Does it make sense to train once a week? How many times a week should you go to the gym? The whole truth

Bodybuilding once a week? What nonsense, you say, is it possible to get pumped up by working out just once a week? The answer is yes. At first glance, the plan for such training seems completely absurd, which contradicts absolutely all the rules and techniques of bodybuilding, but if you look into this in more detail, you can understand that there is no sense of absurdity here. Except that bodybuilding once a week is not for everyone.

The result from training once a week will be, but not as fast as many would like. Muscle mass will grow slowly but surely, this is due to the fact that the muscles will have plenty of time to rest and recover, and accordingly, there simply cannot be any overtraining.

Overtraining is the main problem with frequent bodybuilding exercises, and sometimes the results of people training 4-6 times a week are much worse than those who spend much less time in the gym. In general, frequent bodybuilding sessions are needed only by professionals who have some experience, a properly structured training regimen and a well-balanced diet. In addition, for good results during frequent bodybuilding exercises, use is often required.

If you don’t have time or don’t have enough money to visit the gym 2-3 times a week, then once a week is just for you. The result will be no worse than other athletes, and maybe even better, but you will have to wait a little. In classical bodybuilding, two muscle groups are trained in each session. In a training program of classes once a week, this rule will not work effectively. Since there will be enough time for rest, you should train three muscle groups.

For example: in the first week you train your biceps, chest and legs, in the second week you train your triceps, shoulders and back. And you do only basic exercises. In the third week, perform isolation exercises on the same muscle groups that you trained in the first week. In the fourth week, you should perform isolation exercises for the muscle groups of the second week.

This is how your training month should go. Naturally, you should get sports nutrition, that is, although you should not take them often, just once a week after training. You can get the rest of the proteins necessary for muscle growth from your regular food. An intensive sports diet is not required for such activities, which is a huge plus.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this type of training has both pros and cons, but it should be noted that you will achieve results in any case. And if you have heard somewhere or from someone that a week of rest between workouts is too long and the muscles will be destroyed from prolonged inactivity, then do not rush to believe it. It has long been proven that muscles retain their volume even after two weeks of rest.

Comments: 20

Muscles are fully restored within 4 days, this has been proven by sports science and athletes. Try it yourself - after a good workout, the desire to come to the gym appears around the 5th day, i.e. after complete recovery. But this does not take into account the fact that you spend a lot of energy at work, in the family, (including sex), as well as not the best nutrition and the lack of a fanatical approach to training, which is what a normal person - a non-athlete - should have. One workout a week gives excellent results. Firstly, the loss of energy in 2-3 workouts is very significant. Secondly, the recovery is not complete. Hence the loss of interest and complete refusal to train after just two weeks. With one workout you will get both results and interest - you can do this for years, even your whole life!

By the way, I myself worked as a fitness trainer for several years (2009-2012). So, those people who worked out once a week, after two months, caught up with the results of those people who worked out more often. The conclusion is the following - training is not the main thing, the MAIN THING IS TRAINING + RECOVERY, i.e. rest. The important thing is that there is neither time nor energy for frequent training, and people simply quit training COMPLETELY and the result was reduced to ZERO. And those who did not exercise so often, trained for several years (i.e. they fell in love with the sport and do not give up training) and as a result are CONSTANTLY in good shape and in a great mood.

By the way, all modern sports techniques have Soviet (USSR) roots. Then sport had ONLY one goal - SPORT OF THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENTS, i.e. not designed for ordinary people, their health and personal life. On the contrary, athletes were turned into slaves of training; many did not have a normal personal life at all, plus they completely lost their health by the age of 35. (athletes are the sickest and most unhappy people, unfortunately). Let's take the American training system (USA). The main thing here is to make money and make a profit. It is logical that the more often a person visits the gym, the more money he will leave for training, sports nutrition, and so on. Naturally, they will convince you that there is no other way, there will be no result at all! etc. The conclusion is: don’t trust the SYSTEM. Think for yourself - 1 good workout per week will give excellent results to an ordinary person.

I myself have been training once a week for several years and there is progress, although I studied at home without a trainer. At first, the bar generally lifted 20 kg in the bench press, now there will be a transition of 65 kg. Even from two classes I was overtrained, I was “at war” with my body for so long, but it didn’t want to. I recently agreed with him that the 2nd workout is working with your own weight, no more than 30 minutes: abs, extensions (back) and that’s it. And those who protest against one time ridicule those who train once - they themselves have been going to the gym for 2-3 years and still do not know what happens when they are overloaded.

