How often should you workout per week I How many days a week should you lift

YouTube, what's going on? In this video, we're going to be talking about answering the question of how many times per week should you be working out? How many days per week should you be working out? And I'm also going to talk about how to set up your workout routine throughout the week. So whether you're doing 3 times a week or 4 times a week or 5 times a week or 6 times a week, I'm going to give you exact kind of strategies you can use to set up your workouts throughout the week. So you get the most optimal results. And actually, I'm gonna turn this light off. Maybe I'll edit that out and maybe I won't. Either way, we are gonna dive right into the video. So before I actually talk about like how to set up your workouts, what's the best, what's the most optimal, number one, I need to talk about this, which is something over everything, which is sustainability over everything. I don't care if you have the best workout on paper. I don't care if the best workout is for you to work out 6 times a week for an hour long each time. If you can't stick to that consistently, you are not going to see progress from that workout program. You can have the best plan on paper, the A++ plan, but if you follow it with 55% consistency, it doesn't matter if it's the perfect plan. plan or the best plan. You are not going to see results from that best plan because it's not the best for you. I'd much rather you follow a B- program with 90% consistency than follow an A++ program with 55% consistency because you will get better results from doing the B- program. If it's not the best on paper, like, oh, I should be working out 6 days a week, but I can quote unquote only work out 4. That doesn't matter because what you follow the most consistently will get you the progress that you want to see. I promise you with all of my heart. And again, this means if you are a working mom who has 2 kids and a full-time job and a spouse and a social life, it's probably not realistic for you to work out 6 days a week for an hour and a half each time. It's probably not. So why would you pick that? It doesn't matter what the best thing is. You need to make sure whatever you're going to pick here, you need to follow consistently. So that is the number one thing. It has to be over everything. That's the first and foremost over-encompassing thing— sustainability over everything. You need to be realistic with your obligations, with your responsibilities, with your time allotment. All of these things need to come into play When creating a workout program and answering the question of how many days a week should you work out. So that's number one. Number 2, we're gonna talk about rest days. And rest days, you can go back and forth on this. Some people, listen, some people take enough rest days, right? Like, I get it. Some people take enough rest days, they need to work out more. I totally get it. But I'd say one of the most underutilized things when it comes to seeing progress is Taking rest days and real rest days. And, I mean, like, you know, taking a rest day. Like, people ask me, what do I do on rest days? I don't know, rest. Like, you don't need to go do an hour and a half spin class. You don't need to go do an hour HIIT workout on your rest day. That's not a rest day. You're still working out that day. That's not a rest day. And so, actually utilizing your rest days because, remember, your body doesn't change when you're in the gym. When you're in the gym, you actually tear your body down. You literally tear your muscle fibers apart. You break your body down. It sounds weird, but you literally create micro tears inside of your muscles. So you don't change your body in the gym or during your workouts. You change your body outside of the gym. There's this process that your body goes through. If you've watched my videos before, you might have already known this, but There's a stress that you put on your body, which is the working out. Your body then has to recover from that stress and then adapt to that stress to keep seeing this change, right? Because if you don't adapt to the stress, then you're just putting a stress on your body. You're never actually changing. So you're just tearing your body down, stressing your body, and then never actually seeing any progress because you'd be missing a step, which is the recovery step. If you can't recover from what you're doing, I don't care what you're doing. You can work out 7 days a week for 4 hours straight. If you can't recover from the work you are doing, your body's not going to see any change. You're not going to see any muscle definition. You're not going to gain strength. You're not going to see your body change. It's not going to happen because you need to recover from what you're doing. And oftentimes people think more is better— doing more workouts, doing longer workouts, doing more reps, more sets, more, more, more. That's not always the case. And again, you know what? Like, if you're struggling to even work out 2 times a week, okay, yeah, like maybe more might be the case for you. But for a lot of people I've just seen through conversations back and forth coaching people, you need to utilize your rest days because that's when you actually change. And if you're somebody who— and again, listen, it's one thing if you are, you know, a 25-year-old guy who's a fitness coach and his entire life is fitness. Like, I sleep 8 to 9 hours per night. My food is on point. I'm recovering from my workouts. I'm able to push my intent. Like, I don't have a very high-stress life. Cool. I can probably utilize less rest days and work out more. Somebody who, once again, if you're a working parent and you have kids and a job and a spouse and a social life and you have a