How Much is Enough?

People often ask, how often do you have to work out? If some is good, then more must be better right?

Well it all depends. Some people can workout (almost) every day and not suffer any negative effects such as overuse injuries or overtraining. Other people, however, have a much lower tolerance to exercise and need longer to recover between workouts. This recovery ability is an inherited trait, and is not something that allows for a 'one size fits all' approach to physical training.

Time, after all, is our most precious resource. It is also a non-renewable resource- unlike money (you can always make more money but you cannot make more time).

Minimum Effective Dose

The logical place to start is to try to find the 'minimum effective dose' of exercise. To clarify, 'exercise' does not include daily activity (walking, yoga, low impact cardio) - but merely strength training. It is fine to perform daily activity and is even good for recovery from your strength training sessions- so long as they are not too intense or long in duration. If you notice a decrease in the desire to train, cut back on your extra physical activity and reevaluate.

Two Workouts Per Week

The best place to start for most people is to perform two full body strength workouts per week. Each workout should consist of the safest, most effective exercises that will stimulate an adaptive response in the body to get stronger. After the initial break in period (six months) of consistent training, it is OK to change to a body part split in order to aid in recovery as well as managing your Central Nervous System (CNS).

One Set Per Exercise

One set of each exercise is all that is necessary so long as it is challenging enough and brings you to or close to momentary muscular failure (where you cannot perform another rep with good form). It might be possible that you might get better results with two or three sets, but it is best to start with one set and track your progress. It takes time for the body to make (super)compensations to your training -therefore it is a good idea to track your workouts so that you have accurate metrics to compare your progress accurately.

When to change it up?

When should someone change up their routine? Simple, when it stops working. Changing the training stimulus needs to happen only when the workout fails to deliver a meaningful adaptation or when the stimulus exceeds the body's ability to perform each workout without digging too deep of a hole in one's ability to recover. Another important consideration is someone's life stressors- if someone is going through a stressful situation (death, divorce, job loss, etc) it is best to scale back on their training to not overburden the CNS any further.

If you are interested in a workout that you can perform at home with minimal equipment/time investment- please reach out and I will send that to you free of charge.

In Strength, Chris