Something is hard to believe.
Well, the athlete came to the gym, and let’s bomb all the groups in one training session. I started with the basics: squat, deadlift and press. Here you can’t do without warm-up approaches, at least one or two, otherwise you’ll end up in the hospital with tears. So, 2 warm-up ones, and let one work. Total 9 sets per base. Then: deltoids (+3 sets), biceps (+3), triceps (+3), lats (+3) - that’s another 9 sets. Now press for 2 sets. Don't forget about the thigh biceps (+2) and calf (+2). TOTAL: 24 sets per workout. What happens in terms of time, taking into account a 1-minute break between sets of 3 minutes. a break between groups and maybe 0.5 minutes for the exercise itself? 24+12+(8*3) = 60 minutes. Well, in principle it’s real... I don’t know!

You can exercise once a week and there will be results and progress. Even in accordance with the mat part (1 muscle group - 1 time per week, but you do it all in one workout). Unfortunately, the majority of ordinary people in the country go to the gym regularly for 2-3 years, moreover, at a young age, and during this time overtraining does not yet take on a noticeable nature for health and against this background they draw some conclusions. Then this majority gives up on the audience and becomes fat. And they quit the gym precisely because 3 times a week is too much. It’s just that society has instilled “boyish” views - ruin yourself or the posons will laugh.

Vitya, they are basic because they involve several groups in their work. The squat can even be removed, because... When standing, the legs are loaded normally. Total: bench press + classic deadlift. I look forward to your arguments that progress is not waiting for a person.

From my own experience I can say that this method works! I struggled with my body for a long time. I refused to grow.. I am 23 years old, with a height of 185, I weighed 63 kg. For a year I worked out once a week with my own weight (powerful squats with my wife on my shoulders, parallel bars, horizontal bar, push-ups, press). Proper nutrition on schedule 5-6 times a day, cottage cheese at night is a must! Good sleep 8+ hours. Weight became 82 kg! I don’t believe it myself, but I seriously gained weight and remained lean. Became like a man.
Now I started training with normal weights in the gym. Training once a week. Just the basics and be sure to do every leg workout!
I want to gain another 10-15 kg of muscle mass, which is quite realistic.
The main thing is to understand your body!

There is no doubt that you are doing your best to run regularly, even to the point of doing it every day. However, life dictates its own conditions to us and does not always allow us to train when we want it. If your schedule is so busy that you can't afford to go for a run more than once a week, is it worth it at all? Research shows that there is nothing wrong with being a "weekend runner" by running once or twice on the weekend.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, analyzed the relationship between life expectancy and physical activity. Observation of more than 64 thousand adults led to the conclusion that to increase life expectancy, it is enough to perform 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise over the course of a week. And it doesn’t matter how you distribute this time - between one or 6 workouts.

The researchers compared people who did at least some activity with people who neglected it. In other words, movement is better than stillness. This conclusion is obvious. Any regular activity will benefit your health in the long run.

However, training 1 or 2 times a week is more suitable for beginners who are just starting out. For more advanced “athletes”, it is still recommended to divide this time into several classes. Even 25 minutes of physical activity a day is already more than 150 required per week. Almost each of us can allocate that much time during the day for these purposes.

However, if you definitely cannot follow such a schedule, focus on full-body training through the use of interval training. The strength component will help maintain muscle mass, while the high-speed intervals will stimulate the cardiac system. You should maintain an elevated heart rate during training that includes mobility exercises (jumping rope, running). In addition to these, you should do bodyweight work, strength training and cross training, such as swimming.

While working out once or twice a week is an acceptable option, it's best not to spend your remaining days being passive and instead try to be as active as possible in your position. Try to move in any way and force your muscles to work (take the stairs instead of the elevator, take long walks), and then it will be easier for the body to adapt to the stress it will receive during weekend workouts.

People want to exercise just once a week for two reasons.

Firstly, these are people who have not yet become involved in training and have decided to add a little sports on weekends to their regular lifestyle.

Secondly, these are people who have already had enough of sports and are afraid of completely losing their shape, so they decide to keep it to a minimum.

A lot of people go to the gym once a week. They say they are walking. In fact, “sometimes” “force majeure” occurs. In total, according to my statistics, if a person announces that he will go to the gym once a week, then he will check in at the reception 35 times a year.

Although, if there is absolutely no time = desire to do or cardio, then instead of training once a week, I would choose the “” principle.

What results do 35 workouts a year actually lead to?

"2-3 times a week could be 5 times a month"

In sports there is a law of 10 days. After 10 days, fitness levels begin to fade.

For example, you can do 10 push-ups. On the ninth day after your last workout, you will do 10 push-ups, but on the eleventh day it can only be 9 times.

This is if you don’t train for 10 days. What if you don’t train for 10 years?

Obviously, a life without training makes a person weak.

For example, if a man in the army could do 20 pull-ups, then by thirty years of a sedentary lifestyle his record in pull-ups can reach 2 times. I have seen such examples often.

But if this man did just one pull-up once a week, by the age of thirty he would retain the ability to do 20 pull-ups.