high-stress job and all these things come into play, no, you're probably not gonna need the same amount of Recovery that I need, because you actually probably need more because you're not sleeping as much. Your nutrition isn't as on point. Like all of these things have to come into play because you have to realize how your body changes is again, not from the workouts in the gym, it's from what you can recover from. So if you can't recover from what you're doing, you're just gonna be beating yourself into the ground and not seeing any real change. And so rest days, they are very underutilized and underrated. And again, on your rest days, you should rest. Like if you wanna go take a walk, Awesome. Awesome. Like, what a lot of my clients do is on their rest days, they just set a step goal and say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna try to get 7,000 steps per day. Or, you know what? I'm gonna go on a bike ride with my kids. Or, I'm gonna go on a swim. Or whatever the case may be. Awesome. Cool. Mazel tov. But like, you don't need to go kill yourself on your rest days because that's not what a rest day is for. So, just making that very clear as well because that was something that I did very early on. I'd work out every day for 2 hours a day and I would wonder why I wasn't seeing progress. I was just always under-recovered nonstop, 24/7. I never actually gave my body a chance to recover, which is why I never saw any substantial change. So if you think that's you, I'm telling you right now, I've already been there. Rest days, they are important. Okay, so that's the first 2 things and the 2 biggest things, because you have to understand that first when talking about doing this. Now let's cover what a 3 times a week, 4 times a week, 5 times a week, 6 times a week program might look like. And so I'm going to start with 3 times a week. So So 3 times a week, you see I wrote some letters here. I will explain. So there's essentially 2 kind of ways I like to split up your workouts if you are going to do a 3-time-a-week workout program. Something in my eye, I apologize. So the first one is going to be a— it says L-U-F-B. It's not Facebook. Lower, upper, full body. That is essentially how you would set up your workout routine throughout the week if you were doing a 3 times a week workout program. On day 1, you would do a lower body workout. On day 2, you would do an upper body workout. On day 3, you would do a full body workout. And also, I want to tell you, if you scroll back on my channel, or I'll link it here above, I kind of covered this, but I also went more in depth, like what would a lower body day look like, for example, right? So you can go check that video out if you want, but that's essentially how you would set up your workout routine throughout the week. So let's say, for example, Monday, lower body. Wednesday, upper body. Friday, full body. That's a 3-time-a-week workout program right there, and you're giving your body rest in between each workout, right? Typically speaking, you don't wanna go lower body, upper body, full body because it's 3 days in a row. You're gonna be spent, you're gonna be taxed, your muscles aren't gonna have time to recover. Generally speaking, you wanna give anywhere from 24 to 48 hours of recovery in between the time you hit a muscle to the time you next hit a muscle. So like, for example, Let's say you're doing lower body, upper body, full body, right? You typically don't want to do full upper body on Thursday and full body on Friday because your muscles haven't had a chance. Your upper body muscles haven't had a chance to recover. So when you go and do full body, you're not going to be fully recovered, which is going to do 2 things. Number one, it's going to decrease your performance for that full body workout. And if you decrease your performance, you're not going to see as good of results. And number two, it just leads you to more risk of injury because if you're going into a workout under-recovered. Your muscles haven't fully recovered. Your form is going to break down. There's going to be more risk of injury. And so those 2 things combined is why I say you need to give your muscles anywhere from 24 to 48 hours in between training them to then train them again, because you want to properly recover. Again, we talked about rest days, right? You want to properly recover in between your workout sessions. So again, one more time, let's just say Monday lower body, Wednesday upper body, Friday full body, right? That's one option. The next option would be 3 full body days. So let's just say you do Monday full body, Wednesday full body, Friday full body. That is an option. I typically don't program that for a lot of my clients just because full body days are— it's just rough. Like, they are hard workouts. They normally take a bit longer and it's just more systemic fatigue that you're giving to your body. So it's more for your body to recover from. Generally speaking, I like to have the lower, upper, full body. Because 3 full body days, especially for somebody who's more of a beginner, um, it's just a lot to recover from. It's a lot for your body to be able to recover from. And again, you have less like flexibility. So let's say for example you're doing a lower upper full body. Let's say something happens and you have to— you normally work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and let's say Wednesday you have a meeting so you have to work out Tuesday. That's fine because you did lower body on one day and then upper body the next day. So you have not worked both muscle groups, right? So you did lower body, upper body, 2 different muscle groups. You can do it on 2 different days back to back. That's fine. But if you did full body, you would kind of be struggling to make that change, right? Because