How many times a week to train for weight gain or for weight loss ?

Date: June 03rd, 2020

How many times a week to train for weight gain or for weight loss?

How long does the muscle need to recover after playing sports? How often can I train my legs and how many times a week to do cardio?

How often do you need to train?

The optimal frequency of training per week is determined, first of all, by the main goal of visiting the gym - from building muscle for men to training for fat burning and maintaining good physical shape for women. It is the goal factor that determines how many days of good rest the body will need to recover.

If long, but relatively lightweight, cardio workouts for burning fat can be done 4-5 times a week, then strength training for muscle growth will require more time to recover. That is why 3-4 visits to the gym per week will be the most effective training frequency for muscle growth. We also talked about whether it is possible to train every day.

On the other hand, the answer to the question of how many times a week you can train is, in many cases, connected with the schedule of your daily routine. In most cases, it is more convenient for people to go to the gym 3 times a week - usually, this is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It is on this schedule that a three-day split was built and a program for gaining mass with three workouts.

How much muscle is restored?

Scientific studies suggest that the time required for muscle recovery after sports is an average of 48 to 72 hours - or 2 to 3 days. In reality, this figure depends both on the level of experience of the athlete and his age (the older the person, the longer recovery takes), and on which muscles were involved in the training.

Moreover, if small and medium muscle groups (for example, arms, shoulders and abs) require about 48-60 hours for regeneration, then for the full restoration of large muscles (primarily legs, chest, back), and especially the central nervous system , also experiencing serious stress when performing basic exercises, requires at least 72 hours.

Muscle group recovery time

Shoulders                    48 - 60 hours

Chest up to                  72 hours

Back up to                   72 hours

Press                            48 - 60 hours

Triceps                        48 - 60 hours

Biceps                          48 - 60 hours

Buttocks up to            72 hours

Hip muscles up to       72 hours

Muscle pain after exercise

It is traditionally believed that a specific “pulling” muscle pain after playing sports is directly related to their growth. From a scientific point of view, this is not entirely true, and muscle growth can take place without pain at all - it all depends on the individual characteristics of a person’s metabolism. We also note that active recovery and sports massage significantly reduce this pain.

In fact, the specific “delayed” pain felt in the muscles of the body after performing heavy strength exercises, only means that the body successfully restores the muscles and removes toxins formed after exercise (including lactic acid). Typically, such pain begins in the period from 12 to 24 hours after training and completely ends after 24-72 hours.

Recovery after playing sports

Recovery

It is not strange, but complete slack is not at all the best way to quickly restore the body after training. Studies show that moderate physical activity on rest days from training in the gym increases blood flow and the rate of elimination of toxins, thereby significantly accelerating the processes of regeneration and growth of muscle tissue.

In other words, light cardio, performed in the fat-burning zone of the pulse and lasting 20-25 minutes on days free from strength training, will not only accelerate recovery but, in the end, will allow you to train with greater efficiency for muscle growth and creating a relief. It will also be useful to visit the pool - it is no secret that swimming perfectly develops the body.

How many times a week to swing legs?

The legs are one of the largest muscle groups in the body, so it is recommended that they be trained no more than once every 72 hours - in other words, if you performed heavy squats with a barbell on Monday, the next time it is better to swing your legs on Thursday or even Friday. However, if you trained exclusively calves or inner thigh muscles, then time is reduced.

 

At the same time, the total number of days needed to restore the muscles of the legs depends on the type of physique of the person – sports fans can train more often (and, ultimately, build muscle faster), while the body of thin ectomorphs or chubby endomorphs needs an increased amount of time to replenish energy reserves.

How often can I train the abs?

For beginners in the first months of strength training, you can pump abdominal muscles 5 times a week - the presence of “delayed” pain will literally help you feel the abdominal muscles, which will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your abs training. However, we are talking about performing single exercises on the press without additional load or a simple workout at home.

Full-fledged sets of exercises for the development of press muscles will require about 48-60 hours to recover. Separately, we also note that more frequent training of the abdominal muscles is completely incapable of removing fat from the abdomen faster (this requires only a diet). In fact, they will only cause overtraining and adversely affect overall progress.

How many times a week a person has to do some training?

If we speaking about training for fat burning, it is important to mention aerobic training. In this case, daily training against the background of a decrease in calorie intake can give the opposite effect to the desired one. Instead of accelerating metabolism and losing weight, the body can increase the level of the stress hormone cortisol, thus provoking not fat loss at all, but it's gain.

Weight loss should always begin with the normalization of nutrition, the exclusion of fast carbohydrates, and excessively high-calorie foods. Physical training for fat burning, in this case, is only a way to normalize metabolism and level blood sugar, and not at all a mechanism to get rid of excess calories and direct "burning" of fat.

Since the total time for muscle recovery is 48 hours for small muscle groups (arms, abs) and 72 hours for large ones (legs, chest), it is recommended to do strength training for weight gain 3-4 times a week. Training for weight loss can be carried out more often (up to 5 times a week), but without a sharp reduction in caloric intake.