Simply put, one workout a week or 35 workouts a year will allow you to maintain the shape that you have, if this shape is not at a very high level.

At a low level of training, even one workout per week produces progress in results.

For example, if a woman has never been involved in sports: music school as a child, and work as an accountant after college, then by the age of thirty, even one workout a week gives her an increase in strength and endurance.

It should be noted that not every workout once a week gives an increase in strength from scratch or maintains average level gains.

A workout consists of exercises, and exercises are measured in sets or minutes.

In strength training, you need to do at least 5 approaches per exercise: four and five.

In endurance exercises, the workout should last at least 30 minutes, of which at least 6 minutes are spent at more than 80% of the maximum.

A set of exercises for training once a week

A set of exercises for full body training once a week should give a total of 25-40 approaches: few can stand more.

Of course, these approaches should not be “to failure”, but with an intensity of 60-90% of “to failure”.

How to scatter 25 approaches per set of exercises? Whatever. You can do 3 exercises of 8 approaches or 5 exercises of 5 approaches. You can even do 8 exercises in 3 sets.

Doing less than 3 approaches per exercise is very little. The first approach, the body only remembers the movement.

In our case with full body training once a week, we have only 6 workouts that must be done in .

Every program must have a goal. For example, build a certain amount of muscle if the training is aimed at gaining muscle mass.

I wonder how many kilograms of muscle you can build in 6 workouts?

You will know this if you do this with a constant increase in load from week to week. In our case, this is from training to training.

As experience shows, a person with no training experience can make great progress by training just once a week and increasing the load from training to training by 3-.

The increase in load from training to training depends on the quality of recovery between training sessions.

People who recover well add 3 loads per week.

How many workouts per week is optimal?

Determined by the level of training. The level of training is determined by the length of training.

In trained people with more than one year of training experience, training once a week allows them to maintain shape, but not improve it.

To make optimal progress in the first two years of training, you need to train for 3 hours or 3 times a week for an hour.

Two workouts per week provide a progression between optimal progress and maintaining fitness.

These data are valid for people with an average level of willpower and an even psyche. There are people who are very strong-willed and ready to perform great deeds during training. Such people progress faster at first, but are more likely to get injured and fall back.

As a result, it is not the one who showed more heroism in the first training sessions who remains in the best shape, but the one who has been injured less over several years.

Training 3 times a week

To write workouts for 3 times a week, you need to divide the weekly volume of training into three days.

In your plan, both cardio and cardio workouts take away your strength.

Full-time employees must be employed for at least one hour per week.

In my experience, people with full-time jobs can't handle more than six hours of strength training per week.

These three hours are filled at a density of about 25%. That is, 30 seconds to complete the approach, 90 seconds of rest - 2 minutes per approach.

In total, a weekly plan for 3 workouts per week can be made up of 24-30 approaches in three movements, in three or six series.

Three movements can be divided into 9 exercises per week.

For example, push-ups can be divided into: weighted dips, bench presses, and wall handstand push-ups.

Dips with weights

Bench press

Handstand push-ups against a wall

Pull-ups can be divided into: chest-high pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, and archer pull-ups.

Pull-ups to chest

Pull-ups with weight

Squats can be divided into: stand-ups, back squats, and shrimp squats.

You need to score 25 sets of each movement, which can be broken down into three exercises of 8-9 sets.

Training sets for three times a week might look like this:

Day 1 (gym)

1 Bench press
2 Squats with a barbell
3 Weighted pull-ups

Day 2 (street)

1 Pull-ups
2 Dips with weights
3 Climbing onto the pedestal

Day 3 (at home in bad weather)

1 shrimp
2 Archer Pull-Ups
3 Handstand push-ups against a wall

Experienced athletes and coaches say that to maintain muscle tone, a normal figure and excellent health, you need to regularly visit the gym. A reasonable question arises: how many times a week should this be done? Is it enough to come to class once a week, for example on a weekend, and be in great shape?

What are the consequences of loss of muscle tone?

It is known that with age, soft tissues lose their firmness and elasticity and are filled with harmful components. As a result, the body becomes less resilient, various ailments appear, including heart problems, bones become thinner, and joints begin to creak and wear out. As a result, a person loses the ability to withstand even minimal loads.

A person loses his ability to work. He gets tired quickly. If nervous tension is added to this, then depression or states of increased excitability and manifestations of inadequate reactions occur.

The only salvation from this can be playing sports. If a person does not aim to pump up muscles like a bodybuilder, but only to maintain them in normal condition and at the same time feel good, you can go to training once a week.

What do regular workouts give you?

A person who visits a fitness center or gym only on weekends or on one day of the week is usually prescribed moderate, even loads for all muscle groups. They are installed at the same level, without increasing or decreasing. This allows you to maintain tissue and muscle mass in normal condition.

