How often should you be going to the gym?

The question of the year, it seems. In a world muddied with social media influence and people seemingly exercising 5732 hours per week, here’s the deal:

Unfortunately this answer… totally depends.

You have to be going to the gym frequently enough for your body to actually adapt to what you want from it; if you’re going just once per week, that’s basically you entering the gym at square one every single time you come in. Your body adapts to that first workout, and then it forgets just in time for you to come back in again and get really, really sore. This means going once per week probably isn’t frequent enough for you to be seeing consistent forward progress.

If you’re going two days per week, thats just shy of being enough to really hit the frequency needed to build strength and muscle. When those are the goals, you need about 3 days per week of repeated exposure; 2 days per week is quite simply not enough to build significant, lasting, and meaningful fitness.

3 days per week is starting to hit the nail on the head, especially if you’re a beginner. You’ll begin to repeat movement patterns, add a little weight each week, and start to really get some practice in with stuff you are learning how to do!

4-5 days/week is for those who have an established fitness baseline; if you are someone who has been exercising for a while (read: years and years), you are considered “trained.” That means you need a lil extra sauce to continue to get stronger and fitter, which will mean an extra day or two.

6-7 days/week is mostly a no-mans land, unless you are an elite athlete or have worked many years to build up the tolerance for a program that has that much volume in it. More can be better if you are starting off with 3 days/week, but more also means more to recover from, which is where it gets tricky. Worth noting here: the exercise program you can recover from is the exercise program that’s sustainable long term, which is the biggest factor in reaching your goals. Have to be able to keep coming back from more!

The trick is to find the balance; you’re consistently working hard, making progress, and recovering, while also living your life outside the gym. For most, that lands somewhere between 3-5 days/week of exercise.