#85: How Often Should You Strength Train? (and what's the benefit of lifting more often)

Are you wondering how often you really need to train to build muscle and stay fit?

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, I break down the pros and cons of training two, three, or four days per week—so you can decide what fits best with your lifestyle and goals.

In this episode, I cover:

• The benefits of training at different frequencies
• How to effectively schedule each option into your week
• What extra results you can expect from training more frequently
• Why two days a week is more than enough to see progress

Whether you’re just getting started or are looking to fine-tune your routine, this episode will help you figure out how to balance your workouts with your busy life and still get results.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Not lifting yet? Check out my Learn to Lift Courses for structured programs designed for midlife women.
• Need help building your training routine? Explore my Monthly Membership for done-for-you programming.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:39 The Importance of Starting Your Training
• 1:23 Training Frequency: How Often Should You Train?
• 2:32 Guidelines for Beginners: Two Days a Week
• 6:59 Advanced Training: Three Days a Week
• 9:57 Maximizing Gains: Four Days a Week
• 11:55 Flexible Training Schedules
• 13:52 Conclusion and Final Tips

Transcript

#85: How Many Days Per Week Should You Train

Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women in perimenopause and menopause build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we're going to talk about a question that I get asked a lot, especially by women who are trying to figure out which one of my programs to follow is How many times a week should you be training and what is kind of the difference between training more often and less often.

So, let's get into it. 

First of all, I want to say that the most important thing is that you start training. Even if it was one day a week, that you have time to pick up some weights and start challenging your muscles really hard. Do it. Okay. Do not wait for the moment when you can do it perfectly. Do not let perfection stand in the way of progress.

The benefits of weight training are so clear and they're finding more all the time as far as health and longevity, your ability to function and live a long independent life and holding onto the muscle mass that you have.

All right. And having said that, now let's think about if you are able to train two, three, four days a week, like what is the difference? And what should you aim for? I'm going to try to simplify this, but then also explain a little bit of the like, That it isn't quite so cut and dry because the thing is that when they do studies on frequency and these kinds of things, they do find differences.

First of all, the studies are not always going to be perfect. They're not terribly long term and people are all different. Every one of us is an individual. So, In a way, what I'm saying is get started, and then when you have been weight training for a while, you can start to play with frequency, like when you've been doing it for a year or two, you start looking at, hey, would my body actually respond better if I did shorter workouts five days a week, or is it better that I do, you know, two days a week

whatever. So that's something that you can play with. But as far as getting started, I would say some general guidelines would be that you would like to challenge each of your muscles twice a week. All right. And not on back to back days. So you need to give your muscles 48 hours to rest and recover, grow after your weight training session, because your weight training session is the stimulus for your muscles to grow. And then after your session is when the magic actually happens, when the growth actually happens. So the two days a week is really very, very sufficient, you know, for getting going on your weight training journey. And if you are doing two days a week, then I would suggest that you do a full body split so that you are working your full body on both of the days.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do exactly the same exercises on each of the days, but when you're first starting out, that's probably going to be the most Like low barrier to entry way for you to do it because honestly doing an exercise once a week, it doesn't give you a lot of opportunity to fine tune your form on that exercise and start feeling really comfortable with it so that you can start, progressively overloading and really pushing yourself on that exercise.

So if you're just starting out, I would get a full body program and do that twice a week as you get more sophisticated, you could have two different, you know, full body programs on the two days, like, changing up what compound movement you do for your lower body on those days, maybe you do a squat variant on the first day, and maybe you do a hip hinge variant on the second day.

For example, okay, and the same kind of thing with the upper body day is that as you get more comfortable with the various types of lifts, you could do a different pull exercise on the two days. So it could be a pull down on one of the days and it could be a row. So a horizontal pull on the other day. So that gets more into programming.

The thing. That will happen if you're only working two days a week is if you think about you have time and energy actually to do about six exercises in a session and three sets of each of those exercises. So that means that you really need to choose your exercises strategically so that you are exercising all or most of the muscles in your body.

And you won't really have capacity for targeting specific muscles when you're working out just full body sessions twice a week. Okay. So that's going to be kind of the downside of doing only twice a week. But honestly, you are, I mean, it is amazing if you can fit two days a weekend. I mean, for me, I mean, it is important for me to stay fit, like not only from a personal perspective, but also because you guys are watching me on social media all the time. And it is really hard for me sometimes to fit in the training sessions that I would like to fit in. And I completely, I so 100 percent understand for so many of you getting two sessions in a week is going to be as much as you can possibly do.

