You might often ask your trainer or yourself that "how many times a week should I workout?" to stay fit and healthy. Today, we are answering it for once and all.
To stay fit and healthy, you need to be honest and dedicated to your fitness goals. You cannot stay healthy if you continuously have junk food; you need to work on yourself. A workout plan should consist of both the types of training, cardio and strength training.
Here, we’ll discuss some tips and ideas that will tell how many times a week you should workout. Though, this depends on many factors such as your fitness goals.
Also, the type of workout you are following, whether cardio or weight training. People do cardio workouts to increase their endurance; it includes running, jumping, walking, and indoor-cycling.
Whereas, in strength or weight training, you train yourself by using free weights to build muscles. If you want to stay fit, it is very important to come out of your comfort zone. Only concentrating on workout is not sufficient; you need to be honest with your eating habits too.
So, let's go through the type of workouts and answer your "how many times a week should I workout?" question.
1. Cardio Training
In cardio workout sessions, you train your body to increase its endurance. It helps in maintaining good heart health.
With cardio, you can easily burn calories, stabilize your hormonal imbalance, also, boost up your mood. You can plan your cardio training sessions three times a week, for a minimum of 30 minutes of each session.
Cardio workout includes jumping, walking, indoor- cycling, and high-intensity interval training, where you do not take much rest in between the exercises and burn extra calories.
If you're planning your cardio training sessions, then you should,
- Either plan 25-30 minutes for each session of moderate to high-intensity training five times a week, or
- Plan 35-40 minutes for each session to do high-intensity aerobics for at least three times a week.
If you want to lose weight fast, then you can plan both types of cardio activity for alternative days.
Cardiovascular workout helps in burning calories and increases your metabolism. Some best cardio exercises that are effective in burning calories at a faster rate are mentioned below -
- Jump rope
- Jumping jacks
- Burpees
- Planks
- Squat jumps
- Mountain climbers
- Push-ups
- Running.
2. Strength Training
Strength training focuses on muscle gains. You can plan your strength workout sessions three times a week.
Either you can plan each session for a full-body workout or those exercises which focus on muscle gaining of some parts of the body such as legs, chest, shoulder, back, and arms.
- Chest-building exercises - chest fly, pullover with a dumbbell, dips, bench press, incline bench fly, and dumbbell press on the bench.
- Exercises for Toned legs - lunges, squats, sumo squats, deadlifts, planks, step0ups, leg extension, leg curl, and jumping jacks.
- Exercises for Toned arms - bicep curl, skull crusher, triceps extension, and arm circles.
- Exercises for shoulder strengthening - shoulder press, lateral raise, Arnold press, single-arm press, dumbbell push press, reverse fly, and pullover.
- Exercises for back - pull-ups, deadlifts, lat pull down; bridges bent over barbell row, seated cable row, and pull-downs.
While some exercises focus on multiple muscles at a time, those are,
- Squats with shoulder press.
- Planks and push-ups.
- Deadlifts with a row.
- Lunges with weights.
You should plan your cardio HIIT and strength workout sessions for alternative days as it will give you the best results or if you're planning to do continuously then make sure you're getting a minimum of 2 days of rest or recovery days to repair your muscle fibers.
3. Core Workout
In the core workout, the focus is on a set of muscles at a single time. Those muscles are well extended beyond your abs. These are made for the stability and strength of your lower body and upper body.
You need to plan specific workout sessions that will help you in strengthening all your major core muscles that include, obliques, abdominal muscles, pelvic floor muscles, and spine muscles.
Some exercises are most effective in strengthening your core muscles; these exercises are even done by athletes and novices, those exercises include-
- The Plank
- The Side Plank
- Sit-ups
- V-Sit Pose
- Bicycle crunches
- Push-ups
- The Bridge
- Skipping with a twist
If you want to work out efficiently in the gym, it is very important to ensure that your core is flexible and strong enough.
Firstly, you should particularly focus on strengthening your core muscles for effective results. Core exercises are a vital part of every workout session. There are some exercises that you should include in your muscle and core strengthening program such as, push-ups, squats, chin-ups, lunges, planks, pull-ups, ball crunches, and dumbbell rows.
4. Rest Days
Rest days do not mean you do need to do anything. You should do some light exercises to keep up with your workout plans.
The light workout session includes jogging, running, jumping or cardio with less intensity. With your workout sessions, it is very important to take rest or recovery days.
Also, a proper sleeping schedule should be there to remain fit and healthy. Quality of sleep is necessary for your body to repair damaged muscle fibers.
Without adequate sleep, you will feel restlessness and weak during your workout sessions. The recovery days should consist of 1 or 2 days only.
5. Stretching
Stretching workout is as important as the cardio and muscle training are.
If your body is not flexible, then you cannot do the workout efficiently. Including stretching work after or before a workout session helps you to improve your flexibility, make your workout session effective and efficient, and reduce tightness in your body.
Some stretching exercises are -
- Standing stretch
- Lunges with a spinal twist
- Triceps stretch
- 90-90 stretch
- Butterfly stretch
- Seat shoulder stretch
- Side bend stretch
- Pectoral stretch
Tight muscles can cause pressure on your joints during the normal functioning of your body. Fortunately, enhancing your strength and flexibility isn’t hard at all. It takes little effort and time.
You should add stretching exercises in your workout sessions as it will show effective results with no unwanted strains in your body.
