuss why this approach isn’t a good idea for long-term success.

After a while of training with the same volume and intensity, our body adapts. That’s why we need to continually give our bodies a greater stress over time.

So if you’re a beginner who starts out training seven hours per week, once you stop making progress, you’re going to need to add in even more training to continue to make progress.

For most average folks, training eight or more hours per week isn’t going to be sustainable.

Plus, unless you have phenomenal recovery, most individuals don’t have bodies capable of handling that type of stress without getting injured.

So if you’re not currently working out, it’s better to start off training three days per week because you can always add more volume later. It’s going to be a much more sustainable and safer approach for average folks.