if you do full body on Monday and then try to do full body on Tuesday again, it's like, oh, well, hell, like, I already— I just hit my entire body, now I gotta go do it again and I'm already sore. And like, that comes into play, right? So generally speaking, I like to do lower, upper, full body. But again, choose what you may and take my 2 cents for what it's worth. Talk about the 4-time-a-week workout program, if you're gonna work out 4 times a week. Generally speaking, the way— the only real way I like to set up 4 times a week workout programs is gonna be lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body. That is normally the, in my humble opinion, the best way to do it. There are other variations, like for example, some— like a female, for example. Some females might say, hey, you know what, like I'm gonna do 3 lower body days and 1 upper body day because I wanna focus on growing my glutes more. Nothing inherently wrong with that. I'm just not the biggest fan of that style of programming. I'd rather you have a more balanced approach and just put more volume on the days that you do have lower body days. And when I say volume, I mean just basically how many sets and reps you're doing and just total sets throughout the week. I did another entire video on that, so I'll link that here above. But generally speaking, I like to do lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body. And let's say again, for example, If you're trying to give your muscles 24 to 48 hours in between to recover, let's say you do Monday lower body, Tuesday upper body, Wednesday rest, Thursday lower body, and then Friday or Saturday upper body. That way you can have 24 to 48 hours in between muscle groups. That way you can rest them. Um, and again, you still have some flexibility in there. So let's say again, for example, if Friday you can't work out, cool, just push to Saturday. That way Sunday you still have a rest day and you're going into your next lower body day. Pretty— excuse me— pretty well rested. So that's usually my favorite form of programming, is just a lower-upper, lower-upper split. Also, I didn't mention this as well, but I'll mention this. I should've mentioned this, but I didn't. I mentioned it probably in a different video. Either way, you typically wanna hit your muscle groups 2 to 3 times a week, 3 being on the high-end range, and then 2 being probably by the sweet spot. So let's say very quickly, we'll look over 3 times a week. Lower, upper, full body. You're hitting your lower body once on lower body. You're hitting your lower body once— flicking you off— lower body once on full body. Upper body, you're doing upper body a day. You're hitting it once. Full body, hitting it once. So on that workout split, you'd be hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week. If you did full body, full body, full body, obviously you're hitting your muscle groups 3 times a week, right? Let's take a lower, upper, lower, upper split. Obviously you have 2 lower body days and then 2 upper body days. So that way you're hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week. Again, anywhere from 2 to 3 times per week is most optimal. Generally speaking, the only time I would do a 3, like hit your muscle groups 3 times a week, is when you really wanna like grow or improve a certain muscle group. So again, let's just take if a guy wanted to really improve his shoulders, for example. I might say, hey, you know what, like if you're doing a 4-time-a-week lower-upper, lower-upper split, I'm gonna put Some side lateral raises at the end of your lower body day just to simply add some extra volume on your shoulders if you wanted to grow your shoulders, right? So you could do something like that to go 3 times a week, but that's typically when you want to do a 3-time-a-week program. And even then, again, you have to balance the recovery aspect because if you're not letting your body recover, again, you can work out every single day and it's not going to matter. So kind of balancing in that aspect is what I would say. But Honestly, I'll be very upfront with you. 90% of the clients I coach fall in the 3 times a week or 4 times a week workout program. And why is this? We're gonna talk about, you know, what is the best workout program? Well, the best workout program is the one that you can adhere to, is the one that is sustainable, is the one that you can recover from, is the one that can fit into your schedule. Like all those things we already talked about, right? Generally speaking, if you're just a regular old cat and you just wanna improve your health and you have other responsibilities in your life, Yeah. And if fitness and working out is not your job, if you're not like a professional bodybuilder or a model or whatever the case may be, you have kids and a spouse and a job and all these other things going on in your life, typically speaking, working out 3 to 4 times a week is way more than enough to see progress. And that goes for anybody, really. I mean, that goes for any single person, whether you're a bodybuilder or not. But especially if you are somebody who your life isn't fitness, and if you're watching this, your life probably isn't fitness. If your life isn't fitness, working out 3 to 4 times a week is number one, way more than enough to see progress. But also number two, it's way more than enough to have you be consistent and have it be sustainable. Because again, if you can't stick to something, it doesn't matter. I don't care if you're like, oh, I want to work out 5 times a week. That's great. But if you can't sustainably fit that into your schedule, then what's the point? So typically speaking, 90% of my clients go through a 3-time-a-week or a 4-time-a-week workout program and they have seen tremendous results. If you want to, feel free to head to my website or do whatever and you can see some of the testimonials or whatnot. But just for you, just so you can have social proof that like it is a real thing, you don't have to work out 5, 6, 7 days a week in order to see progress. 