People want to exercise just once a week for two reasons.
Firstly, these are people who have not yet gotten involved in training and have decided to add a little sports on weekends to their regular lifestyle.
Secondly, these are people who have already “gotten enough” of sports and are afraid of completely losing their shape, so they decide to keep it to a minimum.
A lot of people go to the gym once a week. They say they are walking. In fact, “sometimes” “force majeure” occurs. In total, according to my statistics, if a person announces that he will go to the gym once a week, then he will check in at the reception 35 times a year.
Although, if there is absolutely no time = desire to do 75 sets or 90 minutes of cardio, then instead of training once a week, I would choose the “seize the moment” principle.
What results do 35 workouts a year actually lead to?
\"2-3 times a week can be 5 times a month\"
In sports there is a law of 10 days. After 10 days, fitness levels begin to fade.
For example, you can do 10 push-ups. On the ninth day after your last workout, you will do 10 push-ups, but on the eleventh day it can only be 9 times.
This is if you don’t train for 10 days. What if you don’t train for 10 years?
Obviously, a life without training makes a person weak.
For example, if a man in the army could do 20 pull-ups, then by thirty years of a sedentary lifestyle his record in pull-ups can reach 2 times. I have seen such examples often.
But if this man did just one working set of pull-ups once a week, then by the age of thirty he would retain the ability to do 20 pull-ups.
Simply put, one workout a week or 35 workouts a year will allow you to maintain the shape that you have, if this shape is not at a very high level.
At a low level of training, even one workout per week produces progress in results.
For example, if a woman has never been involved in sports: music school as a child, and work as an accountant after college, then by the age of thirty, even one workout a week gives her an increase in strength and endurance.
It should be noted that not every workout once a week gives an increase in strength from scratch or maintains average level gains.
A workout consists of exercises, and exercises are measured in sets or minutes.
In strength training, you need to do at least 5 approaches per exercise: four at half strength and the fifth at your best.
In endurance exercises, the workout should last at least 30 minutes, of which at least 6 minutes are spent at more than 80% of the maximum.
Create a strength training program
How to avoid overtraining?
This is an equally important topic compared to how often to exercise. First of all, you need to monitor your progress. If you stop progressing in at least one exercise, this may indicate that you are close to overtraining.
In the example we considered above, this is what happened, because the builder noticed that he had stopped improving his results in the bench press. If a similar situation happened to you, then you should rest. Here are the three main symptoms of overtraining.
We recommend reading: Why TRX should be original
- The working weight in exercises does not increase. To progress, you need to gradually increase the load. However, for this, the body must fully recover so that you can work with heavy weights.
- The number of repetitions or the time of static holding of projectiles does not increase. If the working weight does not increase, then the number of repetitions or the time of static holding of the projectile should increase.
- You spend more time doing the same workout. The effectiveness of training is closely related to the concept of intensity, which is measured in units of time. Simply put, if it took you longer to do an activity you did a few days ago today, then the intensity has dropped.
Workout once a week for weight
Today there is an opinion that you need to train one muscle group for mass not more often, but less often, so that the muscle has time to recover. Many bodybuilders train one muscle group once a week, but go to the gym more than five times a week.
This means that if you decide to go to the gym once a week, then you need to train using the “full body” method - training the whole body at once.
With one workout per week, there can be no talk of dividing the muscles into splits by day.
You also need to remember about a minimum of approaches in motion. There must be at least ten of them. The Size/Quarter technique covers the entire body in three movements. This means covering your entire body with thirty sets.
If you decide to train once a week, then this is at least 30 approaches, of which 24 approaches are performed half-heartedly and 6 approaches as you feel.
What to do if you only have one or two days a week to workout
Theoretically, it is possible to get a good workout done in one or two sessions. For example, you cannot go to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but you can only on weekends, or only on Saturday morning.
What is more likely to influence the outcome is the dedication and effort you put into these rare activities.
This choice has its drawbacks. For example, it will take a lot of time. And it may be difficult to maintain such an intense rhythm if you are used to putting in less effort but training regularly.
A set of exercises for training once a week
A set of exercises for full body training once a week should give a total of 25-40 approaches: few can stand more.
Of course, these approaches should not be “to failure”, but with an intensity of 60-90% of “to failure”.
How to scatter 25 approaches per set of exercises? As you wish. You can do 3 exercises of 8 approaches or 5 exercises of 5 approaches. You can even do 8 exercises in 3 sets.
Doing less than 3 approaches per exercise is very little. The first approach, the body only remembers the movement.
In 1998, I recommended the following set of exercises to my clients:
1. Bench press
2. Pulley row 3. Squats 4. Deadlift 5. Seated press 6. Standing biceps 7. Triceps pulley 8. Abs or Calves
People did 8 exercises of 3 sets.
