Exercise Frequency and Program Design
You may have heard that you should exercise for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. If you tried that in the past, you may have found that you didn’t see any results, or worse, gained body fat. The problem is that this just isn’t enough physical activity. The USDA now recommends at least 60-90 minutes of daily moderate intensity physical activity to sustain weight loss in adults. So even if you’re not going into the gym or doing intense cardio everyday, it is a good idea to get out and find a way to be active. Even a brisk walk counts. This is especially important for those that have sedentary jobs.
If your goal is weight loss, find a way to get in 60-90 minutes of physical activity a day, and consume slightly fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight. Try to find activities that you enjoy doing so that you are more likely to keep it up.
If you are new to strength training, I recommend exercising 1-2 times per week, doing 1-2 sets of 12-15 reps for each exercise, for each major muscle group. Your focus should be on proper exercise technique and maintaining a consistent exercise routine.
Once you have established a baseline fitness level, you can focus more on specific goals. The following are guidelines for different fitness goals:
Muscular Endurance: 2-6 days per week, 2-3 sets per exercise, 12-20 reps per set, 30-60 seconds rest in between sets.
Muscular Hypertrophy (muscle building): 3-6 days per week, 3-5 sets per exercise, 6-12 reps per set, 30-90 seconds rest between sets.
Muscular Strength: 3-6 days per week, 2-6 reps per set, 4-8 sets per exercise, 3-6 minutes rest in between sets.
To improve all three of the above, you could try a periodization program. An example of this follows.
Weeks 1-4: Muscular Endurance
Weeks 5-8: Muscular Hypertrophy
Weeks 9-12: Muscular Strength
Weeks 13-14: Active rest (staying active but not lifting weights in the gym)
A good time to increase the weight you are using is when you can do more reps than your training goal requires. For example, if you want to focus on building muscular strength and you are easily able to do 8 reps with the weight you are lifting, you should increase the weight. If you don’t want to build any more muscle, you could focus on increasing the reps instead of the weight.