Exercise frequency is an important factor for muscle growth and capacity increase. In this article, I will touch on the subject of rest, giving examples from scientific research, since how many days you need to do sports.
Resting the muscles after exercising
For those who do sports, we look at long-term rest and muscle regeneration. Because learning about rest and restructuring is an important factor in deciding how many days you need to exercise.
Physical development in all types of exercise without exception is the combined use of exercise and rest verbs. Contrary to popular belief, your muscles do not develop when exercising. You just send them the message that they need to be stronger.
In addition to the message given during this exercise, your muscles are exposed to a number of effects during exercise.
Your muscles during exercise.
- In the contraction and relaxation processes, it experiences micro traumas and ruptures at the microscopic level.
- During exercise, cell wastes accumulate in it with rapid metabolic activity.
- At the same time, the cell fluid and mineral balance deteriorates with the accumulated waste.
As a result, with this damage inside the cell, the cell enters the post-exercise phase of rest, restructuring and development.
Completing this process means you are ready for the next workout. If you start a new workout before it is fully structured and this situation becomes chronic, muscle development is interrupted, the risk of injury increases and the possibility of overtraining in the long term arises.
Human physiology is not standard. For this reason, it is difficult to come up with a formula suitable for everyone. However, you can create your own exercise program based on the information I have provided.
Affecting the restructuring physiology in general;
- Hormonal environment,
- Age, gender and other body characteristics,
- Living standards and habits (sleep, stress, etc.)
There are many variables such as. It is very important to evaluate these variables and make the correct adjustment.
As a result, the most important factor that determines how many days you need to exercise is the restructuring and development process. Evaluating this process correctly will help you decide how many days a week you will exercise.
Exercise types and exercise frequency
Although there is a wide variety of exercise types, there are also many types of rest and exercise frequency. Although it is quite difficult to explain in all exercise types, I will at least explain to classify the exercise types and how to determine the frequency according to those classes.
Bodybuilding: how many days a week to do exercise?
Our main focus for bodybuilding is to repair muscle fibers. Because the goal for bodybuilding is to expand the muscles and increase muscle mass.
Here, we see a change regarding training types. Because the resting tempo will change with the changing training types. First, let’s start by creating the classification for weight training.
In this classification, trainings,
- Regional, single or two regions,
- Regional, three or more regions,
- Whole body,
can be classified as.
Regional, single or two regions, in general, people focus on two areas and aim to work all muscle fibers on this region. For example, shoulder and back arm working athletes will train the front, middle and back shoulder areas, long inner and outer back arm areas. Since all muscle fibers belonging to the target areas are worked out in this type of exercises, there is no need to return to shoulder and back arm exercises in other days.
One of the important points here is that large muscle groups are exposed to more pressure and more muscle fibers need to be structured. For this reason, it should not be forgotten that large muscle groups need more restructuring than other small muscle groups.
Individuals who do this type of exercise should keep their resting periods long and rest structures such as muscles and tendons that are severely worn out, as they do heavy exercises that work all muscle groups. For beginner and intermediate athletes, it will be sufficient to train all muscle groups once within a training session 3-4 days a week.
In the regional, three or more region protocol, people concentrate on more than three regions and work only certain muscle groups of these regions. For example, shoulder, back arm, leg working athletes do the front and middle shoulder, back arm outer fibers and front leg exercises. In the ongoing days, areas such as the back shoulder, inner back and long fibers in the shoulder area and the hind leg can be studied.
Since individuals who do this type of exercise follow a fragmented training system without exercising a whole muscle group, they can train 5-6 at least once a week to work all muscle groups. This piecewise method, which is generally used at a professional level, should be well designed and the use of side muscle groups should be carefully examined.
Side muscle groups are the fibers that work in the background along with the main muscle groups. This is an issue that is generally overlooked and restricts performance. For example, the individual who exercises the back arm will have difficulty while doing chest training the next day.
The reason for this is that the muscle fibers that were worn out the day before were insufficient in the “press” type exercises during chest exercises. People who do whole body exercises work together with compound exercises regardless of piece muscle group and set strength-oriented goals. Individuals who do this type of exercise can even do 5-7 training per week, depending on the training intensity.
How many days a week should be done to lose weight?
If individuals are doing weight training during the weight loss process, they can look at the previous topic. Apart from this, there are important points to be mentioned regarding the weight loss rate and cardio pattern.
First of all, individuals who do cardio for a long time to lose weight do not have any obstacles in this regard. We know that muscle structures are not damaged and joint structures are not strained in exercise types such as cycling and spinning where the cardiovascular system is forced.
For this reason, it is possible for individuals who want to lose weight to exercise 5-6 days a week if they are doing cardio. It is possible for athletes who are just starting to exercise, to spend their existing training processes with 3-4 exercises per week.
How many days a week should be done for endurance?
There are many types of exercise for endurance development. For this reason, I will give you an idea rather than a way that depends on the type of exercise.
Strength exercises are based on a single type of activity, and generally based on doing these activities for a long time and at certain tempo. For this reason, it includes long exercise periods and is very tiring. Although muscle wasting is not generally in the foreground, metabolite accumulation is experienced due to long-term exercise. Since this metabolite accumulation does not harm development unless it reaches serious dimensions, individuals who exercise for endurance are free to adjust the exercise intensity within their capacity.
Exercise frequency is a subject that can be evaluated depending on many different variables. Generally, it will be appropriate for weight lifters to exercise 3-4 days a week in conventional working styles, 4-6 exercises per week for those who want to lose weight and 5-6 exercises depending on intensity for endurance athletes.
As a result: For those who exercise only to stay healthy, the minimum amount of exercise is determined in the guidelines as a minimum of 30 minutes a day, three days a week. Your rest and development process will affect how many days you will do sports for all purposes other than this.
So is more exercise always good?
Many professional athletes get more flu infections than normal people during intense exercise. The decrease in the body resistance of these athletes who exercise frequently and continuously is related to the response of immune cells to this exercise tempo. On the other hand, research shows that individuals who exercise regularly have immune cells activated and function better. It’s not always better to exercise more. The important thing is to exercise at the level you need and that you will get the maximum benefit from.
You need to learn your recovery potential and optimize exercise frequency according to muscle recovery. You have to practice different training frequency for different exercise types and for different purposes.