Now I recommend doing 3 exercises of 8 approaches:
1. Push-ups 2. Pull-ups 3. Single-leg squats
Training program once a week
A training program is a weekly plan for a set of exercises.
I wrote about the set of exercises above, now how to create a program from it.
The training program has a deadline and this period is determined in weeks. Typically, the training program is designed for a period of at least 6 weeks.
In our case with full body training once a week, we have a program of only 6 workouts that must be done in 6 weeks.
Every program must have a goal. For example, build a certain amount of muscle if the training is aimed at gaining muscle mass.
I wonder how many kilograms of muscle you can build in 6 workouts?
You will know this if you do this program with a constant increase in load from week to week. In our case, this is from training to training.
As experience shows, a person with no training experience can make excellent progress for 6 weeks, training only once a week and increasing the load from training to training by 3-10 percent.
The increase in load from training to training depends on the quality of recovery between training sessions.
People who recover well increase the load within 3-10 percent per week.
Create a strength training program
They asked an expert: are short workouts effective?
Spending only 5, 10, or oh well, 15 minutes a day on fitness is very tempting. But are short workouts really as effective as the internet promises?
Natalya Saitova, personal trainer of the World Class network of fitness clubs, specialist in integrative health optimization
Express services are the most popular genre in the modern world, and the fitness industry also has something to offer the always busy. Tabata training promises to burn excess fat in just four minutes, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) threatens to sculpt an ideal body for those who have at least a quarter of an hour, and no one has ever considered the author’s methods of pumping up the abs or arms in five, seven, ten minutes. It would seem that there are no more excuses about lack of time - just take it and do it. Oh no, wait a second: it turns out that short workouts are not for everyone.
Pros and cons
There is no official classification of short workouts, but in the professional environment this is the name given to fitness programs that last from 5 to 20 minutes and have an important general rule: every second of this time is spent efficiently and stresses the body as much as possible. That is, lazy morning exercises are, of course, better than nothing, but they cannot be considered a workout. “Before carving out free minutes and choosing a suitable express program for yourself, I would recommend that a person sensibly assess his physical fitness and state of health,” advises Natalya Saitova. — Short workouts are absolutely not suitable for beginners in fitness: it requires a high pace of exercise, ideal technique and, most importantly, the habit and desire to train to the maximum of your capabilities. Not everyone is mentally ready to spend even five minutes at an off-scale rhythm, and without this you cannot improve the quality of your body in a short time. Another important factor is health status. Substantial excess weight, diseases of the respiratory system, problems with blood pressure, diabetes with high-intensity training can be fatal. Even diseases such as scoliosis and severe flat feet are already a contraindication: the technique of performing exercises with these diagnoses cannot be ideal, and training will only worsen the body’s condition.” However, a solid list of restrictions is not a reason for those who fall into it to be upset. A study by the American Council on Exercise found that for sedentary people, a 30-minute workout at a moderate pace provided the same fitness improvements as strenuous HIIT. That is, beginners do not need to test their strength with the help of sweatshop training: it is easier for them to get in shape and lose extra pounds with the help of feasible activities that will gently prepare the body to conquer new heights. But for healthy and physically fit citizens, express training can be a salvation in situations of time shortage. After all, their main bonus is that just 10–15 minutes of physical work at the limit of their capabilities accelerates metabolic processes so much that the body continues to oxidize fat and improve the condition of muscles for several hours, or even days, after the load.
How does high intensity interval training work?
HIIT is a vigorous, functional workout that lasts 5-20 minutes. Schemes can be different, but the classic is 20 seconds of intense exercise, 60 seconds of recovery in fast walking mode - and so on until the time runs out. The invention of the Japanese professor Izumi Tabata is also a type of HIIT, it prescribes 20 seconds of work at the limit of your capabilities, then a 10-second rest, repeat six to eight circles. So in less than five minutes you can provide your muscles with a load that will keep them in good shape for several more days. All types of effective HIIT have one thing in common: if during the exercise you say to yourself: “It’s so hard, I wish it would end sooner” - the goal has been achieved.
How often do you do HIIT?
“Ideally, high-intensity short workouts should be in addition to other types of exercise,” says fitness expert Natalya Saitova. — HIIT is good for tuning the body, but a person should still get the base from longer, more stable training, which gradually builds strength and endurance and prepares the body for powerful short-term loads. Doing 5-15 minute sprints every day makes sense only for advanced athletes, for example, so as not to lose shape while on vacation. For my fairly experienced clients, I usually recommend starting with one short HIIT workout per week, and you can add more later if desired. If a person chooses a fitness strategy of 20–30 minutes, but in a more relaxed mode, for the sake of quick results, such exercises can be done daily. However, you need to remember that if the training was at the limit of physical capabilities, the body needs more time to recover - a day of rest will not harm it.”
