How many times to work out per week

JUST FOR YOU KATHY!

so, I touched on overtraining/overreaching and what I thought was good for a training amount per week in Myths Part 3 (http://megamarty.blogspot.com/2010/08/nutrition-training-myths-part-3.html)

So, People are asking:
"How many days a week should I be working out?"

as every answer I have given, it depends.

what is the goal?
how much time fits into your schedule?
how far along are you in terms of beginner, intermediate, advanced trainee/athlete?
how is your nutritional status(I ask this a LOT don't I? maybe its important hmmmm)?

obviously, the majority of my clients are into bodybuilding/figure, not so much other sports as in football, basketball etc. (however I've trained many hockey and football players to great success)

so, we're going to go off rough guidelines that you can apply to your own training.

the biggest one with most people is time. yes, I know you're busy. Yes, I understand some of you have kids. Yes, I know a 6 pack is much more enticing than leg day.

But after you get rid of a LOT of those bogus excuses, you're left with 2 things.
1) the amount of time you can come to the gym
2) the amount of time you're willing to spend on your goal/the gym

these are 2 different things.

if you decide I'm willing to give it my "all" then great. if not? great. up to you.

NOW

as I have stated, and it is still relevant, NO endless hours in the gym are NOT necessary.

cardio is a whole other gig which I'm not going to touch on today, and have touched on in the past.


so when it comes to WEIGHT TRAINING (my definition of "working out" but some others don't have this definition), there is a limit and a minimum.

I will use myself for an example.
I was recently doing a 3 day split. chest/shoulders/triceps, back/biceps, legs/abs

This was working great for ahwile, until my leg day got heavy. really heavy. then one night with my 2 workout partners (and NO it wasn't because we were horsing around, you'd be surprised how "on topic" we are in the gym) and I were sacked. and we still had hams and calves and abs left. even more accurately, one partner was yawning before we got to the 3rd quad exercise from just shear exhaustion/demand of the workout.

so, we looked at it. could we possibly split this up? maybe put hams/calves on one day, quads/abs on another? sure could. and voila, that is what we did.

but this is what i want you to take away from this:
we just simply DIVIDED the time. not INCREASED total weekly workout time. a 2.5 hour workout went into a 1 hour and 1.5 hour workout.

so, also don't get carried away in the sense that "oh, Marty's leg workout was 2.5 hours, mine must need to also!"

No.

That's you missing the boat. turn around. there is the boat you want to get on.

also, don't swing ridiculously the other way, splitting up body parts into ludicrously small workouts.

To loosely quote Dorian Yates " I never saw the need for an arm day. I'm not driving to the gym for a 25 minute workout"

I wish more people adopted this philosophy.

don't have a 7 day split ala chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, back, legs, abs or some other crazy split that requires you to be there all the time. I know a LOT of you love the gym. and I am in that camp myself. If I could workout all the time and see results, I would.

Wait, let me change that.

If I could Squat all the time, and have my body proportionately grow to where I want it to be, I would.

so is 3 days better? for some, yes.

is 4 days better? for some, yes.

is 5 days better? for some, yes.

lets give examples:

3 days/week -> beginner, and someone who has commitments/time constraints on the other days in their schedule. of course, workouts will be longER than 4 or 5 days, but sometimes this is the best fit. also, myself included, I find I can concentrate my energy a lot better when I don't have to throw myself through the wringer day in and out from the level of intensity that I have adopted.

4 days/week -> more flexible time (such as my new workout) with workouts being still sound/paired up muscle groups and moving a bit more quickly (aka. workouts are shorter)

5 days/week -> professional or equivalent. maybe you need to be fresh for a problem area, or someone has a very specialized program built around you for very specific reasons (to date, I do not have anyone working out 5X per week. I feel my athletes get more than enough weights in 4 days/week) this to me would be the upper end. anything more than 5X/week is going way too overboard.

lets say you smashed out legs, and now you have to come back tomorrow and do chest. Just because you're not training legs again today does NOT mean their recovery isn't being compromised from you come in and training chest. the body is going to have to stop shuffling resources to recovering legs in lieu of contracting the Chest.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT!

questions welcome, but I believe that sums it up pretty good!