How many times a week should a person exercise?

Tim2

Tim2

New member
If you exercise different parts of your body in a week, how many times should you exercise? Is it okay to exercise daily, if you are working different body parts? I read somewhere that a person shouldn't exercise more than three times a week. Is that referring to each body part? If you're doing abs, cardio, upper body, etc., will you end up with more than three per week?
 
Moderate Cardio is fine on most days of the week but if you are lifting you need a minimum of a days break between working body parts and at least 1 full day of rest each week. so if you work chest Monday don't work chest again until Wednesday but you can still work a different body part eg. back or legs on the Tuesday.
 
Trusylver said:
Moderate Cardio is fine on most days of the week but if you are lifting you need a minimum of a days break between working body parts and at least 1 full day of rest each week. so if you work chest Monday don't work chest again until Wednesday but you can still work a different body part eg. back or legs on the Tuesday.
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Frequency for weight work is something that is confusing me.

I work with 20 pound dumbells and a 40 pound barbell doing about 250 moves ranging from kettle bell swings, dead lifts, full body lifts, squats, lunges, arm isolation moves, etc.

I assume these weights are low (according to the weight lifters) so I am unclear whether I can do this style of weight work 5 - 6 days per week.

I don't want to work with any higher weights as I don't want the bulk so I am content with the muscle build this weight provides but I'm never sure how often is okay. I have no injuries other than a very old wrist injury.

I did contact someone who build training programmes for the police force and his advice is, do what you your body allows you to do, if you get too tired or injured then step back but otherwise, go for it. However, we also get told that too much weight work results in cortisol build up so I remain confused!
 
Spinner, firstly are you male or female ? I am assuming female, firstly I can't say for certain that you won't bulk up from heavy weights but it is highly unlikely. As females we don't have the right hormone levels to build large muscles through hypertrophy. Using different weight ranges (Heavy, Moderate) and rep ranges use different mechanisms to build strength.

When working with heavy weights with low reps much of the strength gain comes from an improvement in the number of muscle fibres recruited. e.g. in a bicep curl if only a few motor units (nerves which activate individual muscle fibres) fire intermittently the lift will be weak but if all the motor units in a muscle fire in unison the lift will be strong.

for hypertrophy you need more reps which can't be achieved unless the weight is a little lighter (Moderate weight). Hypertrophy is the increase of size of individual muscle fibres.

Light weights with lots of reps will build endurance but not much else.

If you don't push for more weight over time at your desired rep range then you won't see any improvement, which is ok if all your doing is maintaining what you have.

If the weights you are doing are light enough to do every day with the same exercises each day then you are probably not doing yourself much harm but you are also not achieving any improvements in anything except possibly endurance. On the other hand if those weights are high enough for YOU to see/experience improvements then you need a rest day between full body workouts or you will develop overuse injuries eventually.

REP and WEIGHT GUIDE, it is only a guide and doesn't take into account advanced techniques.

Max Strength and power with small size gains for an advanced lifter
2-6 reps for 1-6 sets at 85-95% of 1 rep max

Max Strength and power with small size gains for an intermediate lifter
4-8 reps for 2-3 sets at 70-85% of 1 rep max

Max size Gains moderate strength gains
8-15 reps for 1-5 sets at 60-70% of 1 rep max

Muscular Endurance
15+ reps for 2-3 sets at 50-75% of 1 rep max
 
Thanks for your response.

My very old wrist injury is real limiter and I am finding working with 2 x 20 pound dumbells & the 40 pound bar doing 250 reps is about as much as the wrist can cope with right now. And even with these weights I have injured a tendon in the wrist and have now lost movement and strength in the little finger (not to mention, it hurts!). It'll repair but it will take me time to work my way to higher weights.

However, I have managed to build visible muscle and strength with these weights. I tend to build muscle fairly readily and I suspect (if I could handle higher weights) I could bulk up. I was in Cancun last week and there was only one other woman there who was more visibly muscular than me (she was working with 2 x 35 pound dumbells doing arm isolation work so she had larger upper body muscles than I would really want).

My confusion is not about the programme I follow (50 minutes intense cardio with high resistance, 1,000 body weight moves, 250 reps with 40 pounds). What I don't understand is:

- how frequently should a person do this style of workout
- is it possible to have a cortisol build up (i.e. over train)
- and if so, how do you know if you have a cortisol build up

All the mags rant on about cortisol causing body fat to build around the middle and how terribly bad for you it is. I just don't understand if that's true, how it works and how anyone would know if they had cortisol build up.
 
The person should exercise 7 times in a week,Just remember that do ur exercise ones in a day like if you want to do it today then start it from your legs then next day stomach and then next day different and different,7 days and 7 different exercises.
 
Abel, where are you getting this information from? That's really terrible advice. People need to have at least one rest day, and I see no reason why they should vary their exercise quite as much as that.
 
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