What is important during short training sessions?
In addition to being honest with yourself (feeling sorry for yourself and breaking the rules of the game during HIIT is pointless), our fitness expert advises keeping such moments in mind.
- When thinking about a set of exercises for a short workout, make sure that all muscle groups receive an even load and no one is left behind. Girls, especially if they train at home, tend to load only the muscles in problem areas, but this is the wrong strategy.
- For short workouts, the ideal execution technique is extremely important: the pace of transition from one movement to another is extremely high, and you definitely won’t be able to let it go over your head. Therefore, everyone who practices HIIT must develop a consistent movement pattern. This only comes with time, and you need to practice the technique of performing even banal squats and planks in a calm mode.
- Warm-up and cool-down are essential, even if you only exercise for five minutes. This is necessary to raise the pulse, prepare the joints and respiratory system. For warming up, light cardio (running, jumping), stretching, spinning and swinging your arms and legs is suitable. In terms of movements, the warm-up should be most similar to your main work. Breathing techniques that quickly restore your pulse and relax you are good as a cool-down.
- When choosing exercises for HIIT, remember that it is important to respect the anatomical planes, otherwise the body will receive an uneven load. For example, vertical rows should be balanced by horizontal ones, abdominal exercises should be balanced by the load on the back, and all movements as a whole should fit into the concept of “plane training.”
- Don't expect HIIT to replace strength training. Firstly, you can't use your usual weights for short, powerful sprints: it's usually recommended to use 30-40% less than your usual rep max. Secondly, muscle recovery time is limited to seconds, and all the body’s forces are devoted to the breakdown of fats - a suboptimal regime for muscle growth.
- HIIT is strictly contraindicated for people under chronic stress: their tired adrenal glands from such stress can turn the entire hormonal system on its head with unpredictable consequences.
- The human body has the ability to adapt over time to any, even peak loads. So it is necessary to progress even during short workouts, gradually increasing the number of repetitions over a certain time, the weight of the equipment, and the time under load.
- HIIT is often chosen by women who want to recover after pregnancy, but for objective reasons cannot afford to spend a lot of time. “I don’t recommend this strategy,” says Natalya Saitova. “The level of stress and energy costs during childbirth and breastfeeding are already high, the hormonal system works according to different laws, and as a result, you can not only not lose weight, but, on the contrary, gain weight, face swelling and loss of strength.”
How many workouts per week is optimal?
The number of workouts per week is determined by the level of training. The level of training is determined by the length of training.
In trained people with more than one year of training experience, training once a week allows them to maintain shape, but not improve it.
To make optimal progress in the first two years of training, you need to train for 3 hours or 3 times a week for an hour.
Two workouts per week provide a progression between optimal progress and maintaining fitness.
These data are valid for people with an average level of willpower and an even psyche. There are people who are very strong-willed and ready to perform great deeds during training. Such people progress faster at first, but are more likely to get injured and fall back.
As a result, it is not the one who showed more heroism in the first training sessions who remains in the best shape, but the one who has been injured less over several years.
What conclusions did the study come to?
People who spread their training volume over 3 days per week gained more muscle than those who spread their weekly volume over 1-2 days per week.
On average, training a muscle group 3 times a week allows you to increase muscle growth by 3.1% compared to one- and two-day training (6.8 versus 3.7%).
After 8 weeks of training in this mode, a beginner in strength training will be able to gain about 5 g of muscle more.
Over time, this figure will increase, but the difference is not that great.
Here's what the study results look like when dividing subjects into several groups:
This can be approached in two ways:
- You can build more muscle in the same amount of time by simply hitting each muscle group more often. Why not take advantage of this? Forward!
- Training each muscle group more frequently will only make a tiny difference in muscle growth, so why bother?
A closer look at the findings reveals a couple of pitfalls that make the study's findings even more ambiguous.
- Five of the studies were conducted on people who had not lifted weights for at least a year. Two of them involved middle-aged people (30-49), and the other two involved older women (50+). Although strength training generally has the same effects on people, these results only hold true for those who fall into one of these categories.
- Studies have used a wide range of training frequencies, making it difficult to determine what is “best.” Some compared one- and two-day training, others - two- and three-day, and still others - one- and three-day.
With such a small difference in progress, it cannot be said that frequent training will guarantee muscle growth.
But here's some food for thought:
All groups of subjects performed the same training volume.
On the one hand, this proves that the difference in muscle growth is not due to one group doing more volume than the other.
