Is Going To The Gym Once A Week Enough?
Q: Is going to the gym once a week enough? I’d like to go more often to avoid being home and having to spend time with my family but that’s all I can manage at the moment. ARRRGGGGHHHH, I’m getting angry right now at the thought of even having to be around those motherfuckers. Talk about torture!
A: Is going to the gym once a week enough?
Well, to answer that, you’re going to have to define what “enough” is.
If you’re starting from baseline and want to improve your health and general fitness, then only one day of gym attendance might be enough. Working out that infrequently can help you gain a bit more endurance, build a little muscle, and get a tad stronger. One workout a week might also be enough to help you maintain your level of fitness if you already have a good foundation built. For anything else more worthwhile, however, that amount of frequency isn’t going to cut it.
Better results require more regular exposure of the body to cardiovascular and resistance training activity. That means that at a minimum, your weekly exercise should be spread out over 2-3 days if you’re a beginner. Once your experience is on the intermediate or advanced level, then you should be in the gym 4-5 days maximum. That said, if going once is all you’re capable of due to certain responsibilities and obligations, then something is better than nothing.
When you’re only able to go to the gym once a week, it places a greater impetus on you to be active throughout the day to receive the benefits of movement. That can take shape in the form of activities such as taking the stairs, parking further from entrances, riding public transportation and getting off a few stops early to walk the rest of the way, and improvising with the equipment when you take your children to the playground. Speaking of the latter point of making due with what you have around you, just because you can’t go to the gym doesn’t mean that you can’t work out elsewhere, such as at the local park or at home.
As for when you’re at the gym, what you should do when your visit is limited to once a week is to perform a full-body workout so everything gets trained because you don’t have the luxury of performing a whole workout for one or two specific muscle groups over multiple days. Concerning the workout itself, the majority of your exercises should be compound movements that involve more than one muscle group at a time rather than isolation exercises that only target a single muscle group. That’s what you should do if you’re lifting weights. But regardless of whether you’re going to the gym for that or to do cardio, the most important thing when working out once a week is to perform both with enough intensity so you’re near your fatigue limit at the end, which should help offset the lack of additional training days. These tips should help make your workout efficient so you get the most benefit out of your single session.
Given that you can only go to the gym once a week and should maximize the limited window by training both the upper and lower body on the same day, a single session workout may take a little bit longer to get through than a workout that’s part of a multi-day training schedule. So you’re probably looking at about an hour or two. But hey, you’re welcome to stretch out your workout beyond that timeframe if you’re looking for an excuse to be away from home any longer than you have to be!
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
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