“How many times a week should you work out?”
The answer is 3.
Bye. See ya. You don’t have to keep reading anymore.
…
Um, excuse me?
What the heck are you still doing here?
I told you straight-up, the answer to how many days should you workout is 3 and you should just trust me.
Oh you don’t?
Well good because that’s what most crappy bodybuilding and strength-training websites will tell you is the right thing to do
only because that’s some common information they’ve been passed down to them (without taking a moment to question anything).
In reality, just like most things having to do with building muscle and getting lean, the answer is… it depends.
So let me tell you a story about how I trained like a moron when I first got into weightlifting and learned my lesson the hard way.
“I worked out every day this week and I feel like crap…”
When I was in high school, I had a friend who was on the football team.
(I wasn’t on the football team. I was a drama geek nerd big time, but for some reason this guy was my friend. I think it was just because we rode on the same bus… go figure.)
And one day he asked me if I’d like to come lift weights with him and the other football players after school.
“Say, what bruh?”
I was completely stunned.
He wants ME, this nerdy guy to actually work out with the football team?
So naturally, I agreed and showed up at the locker room when school let out.
And as soon as I set foot in that cramped, smelly weight room and gripped that barbell for my first bench press ever… I was hooked.
I was so psyched in fact that my dad had this ancient weight bench and plastic weight set that he used to workout with back in the day and I made him dig it out of the rubble in our basement so I could use it.
I was amped, boy.
I wanted to know how to squat.
I wanted to bench press just like my buddy.
…and when the weekend came around and I had no reason to go to the school gym, I was “pumping iron” on my dad’s old beginner set.
Flash forward to a week later… and I was wrecked.
I felt like someone had beat the the hell out of me and I didn’t understand it.
Even my dad noticed and asked me if everything was OK and I just replied…
I just don’t understand. I worked out every day this week and I feel like crap.
Well apparently… that was the problem.
(I wasn’t asking the question, “how many days should you work out”.)
You’re probably reading this right now thinking about what I said and maybe don’t quite understand where I went wrong.
(Or maybe you already know where I went wrong… but you don’t know what’s right either.)
If that’s the case, make sure you read this post all the way to the end because I’m going to share some surprising information on workout days that most muscle-building sites won’t tell you.
Why How Often Should You Work Out Isn’t as Important as You Think
You probably came to this page because you’re confused about how many days per week you should workout to build muscle and get lean…
…and that’s a valid question.
Plus I mentioned that RVE is better… keep reading because I’ll get to that in a little bit…
However, I want to tell you straight up that breaking down the question “how many days should you work out” into a 1-2 week period may not be as important as you’ve been told.
In fact, there have been a number of studies on the subject comparing the amount of lean muscle gain on both trained and untrained adults and the results have been very… interesting to say the least…
For example, in 1988, a study was conducted on 50 men and women who had experience with weight training 2-3 times per week and they were instructed to train either 0, 1, or 2 times per week for 12 weeks.
In the groups that completely stopped training, they lost roughly 70%, but for the groups that reduced down to 1 workout per week, their muscle loss wasn’t significant.
In 2000, a study was performed on experienced recreational weightlifters.
One group worked out 3 times per week and the other took all the volume from those 3 days and packed it into one single workout. (Volume was consistent)
Unlike the previous study, the participants who did the super-duper volume day saw about 60% of the strength gains compared to the 3x per week group.
This goes to suggest that in experienced gym rats, 3 days per week is better, but you can still make gains at a slower rate in a single massive workout if volume is kept consistent.
In 2007, a study was done on 29 new gym lifters and they were told to workout either 2 or 3 times per week with both groups keeping volume consistent.
Both groups increased lean muscle tissue and strength in the main compound movements and the differences between the groups were again… insignificant.
What’s the Takeaways from these Studies?
You might be asking yourself…
OK, that’s nice and all but how many days a week should I workout based on that information?
One of the important points to make about frequency is that in those studies, the subjects were instructed to take 2-3 days worth of training volume and shove it into a single workout.
Think about that for a second…
Take 3 sets of bench press and all its accessory movements, 3 sets of squats with all its accessory movements, 1-2 sets of deadlifts and all its accessory movements, 3 sets of chin-ups, etc.