3 to 4 times a week is way more than enough and it allows you to also have rest days, recover from your workouts, and also work in other things you enjoy. Like for example, I have some clients who they enjoy Whether it's going on a hike or going on a run or doing yoga or whatever the case may be, they don't wanna strength train 5, 6, 7 times a week. And that's fine. That's totally fine. You can do your 3 times a week strength training, knock it out of the park, do 1 day of yoga and do 1 day of running. Like, awesome. Like, do— you can work those things in. But if you were doing a 6-time-a-week strength training program, you don't really have much room to work those things in. And even if you did, you also have to balance the recovery from that and so on and so forth, right? 3 to 4 times a week, in my humble opinion, just from what I've seen coaching people, way more than enough to see progress and way more than enough to be sustainable with it. So with that being said, let's talk about 5 times a week, because I do have some clients who work out 5 times a week. But I will tell you, these clients have their nutrition in check, they have their sleep in check, they have their recovery in check, um, they dedicate a bit more time to it. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to understand it. Once you get past the 4-time-a-week mark You're going to have to dedicate more time to the little things, which are actually the biggest things. Sleep. All of my clients who work out 5 times a week, they all get at least 7 hours of sleep. At least, if not more so, 8 or 9. They all have their nutrition very dialed in. Eat a lot of protein, good quality nutrient-dense whole foods. They're not eating a bunch of snacks or a bunch of processed foods, which, nothing inherently wrong with that, but you have to get your basics in. In order for us to succeed at a 5 times a week program. Because if not, you are going to burn out, you are going to under-recover, you're not gonna see any change in your body. So just making that very clear first and foremost. I'm not saying you can't do it, but if you're gonna do it, you have to have all of your ducks in a row because if not, you're gonna under-recover, which is gonna then bleed into, again, you're not gonna see change in your body, you're not gonna stick to your diet. So all those things play a role. All right. So Now let's talk about the 2 main ways. I might put them down here. So the 2 main ways for me would be lower body, upper body, lower body push and a pull. So let me explain. So let's take a week's worth of workouts, right? Let's say Monday is lower body, Tuesday is upper body, Wednesday is rest, Thursday is lower body, Friday is an upper body push day, and Saturday is an upper body pull day. So once again, if you think about Hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week, right? You're doing that with this program. 2 lower body days, lower body 2 times a week. You have 1 upper body day, and then you have an upper body push, upper body pull. Upper body push is things like bench press, pushups, shoulder press, triceps, those kind of movements. Upper body pull is things like chin-ups, rows, um, one-arm rows, pullovers, basically back, biceps, those kind of things, right? Right? So that is how you could potentially set up a 5 times a week workout program with giving yourself ample time in between to recover. So again, you're doing lower body and then upper body, right? You're not going straight into the next lower body day because you'd probably be gassed, honestly. Like, and I've done it before and I will— it's tough. I mean, you could, but that way you're hitting your whole body, break on Wednesday or whatever day works out for you, and then finish the rest of the week with those other 3 workouts. So that is a potential way you can go about doing it. Um, I, this is what I personally do right now. I thoroughly enjoy it, but again, like my life is fitness. And so I do get 8 to 9 hours of sleep. My food is on point. It has been on point for a while. Like my protein's on point, my stress isn't very high, so I can kind of manage this. But again, if you're somebody who can't, that's okay because you don't need to work out 5 times a week in order to see progress. So that is the first way. The second way you could do a lower, upper, lower, upper, lower, Or vice versa, you could do an upper, lower, upper, lower, upper. So let's say again, if you're a girl who wants to grow your glutes, for example, you could do lower body Monday, upper body Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, lower body Thursday, upper body Friday, lower body Saturday. So you can get your glutes, you can get your legs 3 times a week. Or vice versa, if you're a guy who wants to grow their upper body, upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, right? So upper 3 times a week. So that is another way you potentially set Personally, I'm a fan of lower, upper, rest, lower, push, pull, but, you know, it's just whatever works for you the best. And again, this is where obviously it's gonna be a bit individual, and so just, you know, whatever works best for you in this scenario. And then now heading to 6 times a week, I have never once programmed a 6-time-a-week workout program for any of my clients. I'm just not the biggest fan of it. If, again, if you are If your entire life is fitness, and even so, like my entire life is fitness, but like it's not because like I have a business that I run and I coach people and I, you know, I do content, so on and so forth. Like