And that is amazing. So please do that. Okay. And, and I also recognize that even though I talk about weight training, primarily women love their cardio classes. I love my cardio class, my dance class too. And I would like to do more yoga as well.

So I recognize that you're not going to just spend all your free time in the weight room. Like maybe some of us do. Okay.

Now if you're able to train three days a week, then that already opens up the possibility to do targeted exercises for particular muscles. If you train three days a week, my recommendation and the way that I train my clients is that you do an upper body session, a lower body session and a full body session.

And now, in the upper body session and the lower body session, you have this amazing luxury of choosing six exercises, you know, for each, which means that for example, in upper body, you can do the basic movement patterns. that you need to do. So horizontal push, horizontal pull, vertical push, vertical pull.

So that already covers those four. That's only four. And you have two left over. And generally women will want to strengthen their arms and their shoulders, right? Men might go more for like back and chest. Well, okay, they do biceps, triceps too. But so then you have Two more exercises that you can dedicate to something else and generally bicep and tricep is what people will add in and what I will add in as well because those are small muscles and they take a while and a lot of people just start showing and it feels nice, you know, to have your arms be Firm.

Okay. So that's the benefit of being able to do three days a week. And as far as how to schedule that into your week, it with three days a week, if you have a lower body day and upper body day and a full body day, then the lower body and the upper body days can be back-to-back because when you're doing your upper body, your lower body is resting and such.

And then Take at least one day break before doing your full body day. So that's fairly easy to program into your week. If you're somebody who is super busy, um, during the week and you have more time on the weekends, then do your full body session during the week, like choose a day, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday to do that or Monday through Friday, whatever, and then do upper body and lower body on the weekend.

Like the Friday or Friday and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday. Okay. If you have more time on the weekends and vice versa, if you're more away during the weekends, and you want to get more, most of your sessions in during the week, do your upper body and your lower body sessions during the week.

You could do a Tuesday and Wednesday and then do one full body session, either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Okay. So I think the three days a week is actually one that is fairly easy to program into your week. 

So what the difference is between the three days a week, where you do upper, lower, full, and four days a week where you would do two upper body sessions and two lower body sessions is that you're not having to do that kind of full body session where you're leaving out those targeted exercises. So your biceps and triceps, for example, since we started with that example, those, yes, they get worked in the other movements. So when you're doing rows and pull downs and, and chest presses and these kinds of things, you are using your arm muscles. Okay. So they do get some work in that full body session, but they're going to develop faster. because in the four days a week, training program, you're going to be able to work on them specifically, you know, twice a week as well. So they actually will get, more training than they would in a three days a week 

So as far as scheduling those into your week. you can put them actually even four days in a row. So you can do lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body. But that might be just pretty tiring, right? I've, I've done that every now and again. Um, but yeah, not feeling quite as fresh when I go in for the second set of like lower body, upper body.

So I would recommend that you. Do maybe lower body, upper body rest day, lower body, upper body, or you could do lower body, upper body, take a rest day and do lower body, take a rest day, then do upper body, you know? So there's a lot of ways to fit that in as well. And, um, and just one more thing to point out with this training scheduling.

You can also play with these a little bit. So right now, for me, for example, it's a really busy time for my business, for this business, because I'm kicking off some new programs. I'm changing some of my. Tech on the back end, which is taking ungodly amounts of time. And so I have decided that I'm going to train four days a week, every other week and three days a week, every other week. So that's possible as well. Right? So. It doesn't always have to be exactly the same every single week,

but to summarize the biggest difference that you will get as you're able to add more days in the week to your training is that you will be able to incorporate more of these targeted exercises. And by that, I mean, targeting specific muscles.

So when you're training fewer days per week, so if you're training twice a week, you do full body days, you won't have time to do bicep and tricep exercises. Your arms will get worked in the other exercises, but then when you start to have more training sessions. then you can do more of this targeted exercise selection that'll allow you to work on particular muscles. 

But in the end, if we think about your health and your fitness, really the two days a week is plenty, that is really going to do it. And then if you're starting to be like, Oh, I really want to. have bigger shoulders, or I really want to get my arms, you know, showing more, then, you know, start adding extra sessions on top to do that.

 So I hope that helped you to decide how many days a week you should be training and to understand the difference between training two, three, and four days a week. Because I know. We are all busy and a lot of us want to do other things besides weight training in our exercise regimen. And with that, I leave you until next week and wish you happy training.