How Often Should You Go To The Gym?
How often should you go to the gym?
My, what a totally original question!1So original, in fact, that you can’t find it answered elsewhere because no one has had the pleasure of being asked this totally original question that no one has been as original as you to pose.
Well, if you want to see results then you better be consistent.
That not only includes doing the going to the gym shit for longer than a week but also doing the going to the gym shit with regularity.
But with how much regularity do you have to do the going to the gym shit?
Sure, you could go once a week but that isn’t enough to expose the body to a large enough training stimulus to prompt an adaptive response.2I know, that’s a bummer because working out once a week is what you had your fingers crossed in hopes of.
And sure you could go every day, but that doesn’t give your body — especially the central nervous system — enough time to repair itself, which can result in the desired adaptations not taking place, as well as improve the risk of injury.3I know, that’s a big weight off your shoulders because going to the gym every day is what you were praying to the heavens against.
So what’s the proper exercise frequency then?
This is…
If you’re working out for health reasons, research suggests that it doesn’t matter how you space apart your workouts. All that matters is that you get 150 minutes of physical activity per week. That’s all that’s needed to lower the risk for metabolic syndrome.4Psst…metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that include heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.
But that’s how often you should work out for health reasons, which you don’t care about.
Nope, you go to the gym for reasons other than that.5Yeah, I agree with you. FUCK HEALTH!!!
Instead, you go for cosmetic reasons.
How often you should work out to meet those shallow goals is dependent on a myriad of variables, like age, experience, nutrition, sleep, genetics, drug use, yada yada yada.
Because I have other shit to do with my life, we’re only going to focus on activity.6I would assume that you have shit to do too, but you don’t.
If you’re lifting weights or performing cardio with no real effort like almost everybody does at most commercial gyms, then do whatever the fuck your schedule allows. That lack of effort sure as hell isn’t going to do shit for your body, but keep thinking it will!
If, however, you want to strength train for hypertrophy purposes, we have to consider that building muscle requires lifting weights at a moderate to high intensity. Seeing that it becomes harder and harder to push it in the gym when your body isn’t fully recovered, you should have at least one rest day per week.7To further help with recovery, avoid working out the same muscle group on consecutive days. As for how often you should train a muscle group, research suggests that hitting each muscle group twice per week yields the best results.
With a minimum of one rest day, that leaves six remaining days to play with.
Do you HAVE to make it to the gym six times a week?
No, not unless you really, really want to because you don’t have a fucking life. If you’re one of those people with a job, family, friends, or any other outside obligation that’s indicative of having a life, working out 3-4 times per week is more than enough.8As a general rule, newbies should schedule 2-3 training days per week, each session consisting of total body work. Intermediates should work out 3-4 days, with the workouts split by muscle group or one session for the entire upper body and other for the lower. And advanced trainers? The recommendation is 4-5 days of lifting however the fuck they want to!
When it comes to cardio for fat loss, you should aim for 300 minutes per week of moderate intensity work then divide by the number of days you plan on torturing yourself. So if there are five days open for you to lightly jog on the treadmill, that means each cardio session should last an hour, which is an eternity in cardio time. Too long, huh? Then aim for 150 minutes per week, with the caveat being a severe increase in the aerobic intensity.9Over five days, that cuts the length of each session down to 30 minutes.
But truth be told, if you’re trying to lose fat, your primary objective should be building calorie-burning muscle. For that reason, you should be lifting weights, if not a combination of both.
Even more truth be told, you don’t have to do either to lose weight.
Wha-what?!?!
Yes, you read that correctly.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you don’t have to concern yourself with going to the gym because you don’t have to lift or do cardio.
All you have to do is control your food intake and voila, the fat will melt off.
*gasp*
Am I saying that exercise is overrated for fat loss?
*gasp*
Yup, I most certainly am saying that!
And my proof is what exactly?
Well, a meta-analysis of 25 years of weight loss research.
That’s what!
The data shows that people who relied on diet alone lost 23.6 lbs, which is more than the 6.4 lbs lost by those who only exercised. That’s more than triple the weight loss, highlighting the importance of proper nutrition!
And when diet intervention was paired with exercise?
Take a guess!
If you said people only lost an additional 0.7 lbs, then you would be absolutely correct!
Yes, that’s right!
People lost a whopping total of 0.7 more lbs when they combined diet and exercise!!!
What that clearly says is that body composition has less to do with moving around and more to do with what goes inside your mouth, contrary to popular belief. Basic physiology explains why, as 100 percent of the energy we use comes from food and our basal metabolic rate burns about 60 to 80 percent of those calories while ALLLLLLLLLLLLL the physical activity we do throughout the day accounts for only 10 to 30 percent, of which 1-2 hours of exercise makes up only a teeny-tiny sliver.
Okay, maybe that’s advanced physiology!
Whatever the case, we CAN’T control how our bodies burn calories but we CAN control what we put into our mouths, which is why food control is far more important for weight management than exercise.
How often you should go to the gym depends on what you’re working out for, with you possibly not even having to.
But here’s the thing.
Even if you don’t have to go to the gym, you’ll still go…
…or at least pretend that’s where you’re going because having your significant other thinking you’re at the gym after work provides you cover to carry on that extramarital affair.
Play on, male or female player!
Glossary: calories, cardio, commercial gym, diet, exercise, frequency, genetics, goal, gym, hypertrophy, intensity, muscle, muscle group, rest day, results, treadmill, work out