if you're a bodybuilder and like your main job is to just like go work out and eat, sleep, and train, that's one thing. But if you have other responsibilities, 6 times a week working out is, it's just a lot. It's a lot to recover from. If all of your ducks are in a row and you're sleeping 8 to 9 hours per night and you have all these things and like, You don't have a very stressful life at all and you're totally fine, like, cool, maybe go for it. But even then, I'm still not the biggest fan because I think it's just— I don't think it's overload, I think there's just smarter ways to go about doing it. And again, I've done 6 times a week before and, you know, it is what it is. But especially for people who are more just general population, you just wanna look better, feel better, you have other responsibilities, you have a kind of a high-stress lifestyle, like, yeah, I'm just not the biggest fan of 6 times a week. But with that being said, I will go over it. So 6 times a week would be a push-pull-legs. So again, you could do lower— you can do upper body push, upper body pull, legs, or you could switch that. You could do legs, push-pull. Either way, people just say push-pull-legs, and so that's what I wrote there. But you could switch that around and say lower body is day 1, push-pull, lower body again, push-pull. So you could have that 6-day split, so Monday through Saturday essentially, or you could do Monday through Wednesday, rest Thursday, Friday through Sunday. I mean, you could do that as well. Again, you don't have much flexibility because you have to work out 6 days a week, but whatever works best for you in that scenario. Or you can just do a lower, upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, 6 times a week rotating. So Monday through Saturday, once again, you would just lower, upper, lower, upper, lower, upper. Again, it's a lot. It's a lot of accumulated volume. It's a lot of working out. It's a lot of days in the gym. Yeah. If that's what you want to do, man, feel free to go ahead. I probably— I've only ran a 6-time-a-week program a few times and I've just noticed for myself I get burnt out because it's just a lot. It's just a lot of time in the gym, a lot of pushing yourself, a lot, a lot, a lot of work. Again, if you're somebody who— for example, I did it back when I was in college and I did college from— I did community college, so I didn't actually go Well, I went to college, but not really. But again, like, all I did was kinda work, go to college, and then train. So like, I didn't really take college seriously either, so I didn't really have a high-stress lifestyle, and I had a bunch of free time, and like, I was doing it 6 times a week, and like, whatever, cool. But now, like, I don't have that same free time, and I don't have the same lifestyle, and so right now I'm doing 5 times a week. So, you know, I think finishing this off here, this is how you would set things up if A few things to remember again, like hitting your muscle groups 2 to 3 times a week, allowing for 24 to 48 hours in between when you hit your muscle groups. So again, if you do lower body on Monday, you don't want to do full body on Tuesday or another lower body day on Tuesday. You need to give your body time to recover. And then the most encompassing thing is pick what is sustainable for you. If in your head, and you get to be really honest with yourself, if in your head you're like, I know for a fact I can get through 3 times a week workouts in with 100— like, you know, you are 100% confident you can get 3 times a week workouts in. But if you throw in a 4th one, you're like, uh, maybe I'm like a 6 out of 10 confident. It's not worth it. Just stick with 3 times a week because you're gonna see better results doing 3 times a week with 100% consistency as opposed to 4 times a week with 60% consistency. You just are. And again, like, let's say you're doing lower, upper, full body as opposed to lower, upper, lower, upper. You're still hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week. Like I tell my clients, like I can make the same program 4 times a week or 3 times a week, the same program, you'll get the same results. It's just a matter of how many days a week you're working out. So it doesn't— the amount of days per week you work out doesn't determine nor dictate the progress you're going to see. What determines the progress is, are you hitting your muscle groups 2 times a week? Are you being consistent? Are you allowing your body to recover? All those things matter more than like, oh, just because you work out 5 days a week, you're gonna see progress. People you know, and might even you, you might have seen people or yourself working out 5, 6, 7 days a week and not seeing progress. Why is that? Because all of your ducks aren't in a row, right? So the amount of times per week you work out is less important than you may think, but obviously you want some structure to your routine, right? So this would be your structure. And the last thing I would say is just, at the very least, you gotta have at least 1 rest day. Like, you have to have at least one rest day. I don't know if— what else you do, like cardio or Zumba or whatever, that's great, but you gotta have one rest day. At least one rest day. And again, I'm a bigger fan of, like, you know, doing 3 to 4 times a week programs, especially for general population, but at the very least, please have one rest day. And again, you can go on a walk or, you know, do whatever you gotta do, but, like, have a day where you're not pushing yourself to the max and, like, don't feel guilty over it because that's actually gonna help you see progress. So hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, click the notification bell, and any questions, drop below and we'll chat soon. Okay. Bye.