How many times/week should you lift?
One of the top struggles I hear from women who want to lift weights is not feeling confident in how to create a workout session or program to get them to their goals.
While there are many layers to this concern, most of the time people get hung up on the first few steps:
How many times should I lift per week?
How do I break up those sessions?
What should each of those sessions look like?
Today, we’re touching base on the first question:
How many times should I lift per week?
The Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend adults participate in full-body resistance training sessions at least twice/week (along with 150-300 mins of moderate intensity cardio activity OR 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity cardio activity each week).
So two lifts/week is a great baseline to work with!
We do know that there is more opportunity for #strengthgains and other health benefits with more frequent sessions. With 3-5 strategic lifting sessions/week we can make the most progress towards hypertrophy and strength gains than we can with 1-2 lifts/week.
However, whatever you are able to do is the best starting place. If that’s one lift/week, that’s still great and will bring you more health benefits than not doing any kind of resistance training at all.
To summarize:
What you can do consistently (think for 2-3 months at a time) is the best routine to follow for the sake of progress and health benefits.
Doing something will always be better than doing nothing. Even though 2 sessions/week is the recommendation, if you can only do 1 lift every other week that’s still better than not lifting at all.
Have questions about setting up a week of lifts?
Drop them in the comments and stay tuned for part 2 talking all about workout splits!