How Often Should You Need to Work Out?
How often should you exercise? It depends on your goal. Whether you want to gain muscle, lose weight, or live a generally healthy life. If you want to stay healthy, you have to exercise; there is no doubt. But exactly how often do you need to work out? In this article, we will guide you on how often you really need to work out.
How often you need to work out to gain muscle:
Some people believe in the value of training daily, so exactly how many times should you actually work out per week? Certainly, rest days are important. After all, strength and growth adaptations do not occur during the workout but rather during your sleep and recovery. But if you’re only walking on a treadmill for 2 hours while watching videos on your phone, rest won’t matter. On the other hand, if you are lifting the heaviest weights possible for as many reps as possible each workout, then rest is necessary. Now you have to ask yourself what you’re going to do in the workout in the first place. If you do a lot of high-intensity, failure-type training, then certainly you should rest more often. In general, 2-4 days of workouts are more than enough to gain muscle.
Cardio exercise:
If you do cardio exercise for 25 minutes two to three days, it’s more than enough for you.
Strength training:
Strength training is very important for gaining muscle. Research suggests that training for a minimum of two to three days will help you gain muscle strength. Strength training workouts depend on your current fitness level, so if you are a beginner, you can do two to three days per week of strength training workouts (full-body workout each session). If you are intermediate, you can do three to four days per week of workouts (upper/lower body workout). And if you are advanced, you can do four to five days of workouts (as an advanced workout, you can do full-body workouts and cardio as well). If you think four days of strength workouts feel right for you, then you can consider splitting your week up into upper (arms, chest, and abs) and lower (legs) body segments. For example:
Monday: Upper body
Tuesday: Lower body
Wednesday: Cardio
Thursday: Upper body
Friday: Lower body
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
After all of this, if you are not gaining muscle as you would like, then you can add extra weight to your lifts, and also make sure you give plenty of time to rest between strength training sessions.
How often you need to work out to lose weight
In our busy life, it’s very hard to make a plan for a workout. In this article, we will help you optimize your workout routine, but you also have to remember that no one can give you a magic formula to lose weight. Why? Our bodies are so different, our lifestyles are different, metabolisms are different, calorie intake, all of that stuff. So, we recommend you get moving every day. Research suggests that, in general, losing one to two pounds per week is more than enough. Now, I’m going to share with you a few exercises that can help you lose weight effectively. If you exercise regularly, you can burn calories, but if you don’t follow a diet plan, you can’t lose weight. So, now what you have to do is make a diet plan as well. How much weight you can burn depends on how many times you are willing to exercise and also how closely you follow your diet plan. As a beginner, you can start with two days of workouts, and after that, you can go for four to five days.
For losing weight, you can do:
- Cardio
- Strength training
- Core work
- Stretching
Cardio exercise:
30 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio activity at least two days per week (60 minutes per week)
at least 25 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity three days per week (75 minutes per week)
Strength training:
Try to do two to three days per week of strength training. Include full-body workouts that focus on compound exercises. These are moves that work multiple muscles at a time.
Examples include:
- Squats with a shoulder press
- Deadlift with a bent-over row
- Lunges with a lateral raise
- Push-ups and planks with a one-arm row
