Fundamentals: Workout Frequency

 I thought, for the sake of a few e-mails that I have received recently, that I would do a "back-to-the-basics" series of posts covering most of what you need to know if you're just getting started in a serious weight training program.  Now, this could also be for you if you have been training for a considerable amount of time (6 months or longer),and haven't made any real gains.

Let us begin with workout frequency.

If you're just beginning - or if you don't have much muscle or strength as of now - then almost always begin your muscle-building career with a 3-days-per-week, full-body program.  In fact, you could spend your training lifetime using a 3-days-per-week program and do just fine.

Clancy Ross spent his career using a 3-days-per-week, full-body program!*

Most lifters enjoy using a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine, just so they can take weekends off, but any three non-consecutive days are fine.  The one complaint I sometimes hear about that is that a lot of people are very busy during the week, and some young men I've heard from work very demanding jobs during the week, as well, such as construction jobs, so they feel as if a program where they can workout on the weekends is best for their situation.

If this is the case for you, then I recommend training on Saturday and Sunday, and then train once during the week on Wednesdays, which you should be able to manage.  Just tell yourself  that you only have one hard training day during the week!  Still train full-body.  On Saturday, workout hard - in fact, this should be your "heavy" day.  Sunday should be more of an "active" recovery session.  Do the same lifts you did on Saturday, but with about half the weight.  On Wednesday, go to the gym and try to "out-do" the workload you performed on Saturday.

But, of course, three non-consecutive days will always be better than trying to cram two days in on the weekend.  And, remember, if you do want to workout one day on the weekends, "begin" your training week on Saturday or Sunday.  Train either Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday, or train Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.  I personally trained on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday for years before switching to another program.  Since my "work day" began on Monday, I always enjoyed having my hardest session on Sunday evening to sort of begin the week off right!

If you are brand new to lifting, then you can train hard on each training day.  Eventually, however, this approach will stop working, and you will need to switch over to a "heavy/light/medium" program for your three-days-per-week, full-body workouts.  At this point, your first training day of the week should be your heaviest training day, and by "heavy", I mean that this day of training should have the highest total "workload".  Workload refers, if you don't know it, to the total amount of weight used during a workout program: sets x reps x weight lifted=workload.

Your heavy day is also when you go "all-out", with your heaviest set of each exercise being pushed toward the limit of your capacity.  The "light" day should then be about 80% of what you did on your heavy day, and then your "medium" day should be about 90% of the workload performed on your heavy day.

As said, you could stick with full-body workouts for the rest of your life!  And I truly mean this.  There is NO REASON whatsoever to switch to a "split workout" if you don't want to.  Yes, there is no doubt that your workouts will get long but if you truly enjoy - nay, love - working out, then you may actually have some of the best workouts of your life by lifting for 3-hour workouts, 3-days-per-week! At some point, however, if you truly admit it, you will probably want to try a "split" program.  But don't go crazy!  For a good split workout, all you need is to split your body two-ways.  When using a split program, I think a few options work well.  The first, and often the most-used two-way split for the majority of lifters, involves just splitting your workouts into upper body and lower body.  Train your upper half on, say, Monday and Thursday and then train your lower body on Tuesday and Friday.  The splits I like the most are, either, legs and back on Day One followed by chest, shoulders, and arms on Day Two of the split; and the second I like is chest, shoulders, triceps, and legs (thighs, hamstrings) on Day One, and back, biceps, and calves on Day Two.

Once you split your body two-ways - assuming that you have been performing a full-body, 3-days-per-week session for over a year or more - then you will probably, however, want to perform more than just two-workouts-per-week for each bodypart.  I prefer a 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off program at this point.  This would mean that your split would look something like this:

Monday: workout A

Tuesday: workout B

Wednesday: workout A

Thursday: off

Friday: workout B

Saturday: workout A

Sunday: off

On the next day (Monday), you would start the week off by performing workout B again.  This means that each week, one workout gets 3-days of training, and the other workout gets 2 workout days.

On the next "Fundamentals" blog post, we will cover "sets and reps".

*Clancy Ross picture is from a 1958 article in Popular Mechanics magazine, of all places.  Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.