On the other hand, the main reason why people advocate frequent training is because it allows you to squeeze more training volume into one week.
It is known that performing more sets per week usually leads to greater muscle gains. So if frequent training allows you to increase your training volume, then we can safely say that this should help build more muscle.
For example, you currently do 6 sets of bench presses once a week. By the fourth, fifth, and sixth sets, you're probably pretty exhausted. You may even have to change the weight to a lighter one.
What if you split these 6 sets into two workouts per week?
Then you will do 3 sets in one workout, and most likely you will be able to press more weight in each approach.
You could go further and add 1 set to each workout, thus increasing your total weekly training volume to 8 sets.
In other words, what helps you build more muscle is not just training more often, but training more often, which allows you to do more training volume, which leads to more progress.
Either way, this is just a theory that research has not paid attention to.
It's also worth considering that all of these studies, including this meta-analysis, initially did not see any benefit from frequent exercise. But when all the results were combined, a statistically proven difference in muscle growth became evident.
This is a frequent topic for scientific research.
Small studies don't show any benefit, but when you look at larger data, you can identify a clear winner that proves there are "hidden" benefits.
In conclusion, the scientists noted:
It can be assumed that major muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week for maximum muscle growth. Due to a lack of data, it is unknown whether training more than 3 times per week can improve the hypertrophic response of muscles.
Training 3 times a week
To write a training program for 3 times a week, you need to divide the weekly volume of training into three days.
In your plan, both strength training and cardio training take away your strength.
People with full-time jobs should do at least one hour of strength training per week.
In my experience, people with full-time jobs can't handle more than six hours of strength training per week.
The basic recommendation is for people with a full-time job and more than two months of training experience to achieve 3 hours of strength training per week.
These three hours are filled with 75 approaches at a density of about 25%. That is, 30 seconds of execution of the approach, 90 seconds of rest - 2 minutes per approach.
In total, a weekly plan for 3 workouts per week can be made up of 24-30 approaches in three movements, in three or six series.
Three movements can be divided into 9 exercises per week.
For example, push-ups can be divided into: weighted dips, bench presses, and wall handstand push-ups.
Dips with weights
Bench press
Handstand push-ups against a wall
Pull-ups can be divided into: chest-high pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, and archer pull-ups.
Pull-ups to chest
Pull-ups with weight
Squats can be divided into: stand-ups, back squats, and shrimp squats.
You need to score 25 sets of each movement, which can be broken down into three exercises of 8-9 sets.
Training sets for three times a week might look like this:
Day 1 (gym)
1 Bench press 2 Squats 3 Weighted pull-ups
Day 2 (street)
1 Pull-ups 2 Dips with weights 3 Pull-ups
Day 3 (at home in bad weather)
1 Shrimp 2 Archer Pull-Ups 3 Wall Handstand Push-ups
Circuit training. Whole body per workout
In 1953 of the last century, R. E. Morgan and G. T. Anderson (University of Leeds in England) developed a system of circuit training. Circuit training involves performing exercises on different parts of the body sequentially one after another in one approach. In one workout, all major muscle groups are worked out (each exercise is for a separate group). One such circle consists of 6–10 exercises, and in one session you can perform from 2 to 6 circles. Between exercises of the same circuit there are short rest periods. Circuit training is carried out 2-3 times a week, at each of them, if possible, both the exercises themselves and the sequence of working out muscle groups are changed. Thus, circuit training involves working out all muscle groups twice or thrice a week, and the amount of work per muscle group varies from small (1 approach) to medium (6 approaches).
An example of a circuit training program with three workouts per week. All exercises are performed in two sets of 10–15 repetitions; next week it would be wiser to change the load mode to a more intense one (increasing the working weights) and perform 2-3 sets of 6-8 repetitions in each exercise:
Circuit training 1. Monday
- Bent-over barbell row;
- Bench press;
- Leg press in the machine;
- Bend legs in the machine;
- Smith machine seated press;
- Standing biceps curl;
- Arm extensions on the upper block with a straight handle.
Circuit training 2. Wednesday
- Incline Dumbbell Press;
- Squats with a barbell on the shoulders;
- Hyperextension with a load behind the head;
- Standing dumbbell raises from the sides up;
- Dumbbell curls for biceps with a hammer grip;
- Close grip bench press;
- Pulldown of the upper block with a medium grip to the chest while sitting.
Circuit training 3. Friday
- Leg extensions on the machine;
- Deadlift on straight legs;
- Pull the lower block along the body up to chest level;
- Raising the barbell for biceps on the “Scott Bench”;
- French bench press on a horizontal bench;
- Traction of the lower block to the belt while sitting;
- Dumbbell flyes lying on an incline bench.
