How Often Should I Be Working Out? – Your Complete Guide
As an online fitness coach, one of the most common questions I get is, “How often should I be working out?”
3 times a week? 4? 5? Every single day?
Are you worried that you aren’t working out enough and feel like a lazy piece of shit?
Or are you worried about working out too much (Yes! You can actually work out too much!).
Well, no need to worry or search any longer because in this article I’m going to tell you exactly how often you should be working out as well any related questions you may have to see the results you’re after.
The only thing I ask of you is to read this entire article from top to bottom and left to right because I don’t want you to miss a single thing.
Oh yeah, one more thing.
Most of the people I work with in my online coaching program are everyday gym-goers who just want to lose some fat, build some muscle, and live a more confident, fulfilling, and healthy life through primarily strength training and supplementary cardio routine.
So that’s who I’m going to be considering when I’m giving these tips.
If you are someone with different, higher-achieving goals, then this isn’t for you.
But if that resonated with you, then welcome. You’re going to learn a lot 🙂
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
How Often Should I Be Working Out? – It Depends
Ah, the age-old copout answer: it depends.
Well, I’m not saying this as a copout answer so that I can say “peace out” and not answer your question.
Rather I’m going to educate you on why it depends from person to person (but also there is a general answer for most people!).
It’s going to depend on a variety of reasons like:
- What your goals are
- What types of exercise will you be doing
- What your schedule allows
- How you prefer to split up your workouts (otherwise known as your “workout split”)
- What your recovery capacity looks like
How Often Should I Be Working Out?
What Are Your Goals?
I know it’s cheesy, but seriously, what are your goals?
As you can imagine, different goals are going to require different workout frequencies.
Are you someone who is a bit more serious and looking to train for high performance?
Then you’re probably going to have to dedicate more time and effort to really dial in your nutrition, training, and stress to make sure you are in peak performance mode.
Are you someone who is just looking to do enough to lose some fat, build some muscle, and get into better shape to boost your confidence?
While you still need to prioritize fitness to an extent, you likely won’t need to make your fitness approach seem like a second full-time job.
Simply put, the higher the performance levels that your goals require, the more often you’ll likely need to work out.
Higher frequency = more practice. More practice = better performance and outcomes.
However, keep in mind this isn’t the end-all-be-all.
More doesn’t always necessarily mean better.
Even Olympic athletes who perform at the highest of the highest need rest days to recover from all the practice they’re doing.
More work, otherwise known as increasing “training volume” is only effective up to a certain point as discussed in my other article, How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat.
You need to let your body rest and recover in order to allow your body to adapt and actually make progress.
A follow up question I get is, “What if my goals are to lose weight? More exercise = more calories burned, right?”
Well, technically yes, but again, our bodies need to recover from the workouts we do.
But with that said, you shouldn’t only exercise for the purposes of losing weight and burning calories.
Exercise is an extremely inefficient way to burn calories.
Rather, you should mainly create your calorie deficit through your nutrition, not exercise…
I won’t talk about nutrition too much here because I have extensively covered that in my other article HERE.
(This is also backed by science, which in this study stated that, “A systematic review of studies with a minimum of 1-year follow-up suggested that subjects who used exercise alone for weight reduction experienced minimal weight loss.”)
Anyways, on that same note about recovery, something else we need to consider is…
What Types Of Exercise Will You Be Doing?
This is important to consider because different types of exercises will have different effects on the body.
Are you doing a lot of high-intensity exercises like sprinting, weightlifting, jumping, or other explosive movements?
Then you won’t be able to do these exercises as often.
Are you just going on jogs, brisk walks, swims, or bikes?
Then you’ll be able to do these exercises more often.
We’ll touch on this a little bit later in further detail, but simply put, higher intensity means lower frequency, and lower intensity means higher frequency.
That said, keep in mind that “exercise” doesn’t always need to mean “going to the gym and working out.”
It can also mean going a walk around the block a few times, going on a bike ride around your neighborhood or the city, or going on a solid hike on the weekend.
Any sort of sustained movement for a period of time can be considered exercise.
Also, if you’re reading this, you’re likely not a professional athlete (and if you are, that’s great, too! Glad you’re spending your time here reading this article.).
This means that working out probably isn’t your full-time job and you likely have a life outside of fitness including a full-time job, kids to look after, family members and friends to socialize with, your own mental state to take care of, and of course, anything else that requires attention to either contribute to or relieve your stress.
Now, this means that we also need to consider…
What Your Schedule Allows
If you’re someone who works 40+ hours a week, has a family to spend time with, and other commitments in life, it makes absolutely zero sense to program a 5x per week at 90 minutes per session workout program no matter how “optimal” it might be for, say, a professional athlete.
Instead of basing how many days a week you’re working out on this month’s lottery numbers, ask yourself, “How often can I realistically see myself dedicating time to work out?”
Let’s say you factored in your busy schedule and found you “only” have time for 20-minute workouts 2x a week.
Guess what? (You might not expect this answer coming from a personal trainer but…)
This is still good! Working out for 20 minutes twice a week is still better than no exercise at all.
