How Many Times a Week Should You Exercise for Best Results?

Percentage Of The Week You Should Work Out For These Workout Styles.

How Many Times a Week Should You Exercise for Best Results?

We all have different results that we expect to achieve. Exercising for the best results require different training routines. For example, let’s look at strength training.

Building Strength

If your goal is to build strength, 4 days per week will help get you to goal. Strength training involves performing multiple sets using heavy weights which can fatigue your nervous system more so than other types of workouts. Just be sure to have a day of rest or light cardio in-between your strength training sessions.

Losing Weight

On the other hand, if you are trying to lose weight, training 3 days per week is adequate. Fat burning routines usually involve the whole body and lots of large muscle group movement resulting in huge energy expenditures. You need a day in-between each training day to build back up your energy reserves and to allow your muscles to repair themselves.

Weight Maintenance

Exercising for weight maintenance requires somewhat of a different strategy since most likely your focus will be on still burning a large number of calories per session, but at a lesser intensity level than you would do for weight loss. Cardio training an hour per day, six days per week fills this bill; rest on the seventh day. Your cardio schedule should look something like training 30 to 45 minutes every other day mixed with at least 30 minutes of strength training per day on two of your non-cardio days.

Staying Healthy

There is also one other type of results that we must address – just staying healthy. Getting exercise regularly is a big part to reducing your risk for certain diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The American Cancer Society recommends getting at least 45 to 50 minutes of exercise per day, five days per week to help lower the risk of cancer. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends people under the age of 65 do moderately intense cardio training 30 minutes per day, five days per week to keep their heart healthy.

In Conclusion

Many people have the conception that their exercise sessions have to be done in one block of time, thus preventing many people from exercising due to that lack of time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Multiple studies have shown that exercising in three 10-minute blocks per day is just as effective (and in some cases more effective) than doing it in one 30-minute session.

And don’t forget to incorporate exercising into your daily routine. Parking at the far end of the parking lot and walking the rest of the way to work or to the grocery store counts as exercise. So does taking the stairs instead of the elevator as well as getting off one or two stops away from your normal public transportation stop and walking in rest of the way. The point is you can make several small minor changes to your daily routine, all that count toward your daily exercise goal. Now get going!