While I was trying to decide what to write about this week, I came across the question: how many times a week should I train?

I felt myself chuckle, thinking that there’s no perfect answer to this question. That’s because it depends on so many factors; your training goals, how much time you have to train, how long it takes you to recover, what type of training you enjoy, and so many others.

So today I thought I’d attempt to outline the best way to train to improve strength. I won’t only focus on how many times a week to train, but try to give you a more holistic set of guidelines.

When constructing training programmes, fitness professionals will often use the FITT principle. This stands for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type. Asking how many times a week we should train only covers ‘frequency’ with no regard for the other factors. About 25 years ago, an academic review by Benedict Tan was published, outlining what the literature showed was the best way to train for strength gains.

I am aware that the paper is not exactly recent. However, it is highly cited, (indicating it is likely reputable,) and I haven’t been able to find a review published in the last 5 years that can do a better job of summarising the main research findings. Additionally, from experience I can say this is generally the way most people train for strength gains today, so I don’t think many findings have been disproven or updated since then.

Side Note: A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the basics of resistance training which you can read here. As I highlighted in that article, we can do resistance training for a number of reasons, and gaining strength is not the only adaptation we can work for. We can also train for power, muscular endurance and hypertrophy (building bigger muscles), so I wanted to clarify that what I’m discussing today only applies to training for maximal strength gains. There are a number of reviews outlining the best way to train for power and hypertrophy, but they won’t be my focus for today.

So, without further ado, what does the literature suggest is the best way to train for strength?

Frequency

As this was the original question I found, I thought I’d begin here. It appears that the optimal number of sessions per week is 3-5 (Tan, 1999). Now, what I will mention is that a paper by Colquhoun and colleagues published in 2018 found that when training volume was equated (meaning the same total load was lifted), training 6 times a week was no better than training 3 times a week.

However, the story might be different if you lift more in a week by fitting in a couple of extra sessions. Therefore, it appears that the number of times a week you train is less important than your training volume, i.e. the load you lift multiplied by the number of repetitions you lift that load for, otherwise known as the work you do. When the same training volume is spread over six days rather than three as Colquhoun and colleagues did, there is no greater improvement in strength. However, Colquhoun et al. (2018) did not investigate what the effect of doubling training volume would be on strength gains.

If we go back to Tan’s (1999) findings, a frequency of 3-5 times per week may seem quite high, especially when we consider that each individual body part must be trained 3-5 times per week. My belief had been that 2-3 days of recovery were necessary between training exposures, meaning that 5 days of training the same muscle group per week were unattainable. However, Tan explains that while 3 days of recovery are necessary to produce optimal levels of muscle tension during training, strength adaptations can be made without waiting this long between sessions.

Therefore, if you’re really pushing for strength gains, training each muscle group 3-5 times a week may be for you. Having said that, if you’re not an avid gym-goer and would like to train less frequently, you will still be able to improve your strength with fewer weekly sessions. The current understanding is that beginners could benefit from full-body resistance training 2-3 times a week (Ralston et al., 2018).

As one becomes more advanced, it might be beneficial to increase training frequency, but as I have written in almost every single blog post to date, doing some exercise is better than doing none at all, and if you can consistently do resistance training twice a week, that’s better than trying to train 4 times a week and giving up. 

Intensity

Frankly intensity can mean a number of things, but today, we’ll take it to mean the load or weight you should use, the number of sets you should do and the number of repetitions you should perform in each set.

When prescribing load, we often recommend using a particular percentage of your one repetition maximum or 1RM, i.e. the weight you can lift once and are then unable to lift again in the same set. However, this may not be the best way to train. It appears that for any percentage of 1RM, different people will be able to perform different a number of repetitions (Tan, 1999).

A better strategy is to ask individuals to use whatever weight necessary to perform 1-6 repetitions per set with good form, before failure. This ensures one is training at the high intensity necessary to make strength gains.

