How often you should exercise depends on a lot of different factors. Such as your goals, the intensity and any history of injury you may have. The type of training you do may also determine how often you need to exercise.
Elite athletes train up to 14 times per week! Clocking up numerous hours on the track, road and in the gym. For the rest of us, getting into shape does not mean such an extreme regime. 😀
Exercise stresses different systems in our body. This stress causes fatigue, but also leads to adaptations specific to the stress we’ve experienced. For example, while resistance training it helps us build muscular strength. It’s less likely to improve our cardiovascular fitness though because it puts more stress on our muscles than it does on our heart.
Improvements only happen with a combination of recovery and repetition. If we don’t repeat the training stress, improvements will be lost. We also need to give our body enough time between training sessions to recover and adapt.
The key to improving fitness is to train consistently, which means striking a balance between exercising and recovering enough.
Take into account though, some exercises can take longer to recover than others. For example, an exercise that stresses the body’s nervous system, such as high-intensity interval training will take longer to recover. This means that depending on what type of training you do, you may need to exercise more or less than you think.
Endurance exercise
When training for endurance events, like a marathon, doing regular, low-intensity workouts are useful. Regularly training at this intensity helps the body use oxygen better. In fact, successful endurance runners tend to perform most (about 80% of their training). High-intensity sessions should only be done two to three times per week, with a minimum of 48 hours between them. This also helps athletes recover better and avoid injury between training sessions.
Resistance training
When it comes to building muscle, doing more training sessions a week results in greater gains in muscular strength. Rest and recovery (including proper nutrition) are still crucial in helping muscles increase in size.
While performing more days of resistance training is beneficial, even just one day per week is effective in improving strength. Whole-body movements, such as squats and lunges, performed with correct technique, can be great for developing strength.
Health and fitness
For the average person trying to get in shape, quality over quantity is probably more important!
Some studies have shown doing four to seven bouts of intense, one-minute exercises with 75 seconds of rest between three times a week improved fitness and mental wellbeing. So if you don’t regularly exercise, less than 30 minutes per week could be beneficial. 💪
Whether you should exercise more or less often depends on many things. How often you’re able, your training goals and the intensity of the exercise you’re doing.
In summary, you should aim to vary the kind of training you do within a week, allowing enough recovery between intense or resistance training days. The most effective training programme is the one that you maintain consistency over a long period of time. Consider hiring an online running coach who can map out your training based on your goals using their experience. 😀
A healthy runner is a happy runner so try to keep in your stretch zone without pushing yourself into fatigue, and impacting your wellbeing!
