How Many Times a Week Should I Exercise? And for How Long?

Once a week to me is a total waste of time and actually I feel a little bit detrimental rather than beneficial for the simple reason that you start an exercise program today and your muscles are thinking, “Well, something is happening. I’m going to start getting fit and active or stretched and toned and loosened up or whatever.”

So they prepare themselves and then seven days later, you’re back to your one-day program and because your muscles have gone back to rest having not done anything for the last few days, there’s a strong possibility that you can pull and tear the muscle if you’re trying to take off from where you left off.

Twice a Week?

Twice a week, I would define as maintenance training barely. Certainly better than training once a week but as far as I’m concerned, you’re not going to actually go forward. The whole point of working on an exercise program is to get fitter, to get stronger, to make a difference to your weight if it’s a weight problem that you’ve got. Twice a week is definitely not going to give you any of those results.

Three Times a Week?

Ideally three times a week. If you have a life behind you, i.e. you work full-time, you have family commitments, you have a bit of a social life, you have a career, whatever it is, if you have a life behind you, I think three days is spot on or the ideal number of days that you should target your exercise.

Having said that, those three days should be spaced out through the week, so something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday or alternatively Tuesday, Thursday, weekend.

In that way, you have the ability to give it all you’ve got on each training day because it will be followed up by a day to recover which will enable you to come back strong for the next training.

So three days, when you start, for a week is ideal and gives you the best results.

Four Times a Week?

Training more than that, I would say four days a week is probably the maximum number of days if you don’t have a lot of other commitments in your life and you want to train a little bit more. Then four days is fine, but anything more than that, five, six or seven, you must be taking some kind of drugs or training socially which doesn’t benefit your physical well-being.

Okay, so three or four days a week. How long would you train on each of those days?

What I would do is I would set my clients a challenge and say, “OK, prove to yourself that you can train three days a week for three months and I will put you on a four-day program,” and not many people will rise up to that challenge because if you train at a high intensity of three days a week, you will find that it will give you the results that you’re after and not training four days. So I just wanted to clarify that now.

Moving on to how long should each training session last for, the minimum is 30 minutes and the maximum is 60 minutes.

This question also depends on where you’re at with your fitness or for example if you were just starting up, you would barely make 20 minutes and then we just keep increasing it, 5, 10 minutes each time until you get to 30 minutes; and then from there, you try and progress to 60 minutes.

But on average, and the recommendation, is to try and pick your workouts at high intensity for 45 minutes.

Looking for a Personal Trainer in Applecross?

Call Prana on 9316 1553 and talk to Agnelo who has over 20 years experience in fitness as a foundation for beauty. We’re located in Applecross, close to both Perth and Fremantle.