Truth is, you can strength train as often as you want, just be methodical about it.
How often you get in the gym and lift weights has a direct impact on your week. The question of how many days per week and which days of the week one should lift, is highly dependent on the individual. For the novice, 3 days per week is typically sufficient. Ideally, those days are not back to back. At Traditional Strength, we have found for most individuals, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday strength training schedule is sufficient to balance recovery. This type of strength training regimen typically takes about an hour and a half.
Ultimately the number of days and hours committed to the developing strength depends on you and your schedule. When do you have free time? How much free time do you have? What days do you have it? Is it all at once or broken up throughout the day? A barbell coach who is worth their salt can help you figure this out, along with a good strength training program to help you progress.
You do not have to be locked into a specific schedule to make strength gains, however, consistency is an incredibly important variable. Most people find that when they lift at the same time, for the same amount of time, and on the same days each week that they make better progress. This is because it allows them to plan for their strength training sessions more successfully. Serious weight lifting requires some pre planning. You need to eat, and make sure you have all of your training equipment lined out in advance.
“What about those who want to lift more than three days a week”? Some people like the way they feel after lifting, and would rather lift every day to get their day started. “Is it going to impede my progress to train 4 or 5 days per week”? No, no it is not. But this also depends on the type of strength building exercises you are doing. Plenty of people have gotten strong by lifting on a 4 or 5 day split, even as novice lifters. But you need to understand that doing heavy squats and deadlifts takes a toll on you physically. You will not be able to do these things every day if the weights are heavy enough. Even bodybuilders managed to figure this out long ago. Thats why every gym bro in the country thinks that “back and bi’s” and “leg day” should be their own days.
So what does it look like to train on a 4 day split as a novice? Perhaps you only have 1 hour a day to lift on your lunch break and you can lift 5 days per week. What should you do? I would start by suggesting you focus on lifting Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri. With Wednesday off. It is better on this schedule to perform only two lifts per day, so that you can focus on those two lifts and completing them successfully instead of rushing to accomplish more.
Here is an example of what you should do.
Monday- Squat Heavy and Bench Light.
Your squats can be programmed to 3 sets of 3, 1 set of 5, 3 sets of 5, 1 set of 3 or any number of combinations that are done with weights heavy enough that more than 5 reps cannot be completed. No “reps in reserve” as they say. The Bench Press should be completed with 3 sets of 5, 5 sets of 5, 5 sets of 4, or 5 sets of 6. This is not an all out max effort. Weight selection here should be based on a percentage relative to your Heavy Bench Press day that can be done with moderate difficulty. If its too hard, you will fail on your heavy day.
Tuesday- Heavy Overhead Press and Light Deadlift.
Your Overhead Press needs to be done in sets of 1-3 reps. Ideally you are getting 6-12 reps done on your heavy day in whatever way you can. The muscles involved in the Overhead Press are smaller and require more work typically, however this is not always the case for everyone. Deadlift on this day should be a light pull. Contrary to what the big starting strength milk drinkers think, doing 2-3 sets of 3-5 Deadlifts will not kill you. The weight selection here should be roughly 70 percent of your 1RM Deadlift.
Wednesday- OFF
Thursday- Light Squat and Heavy Bench.
Similar to your Light Bench Press day, your Light Squat day can be programmed with 3-5 sets of 5 or multiple sets of 3. You want to keep the rep range around 20 reps total, plus or minus 5. Again, the goal of this day is not a max effort set of 3-5 reps. It is to keep the blood pumping, and provide additional stimulus to your Heavy Squat day. The Heavy Bench Press however, needs to be heavy here. Shoot for 1-3 sets of 3-5 reps. One heavy set of 5 is a great method of programming a heavy Bench Press day, and it can easily turn into 2 or 3 heavy sets of 3 reps should you eventually fail.
Friday- Light Overhead Press and Heavy Deadlift.
Typically on a light Overhead Press day 4-6 sets of 5-6 reps are sufficient to drive the stimulus for the next heavy Overhead Press day. Variation exercises are also acceptable here, military or dumbell presses etc. These should be fairly difficult. A light Overhead Press day that is too light, will contribute nothing. Shoot for 85-90 percent of your heavy day’s weight selection with the Overhead Press. As for the Deadlift, 1 set of 3-5 reps is plenty. These can be exceptionally challenging, and so long as you rest well over the weekend and eat like a starving animal, you will be just fine come Mondays heavy Squat.
This is just one example of how a 4 day split for the novice can be laid out. Although there are a million other ways as well. Should you choose to turn this into a 5 day a week program, Wednesday can be your chinups, bicep curls, latpulldowns, or olympic lifting day. But again, there are a million different ways you could lay out a strength training program like this.
But even if you can only train 2 or just 1 day per week you should do it. You can make strength progress with just one day per week of training, it will just eventually become incredibly difficult to get stronger past a certain point. More on that in the next article.
Just remember though, anything over 6 reps at a time is chasing the pump. Chasing the pump equates to short term gratification, and strength training is a long term adaptation. Keep the reps low between 1-6 and the load on the barbell high and you will get big and strong. And if you can find a way to do that consistently, adding some weight to the barbell each week, you will find success.
By: Greg Herman
Owner and Head Coach
of Traditional Strength Gym
in Edmond, Oklahoma