How many days per week should you do strength training for each major muscle group?

When we talk about “strength training,” I think the public is generally informed enough these days to know “strength training” doesn’t mean building muscle to be a “mountain-of-muscles” body builder.

No!

It could mean that, if that is your personal fitness goal, but it could also mean simply building lean muscle for improved fitness and health, or working on “toning” muscles that you’ve neglected to maintain well. Strength training is also a valuable partner to cardiovascular exercise in efforts to lose and/or maintain weight.

So, whatever your reason behind weekly strength training, just how often should you work out each major muscle group to see gains and to maintain them?

The canned answer is “two to three times per week.” Some serious body builders argue vigorously for one time per week. But the fact is there have been numerous studies to determine the effects of training frequency, and the final outcome is that working out each major muscle group two times per week is preferred for optimal gains and/or maintenance. The research reveals:

• • Working out two times per week is as effective as working out three times per week! Adding on a third time of training for muscle groups consistently did NOT produce greater gains than good, efficient, full workouts twice a week did. In that case, a third workout is unnecessary and redundant.
  • Saying doing strength training workouts twice per week is more effective and fruitful than working all major muscles groups once per week sounds like a “Duh!” statement, but it really isn’t. People who argue for once per week often fail to tell you that you have to do more than twice as many different exercises and reps in a single day if working out once per week. How the body functions in building lean muscle is better suited for producing optimal gains by working all muscles groups twice per week rather than trying to cram it all into one very long workout session.

One other note, most people aren’t serious or competitive body builders, so if they limit strength training to just one day per week, they often don’t put into that workout enough to see very much in the way of gains, or to make gains efficiently as compared to two full, solid workouts each week.

Scotty