…and then do them all in one single day.
(Kill me.)
While it sounds like you can just have one single, epic workout day and be done for the whole week, it’s probably not that easy to do.
So here are a couple realistic takeaways you can use from these kinds of studies that can help to answer “how many days should you work out?”
1. You Have More Flexibility When You’re a Beginner or Completely Untrained
There were a number of other studies performed with the intention of isolating training frequency vs other training variables and one thing remains consistent…
If you’re a beginner or completely untrained, you have the advantage of training less-frequently and seeing almost the same amount of lean muscle mass increases compared to training 3 or more times per week.
That’s pretty awesome if you ask me.
Additionally…
2. More Frequency IS Better… But May Not Be Worth the Time Commitment
What you saw with the study using the experienced weightlifters, the group that worked out 3 times per week saw 40% more strength gains than the other group.
However, taking into account all the time required to get to the gym, change, wait for stations, warm-up, cool-down, change again, and drive home…
You’re looking at about a 100-200% additional time commitment for 40% more gains.
Is it worth it? That’s debatable.
My job as the founder of Campus Gains is to help you make awesome progress building muscle and losing body fat with the most efficient time-commitment possible.
So if I’m presented with evidence that you’ll make 40% more muscle gains, but it requires that you commit 2-3x more time… I’ll be hard-pressed to answer “how many days should you work out” with “MORE”.
3 Things that Increase Muscle Mass More than Frequency (RVE)
Now that I’ve presented you with some evidence against holding frequency as the main driver of strength and hypertrophy building, what should you focus on instead?
Well I’ve got 3 things for you right here that will help reveal how many days a week should you work out…
1. Muscle RECOVERY
There’s a reason you’re not supposed to bench press every single day at 95% of your 1 rep max and it’s because you wouldn’t be giving your muscles a chance to recover.
Really, when you’re trying to build muscle, your week is broken into 2 types of days:
- Training days – Days that you’re actually in the gym working out.
- Rest days – Days that you’re allowing your muscles to recover and grow for the next session.
A Common Mistake Most Beginners Make
When contemplating the answer to “how many days should I work out”, beginners often make the mistake of thinking that by training more often, they can make faster muscle gains.
Wrong (that’s the mistake I made.)
What actually happens is they burn themselves out, see slower results, and usually end up quitting and saying that they’re a hard-gainer or some bullshit.
The simple way to avoid this problem is by making sure that you follow a respectable training program (not something that you just made up) with adequate recovery days built in so you’re not completely wrecking your body on a weekly basis.
So what’s the 2nd thing that’s more important than frequency?
2. Exercise VOLUME
I’m even starting to experiment with this because I want to create a course that maximizes muscle gain in your arms and I’m finding that the primary driver is volume.
You saw in those earlier studies that while frequency was manipulated and participants were training fewer days each week and still seeing muscle gains…
…they were keeping volume constant.
That goes to suggest that as long as you maintain a certain threshold of exercise volume, that you should be able to build an impressive-looking, strong body without taking up too much of your time.
2 Tricks to Add More Volume and Keep Your Workouts Short
With that being said, I know as a busy college student your time is very valuable.
You have study groups, class, lab sessions, meetings with guidance counselors, and you want to have a social life in there somewhere.
That’s why I have a couple tricks you can use to slip more volume into your workouts without severely compromising your time and making the answer to “how many days should you work out” easier to realize.
1. Split 1 Large Workout into Multiple Smaller Workouts
Since you now know that you can manipulate your total volume and disperse your exercise sets among whatever combination of frequency that you prefer…
…why not limit the overtime of each session, but make sure you still get enough volume for the day?
With this suggestion, I’m simply implying that you take a workout that might have 15 sets across all exercises and split them between 2 or more workouts done throughout the day.
So if you don’t have time for a single 1.5 hour commitment in the gym, maybe you can swing 2 45 minute sessions instead?
2. Supersets and Dropsets
I’ve already talked about the benefits of supersets before and dropsets are a very similar concept.
The idea is you take multiple exercise sets and perform then in quick succession with virtually no rest time in between.
