How Much Weight Training?

Similar to the “how much cardio” question I tried to answer earlier, some people want to know how much strength training to do in a given week. Opinions vary widely on this subject, but research data shows some basic fundamentals which can be applied to most people’s work out routine on a regular basis. Similar to cardio training, the frequency of strength training will depend greatly on your physical goals and what you plan to accomplish in the gym. Some people are interested in gaining strength, others are looking to gain size (they go hand in hand, but there is a difference). Some want to maintain strength, and still others want to maintain structures other than their muscles, such as their bones. In any case, there is a certain amount of strength training which is required to accomplish specific goals and I’ll try to order those goals from least time necessary to greatest time necessary here-after.

No matter what your goal, you should first understand the concept of “over-training”. Over-training is no simply doing to much but rather an actual condition of excessive fatigue your body can undergo if you are training at a level which exceeds your bodies capabilities to recover. Over-training is marked by a constant feeling of tiredness - particularly during a workout - muscle aches, joint aches, an elevated heart, weight loss and a rather than gain of strength. If you goal during strength training is to increase size, you must pay careful attention to what you eat and drink as well as how much you work out. You will be putting great demands on your body’s metabolism as well as your muscles and you must give it time to allow your body to rebuild from intense exercise. As a rule, your muscles need about 48 hours of rest time to recover from a loaded workout. Thats two days with strength expenditure of the utilized muscle group not exceeding about 50% before returning to fatigue training again.

As I mentioned, every one’s body operates under certain general rules of strength gain, loss, and recovery. If a muscle or group of muscles are enabled to maintain a certain amount of strength, say the chest and arms can do ten pushups, then that amount of strength will generally be maintained with as little as one day of strength training per week. As long as that muscle or group of muscles is brought to fatigue once every seven days, it will likely be able to maintain the strength it has for an extended period of time. After seven days, the body starts to lose a little muscle and, therefore, a little strength. This is by no means a drastic change, but going without strength training for a week or more will result in a little loss. So in order to maintain strength, each muscle group should be fully fatigued under load (with weights) at least once a week. This can be accomplished in one training session if that session is efficient and does in fact target all major motions for strength maintenance (See Major Power Movements of the Upper and Lower Body from January 08).

If you are trying to gain strength, you need slightly more activity out of your muscles than once a week... Twice a week. A second workout which again fatigues all the major movements of the body is enough to gain strength - not much, but a gain is possible. So if you want to increase your pushups from ten to fifteen, you could do so by adding a second strength workout a week which included pushups both times. You body would catch on relatively quickly and you’d probably be able to eek out those five extra repetitions within a month or two. After a certain period of time, your body would become used to the two workout per week regiment and you would need an alteration to your routine in order to continue gains, but increasing frequency would not necessarily be the answer.

For some special occasions your doctor may suggest strength training as the most productive alternative to various medical conditions or ailments. Osteoporosis and fibromyalgia are two of the more common maladies which can be managed and in some cases improved upon with proper loaded or strength training. Although the style of training one would perform to address these issues would not be the same as say, an athlete, the necessity for consistency is very similar. With conditions such as these, your body is essentially fighting itself and the best way to combat the poorer performance of your body is to maintain a higher standard than the average person. If you have one of these doctor prescribed conditions, strength training three, four, or sometimes even five days a week can reduce symptoms, reduce pain, and even slow or on rare occasions improve the processes which cause the degeneration in the first place. All the normal precautions for over-training should be managed as well as added considerations for managing the appropriate affliction, but this should not deter someone from pursuing strength training as a treatment.

Because it is so physically and even fairly mentally demanding, body building or gaining size requires the most strength training in the gym. In order to gain size, you must eat constantly and not small portions. You must also eat properly, indulging in foods which are easy for your body to use for energy, muscle rebuilding, and joint laxity. Body building is a very complex sport and only a few professionals succeed in managing the rigors of this sort of training. In order to appropriately grow muscle you must not only eat a significant amount of the correct food, but you must fatigue your muscles in a manner unlike all other gym goers. It is not uncommon for a body builder to spend 30 or more minutes fatiguing one muscle group (not in constant motion, but in cumulative effort). Thirty minutes spent on each of the upper and lower body power movements would amount to four and a half hours of training. However, the upper and lower body power movements are not exclusive for body building and there must be other actions taken to specify additional muscles in the body. To gain proper muscle weight it will likely take an hour and a half, four to six days a week of intense strength training along with appropriate eating. To gain the status of a body builder, you will likely spend two to four hours training each day you are in the gym. It is a rather significant undertaking. Even at such gregarious expenditure, the regular rules of the body apply. You have to give each muscle group at least 48 hours to repair itself after it has been fatigued so your work out schedule will need to be tightly managed.

Similar to cardio training, the time put into strength training varies greatly based upon your expected output. Unlike cardio training, however, strength training is not usually a necessity for survival. Often basic but precise movement is enough to maintain the strength necessary for your body to operate properly. In other words, in order to keep the strength your body needs to do the activities you frequently do, you need only continue to perform those activities. The weights in a gym are used to exceed these minimum strength requirements and are certainly another form of keeping your body healthy. Like cardio training also, they should not be pursued lightly and without guidance as doing so offers your body to great injury - and no one likes to back track.