However, for most people I’ve worked with, even given all of the other life circumstances, they are able to find at least 1 hour 3-4 times a week to dedicate to working out.
And truthfully, you do not need more than that.
You’ll see some people recommend working out 5, 6, or even 7 times a week.
We’ll go over in just a second why that is the case, but I will say this. If you are training at a proper intensity you do not need to be training more than 3-4 times per week.
But overall, here’s the take-home message, 3-4 times a week of 30 minutes to 1-hour sessions are more than enough to see progress, but doing any sort of exercise no matter the frequency and duration is infinitely better than none at all.
Once you’ve figured out your schedule, you need to figure out…
How You Prefer To Split Up Your Workouts
How you prefer to split up your workouts (or otherwise known as your “workout split” in the fitness community) is also another essential factor to consider.
Because it doesn’t matter how perfect a workout plan might look written down on paper, but if it’s not a routine that you feel like you can enjoy and stick to, it’s not going to work for you one tiny bit.
You could apply this for all types of workouts, but I will mainly be talking about this in the context of strength training.
There are a few things to consider when you’re deciding your workout split.
- The more frequency you decide to train, the more days you’ll be spending in the gym (duh).
- The higher intensity your workouts are, the less frequently you should be working out.
- The more work you would like to dedicate to certain muscle groups, the more frequently you could work those muscles, but other muscles would have to “take a back seat.”
- The more compound movements (movements that work multiple muscle groups at once) you perform during a session, the more muscles you’ll be able to hit per session
With that said, there are no rules you must stick to when designing your workout split.
You may hear people say “Push/Pull/Legs”, “Chest + Triceps”, “Back + Biceps”, etc. on certain days, but you can literally combine or separate any muscle group into any training session you desire.
There really aren’t any rules. I have seen many people make phenomenal progress following both full body splits and also splits that combine muscle groups you wouldn’t conventionally pair.
Again, what matters most is your ability to stay consistent, progressively overload, and enjoy your routine.
And if you do need some more in-depth help on designing your own workout routine, check out my other article HERE to learn how.
Now, once you’ve figured out your workout split, you can’t just work out every muscle constantly and expect to get consistent results.
Yes, you need to do enough to stimulate your body to make progress and grow, but you also need to allow your body to recover from that stimulus to build more muscle, strengthen your body, or improve coordination other you’re just going to be beating away your body without allowing it to repair and rebuild itself.
What Your Recovery Capacity Looks Like
As discussed in my other article, How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat, here is how your body builds muscle and strength and adapts to strength training and other forms of exercise.
It gets the stimulus (and stress) from exercise, then it needs time and resources to recover to undergo the adaptations it needs to improve.
Yes, this means that there is such a thing as working out too much.
Inevitably, a follow-up question I get to this is, “So how do you know if I’m training too much or too little??”
So while no one can say exactly how much training volume you need to make gains, here’s one surefire way to know with your current training program.
If you are able to progressively overload week after week, month after month, and so on and so forth, this means that your training program is working and you need to add or subtract anymore.
Another question I get is, “What about being sore?”
Soreness is not a good indicator of whether your workout was effective or not, but I will say this.
If you’re always sore, you’re probably under recovering through training too frequently and/or undereating, but if you’re never sore, you’re probably not training as hard as you could be and are leaving effort on the table.
How Often Should I Be Working Out? – Putting It All Together
Alright, I know that was a ton of information.
So let’s put it all together with some key takeaways from each point so that by the time you reach the last sentence of this article, you’ll have an exact plan to follow to answer the question, “How often should I be working out?”
What Your Goals Are
Knowing what your goals are will help you determine how frequently you need to work out. Are you someone who just wants the minimum effective dose to get all the health and fitness benefits? Or are you someone who’s looking to achieve higher performance benefits?
The Type Of Exercise You’ll Be Doing
Different types of exercises will have different effects on the body. Doing higher intensity will mean you can’t work out as frequently meanwhile doing lower intensity means you’ll be able to work out more frequently.
What Your Schedule Allows
Don’t go trying to work out 6 times a week if you can only realistically stick with 3 times a week. Stop trying to do the most you can in the short term and think about how much you can accomplish in the long term.
How You Prefer To Split Up Your Workouts
Ideally, you’ll want to rotate through your entire body in a week of training. Split it up accordingly to how well you can make progress and consistently show up.
What Your Recovery Capacity Looks Like
This is one of the areas in life where overachieving is not a good thing. Your body can only recover from so much so more training isn’t always necessarily better.
So with all this in mind, for most people, you are going to be able to make great progress working out 3-4x a week training at an adequate intensity, focusing on progressive overload, and making sure your nutrition and recovery are also in check.
How Often Should I Be Working Out? – Final Thoughts
And that’s about it!
I hope this helps you have a better idea of how often you should be working out as well as answer any potential follow-up questions you may have about this topic.
If you happen to be like, “Austin, this is way too much to figure out, just tell me what to do!” Then it sounds like you may be a good fit for my online coaching program.
Otherwise, please do reach out and shoot me an email if you have any specific questions.
Until next time,
-Aus