(The only rest time is as much as needed to set up for the next exercise.)
This really opens the door for you to fit in a ton of volume by just sacrificing a little bit of your rest time.
And that leads me to the third thing that’s more important to building muscle than frequency…
3. EFFORT
Think about this for a second….
Let’s say there are two guys working out side-by-side in the gym.
Both of them walk up to the dumbbell rack and decide they’re going to work their biceps so they can score a hot date.
(Respect)
Guy #1 grabs a couple of 2 lb dumbbells and proceeds to do 3 sets of 30 reps on each arm.
Guy #2 grabs a couple 15 lb dumbbells and proceeds to do 3 sets of 12 reps on each arm.
Which guy is going to jack his biceps faster?
It’s debatable and involves a number of other variables including diet, stress levels, and adequate sleep, but if all those things are are accounted for and made equal, guy #2 will most likely make faster gains.
While you might argue that guy #1 is putting in so much volume that it would be impossible for his biceps not to grow, it’s important to realize that the amount of effort he’s applying to those reps is practically nothing.
And that kind of effort isn’t producing shit as far as muscle stimulus needed to create growth.
(…and it plays into the answer to “how many days should you work out” too…)
The Most Important Thing to Know You’re Applying Enough Effort
So how do you know when you’re applying enough effort on each exercise?
Well there are a couple things…
First, if you’re doing a compound lift, you should be doing reps until about 1 rep short of failure.
If you feel like you’re probably going to fail on the next rep, then you’ve worked the muscle enough and you should end the set right there.
For accessory or isolation movements, you should push to about 2 reps short of failure.
The second thing you should make sure you’re doing is applying the principles of progressive overload.
This is just a fancy term that means “making the workouts more challenging as your body adapts.”
For example, if you successfully lifted 135 lbs on the bench press for 5 reps on 3 sets, you should attempt 140 lbs for the next workout.
Once your body has adapted to that load, increase for the next workout, and so on…
Here’s How Many Days Should You Work Out Based on Experience
If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably wondering how all this advice applies to you and you just want a straight answer on “how many days should you work out”, right?
I’ve been dancing around it up until this point, but I have some bad news…
It depends.
Yes, I’m going to give you some general recommendations on how many days should you work out each week to see respectable muscle gains, but I’m going to wrap it in a “this depends on your situation” sort of message.
Do this if You’re Completely Untrained
If you’re completely untrained, you have the most flexibility with your workouts and as long as you keep training volume consistent, you should be able to see great muscle gains in a short period of time.
For you, you can train 1-3 times per week and see good results.
If You’ve Been Training Less than 1 Year
For the trained beginner, you still have some flexibility, but it’s definitely less than someone who’s never touched a barbell or dumbbell before.
Again, the idea is you have a certain amount of exercise volume you need to reach to continue seeing progress and trying to fit that into a single workout each week is going to be more challenging than someone with no weightlifting experience.
For you, “how many days should you work out” is about 2-3 times per week in order to see adequate strength and muscle growth.
For Guys with 1-5 Years of Training Experience
If you’re an intermediate weightlifter and you know you’re way around the gym pretty well, then your body is going to require a little more volume and a little more effort to continue seeing gains.
That’s why I would suggest training 3-4 times per week to make sure you get enough volume and muscle stimulation.
If You Have More than 5 Years of Training Experience (Advanced to Elite)
And to the advanced and elite lifters… first of all… I don’t know why you’re reading this and asking “how many days should you work out” in the first place…
…but your body has almost no flexibility in terms of what it demands for you to continue growing and getting stronger.
In your case, unless you want to spend 2 monster volume days at the gym each week and basically murder your muscles to the point of being useless the rest of the week…
…you should aim to workout 4 or more times per week.
How Many Days Should You Work Out?
You can see that “how many days should you work out” is a loaded question when you weigh all the variables that actually contribute to muscle growth.
There’s still so much more research to be done in the realm of strength training and muscle building that we’ve only just scratched the surface on what’s really important for long-term progress.
With all this in mind, what do you think the answer is to “how many days should you work out”?
Start a conversation in the comments section below!
(Or fight… that’s fun for me to witness too.)