Additionally, for optimum improvements in strength, one should perform 3-6 sets of each exercise, as most trainers seem to suggest, and allow for full recovery between sets. Oftentimes, this means leaving 2-5 minutes of rest between each set, as weightlifter and powerlifters tend to do. This is because it allows for adequate recovery, enabling one to perform the next maximal set.

Time

I won’t spend much time on this, as I find it to be less important in this context. If you’re doing 4-6 different exercises and performing 3-6 sets of 1-6 reps with a 2-5 minute rest in between, your session will be 1-1.5 hours long, so it’s not much use prescribing exactly how long the training session should take.

If you’re tight on time, you’ll likely do fewer sets or fewer exercises, and this will shorten your total training time.

One thing I will mention here for the most advanced among us is that it might be beneficial to split your training session into 2 shorter sessions. It appears to enhance strength gains when these plateau in those who are already well trained (Häkkinen & Kallinen, 1994), potentially as it helps recovery and encourages a greater effort to be made (Tan, 1999).

Type

This final one might be quite obvious, but in order to gain strength, we must do strength training. It is this specificity that allows us to make gains in that which we train.

What I will add here is that there are different ways to strength train and it has been recommended that a combination of concentric and eccentric exercises be used for maximal strength gains (Tan, 1999).

Concentric training is when muscle fibres are shortened under tension. This is normally the classic way we think of strength training and an example would be performing the upward phase of a bicep curl, lifting your hand up to your shoulder under tension as you hold a weight in your hand.

Eccentric training is when muscle fibres are lengthened under tension. This could look like lowering the weight down slowly from the top of the bicep curl (i.e. lowering the hand from the shoulder to near the thigh). Generally, we are able to produce more force during eccentric contractions than concentric ones and they serve to damage the muscle fibres in a manner that is necessary for them to heal and grow stronger.

It has also been recommended that sets sometimes be completed to failure (Tan, 1999), meaning to a point where we cannot produce even one additional repetition as part of the set. However, training to failure for extended periods of time may be dangerous and may result in injury, so it may be beneficial to use this technique only sometimes.

Conclusion

When it comes to gaining strength, beginners will likely improve quickly. This is because during the first few weeks of training, they benefit from neural adaptations, where the nervous system gets better at activating muscle fibres more powerfully and efficiently. After the first few weeks, their body starts to build more muscle. At this stage, the increase in muscle size becomes a more important factor in getting stronger. However, this begins to take us into the realm of hypertrophy, another adaptation which, as I previously mentioned, I won’t be going into today.

The important thing to remember is that training at high intensities, meaning with heavy loads, will train the body to adapt to lifting heavier weights. This is the specificity of training that is necessary to make one stronger. But if you’re just starting out, don’t worry about pushing yourself to the limit 5 times a week. Try 2-3 whole-body resistance training sessions per week and lift as much as you can for 3-6 sets of 1-6 reps of every exercise you do, and don’t forget to rest between sets. You’ll undoubtedly see some astonishing strength gains within weeks!

References

Colquhoun, R. J., Gai, C. M., Aguilar, D., Bove, D., Dolan, J., Vargas, A., Couvillion, K., Jenkins, N. D. M., & Campbell, B. I. (2018). Training Volume, Not Frequency, Indicative of Maximal Strength Adaptations to Resistance Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 32(5), 1207–1213. https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000002414

Häkkinen, K., & Kallinen, M. (1994). Distribution of strength training volume into one or two daily sessions and neuromuscular adaptations in female athletes. Electromyography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 34(2), 117–124. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8187678/

Ralston, G. W., Kilgore, L., Wyatt, F. B., Buchan, D., & Baker, J. S. (2018). Weekly Training Frequency Effects on Strength Gain: A Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine – Open, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-018-0149-9

Tan, B. (1999). Manipulating Resistance Training Program Variables to Optimize Maximum Strength in Men: A Review. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 13(3), 289–304. https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/1999/08000/Manipulating_Resistance_Training_Program_Variables.19.aspx