Why Working Out Everyday Isn’t Good For Your Gains – Over 40 Fitness
You may have heard it before:
“Work out every day to get the best quality gains!”
“Do 100 pushups, 100 pullups, 100 squats, and a 10 mile run every day for a killer physique.”
“Take your arms to the gym every day for the best guns possible!”
Whether you’re a complete gym newbie, a casual attendee, or an advanced-level gym goer, chances are you’ve dealt with the question of how often you should be working out per week. During the entire process of putting a workout program together to hit a certain goal, the last missing puzzle piece after making your custom split is the frequency of how often you hit each body part. You might be doing “bro splits” to target a certain muscle group every day or even a push-pull-legs split to get muscles two times a week, but there might be some uncertainty put into the mix of your routine.
The big THREE of workout frequencies
Before anything is said about how often you should really be going to the gym and every when you’re supposed to hit different muscle groups for growth, here are some other significant questions that come along with workout frequency that you’ll need to know:
- How often and how much should you do any type of exercise (cardio, weight training, calisthenics, etc.) every week? – Overall Exercise Frequency
- How many times and how often should you lift weights per week? – Weight Training Frequency
- How many times should you train each body part or each muscle group every week? – Muscle Group or Body Part Frequency
Striking a balance between all three types of frequencies is crucial when trying to make proper gains over a certain amount of time spent in the gym. Workout frequencies are the most overlooked aspect of going to the gym, but the most important in terms of making significant progress in attaining your goal physique and maintaining it for as long as possible.
Determining your overall exercise frequency
First and foremost, you’ll have to establish how many times you’re supposed to work out every week to achieve your dream body. This step includes determining how often you’ll be doing cardio, weight training, Olympic lifting, calisthenics, or any other type of exercise every week. Depending on your overall goals and current physique status, you may have to do three to four cardio sessions a week if you’re trying to lose fat. You can opt to skip the cardio if you’re skinny but you’re trying to put on lean muscle. However, you have to note that your body needs rest to actually make any proper advances or gains, which means you’ll have to take at least 1 to 2 days of rest off per week to allow your body to recover before you slug it out in the gym.
Understanding your optimum weight training frequency
This is another frequency that is completely dependent on the goals that you have. While there are many ways to approach the prescribed amount of weight training that you’ll have to do every week, the best general weight training frequency that can work with most, if not all goal types is to lift weight three to four times per week without doing more than 2 consecutive days. In this case, it would be best to do a full body workout split three times a week on alternate days just to hit everything right and get weight training done as effectively as possible. Think of the three- to four-a-week weight training allocation as the sweet spot or optimal area for lean muscle building or performance enhancement.
Knowing how often you should hit certain muscle groups
The three most common frequencies of hitting or targeting muscle groups are hitting a muscle group once a week, hitting a muscle group twice a week, or hitting a muscle group thrice a week. Although this aspect may be a bit confusing as everything usually depends on your training style, needs, and individual goals (as two bodies are not the same), you’ll want to stick to hitting every muscle group or body part two times per week to really get the right amount of stimulation and growth into your muscles. Going for a program that hits the muscles twice a week makes it far more easier to allow lagging muscle groups to catch up in overall form, symmetry, and size while making minor improvements to semi-satisfactory muscle groups.We help with fitness for men over 40, get in touch & look at our other posts for more tips.
About the Author
FitDadChris
Jack of all trades... master of none! Father of 3 awesome boys, husband to 1 amazing wife! Obstacle racer, procrastinator, computer nerd, trying not to follow the herd!