The main condition for such training is not to take a break of more than ten days. Otherwise, everything will have to start all over again. Thus, you need to visit the gym 40-50 times a year.

In addition to working out in the gym, visiting the pool will have a positive effect. Once a week is enough to activate all organs and tissues, enrich cells with oxygen and feel toned throughout the following days. If possible, physical training on simulators can be alternated with swimming procedures.

In between classes, it is useful to go for a run. A few simple exercises and 10-15 minutes a day are enough so that the muscles do not lose elasticity and do not become flabby. It wouldn't hurt to move and walk more.

Thus, by training once a week you can keep your muscles toned and stay in excellent physical shape for a long time.

Guten Tag (German: Good afternoon), herrы and frau madams:) The material on this page is primarily dedicated specifically to males, but I am sure that beautiful ladies will be able to highlight the necessary information for themselves. So, let’s talk about the possibility of developing strength potential and muscle mass by working out in the gym once a week, and we’ll also try to choose one for such a case. the best training program.

Obviously, most people who want to train a muscle once a week want save time, effort and money, while obtaining a more or less satisfactory result. Everyone has common sense to one degree or another, so I don’t think that “disposable” (forgive my joke) athletes have illusions about their potential with such a low frequency of training.

Many come to the gym just to pump up a little, and not to turn into an anabolic monster under crazy doses of pharmacology. And I absolutely understand such people and respect their choice. It is not at all necessary for everyone to suffer from an acute form of brain bodybuilding with constant reposting of stupid tunes from Jock’s public pages and contempt for those who are smaller and weaker than them. Nobody wants to be a jerk, but not everyone wants to be the Hulk, and even with a huge belly from growth hormone.

Of course, I don’t really welcome such a low number of classes per week in the gym, because for me there is minimum set of exercises, which allows you to pump up all the necessary muscle groups, but cramming this set into one single day will be extremely difficult and not advisable. Here are the actual exercises:

I repeat that this list contains only the most necessary things, without isolations on the arms (they are already well used), working out the calf muscles, forearm, trapezius or neck, as well as without abdominal crunches, which can be safely performed at home.

But with all this, the list is large, especially considering that it will most likely be used by a beginner. Such a large number of heavy basic movements in one day is more likely to lead to total fatigue and overtraining rather than any progress. But we must not forget that in each of these exercises you will have to progress the load from week to week, otherwise any muscle or strength development will have to be completely forgotten.

Scatter this set of exercises over two training days per week would be much more appropriate, and it would be possible to add additional good and effective exercises.

But since this article is dedicated specifically one-day training, you will have to remove something from the seemingly untouchable list of exercises. Grinding my teeth, heart and farts, I will remove from my list Deadlift (or deadlift). And I do this not because it is the least effective exercise of all of them. It's more about aesthetics. The lag in the development of the muscle groups involved in the deadlift will be visually less noticeable than if we threw out the bench press, removing half the load from the upper half of the body, or squats, which are the basis of the basics when training legs.

We get the following training program for training in the gym once a week (the exercises are already arranged in the right order):

With such a one-day program, I advise you to do 4 working approaches in each exercise, and progress the load in the range of 8-10 repetitions. The best way to do this is described. Over time, the program, of course, can be adjusted based on your own feelings and accumulated experience.

Let me explain why this particular order of exercises was chosen. Squats come first, because on this list this is the most difficult, basic and effective exercise, which produces the maximum amount of its own anabolic hormone - testosterone.

In second place in difficulty are wide grip pull-ups. It's no joke, you will immediately have to work with your own body weight, which can be 60 kg, or maybe all 100. The same bench press at the initial stage can be safely performed with a weight of 30 kg, gradually increasing it from workout to workout. By the way, anyone who cannot yet do pull-ups has every right to replace pull-ups with traction of the upper block, but I still highly recommend that you learn how to do pull-ups! And not just pull yourself up, but also gradually increase the load in this exercise by hanging additional weights.

The bench press continues our one-day show. The favorite exercise of most young and not young jocks, pumping the torso from A to the soft sign, with the exception of the biceps and the pulling group of deltoids.

And it will do an excellent job of working out the remaining torso muscles. barbell row to the chin wide grip. It’s unlikely that anyone could come up with a better exercise for the middle and rear deltoids.

Next, since you have decided to exercise once a week, I want to draw your attention to frequency of your rare workouts. If you decided to conduct your training, for example, on Wednesdays, then if you please, conduct them on Wednesdays (± day), and not whenever you want. Need this to save supercompensation period, allowing you to work each time with a load slightly higher than the previous one. More details about the super-recovery period are described in the material How anabolism occurs.

Well, lastly (just a joke) I wish you happiness and health give it your all in your only training session, I think it won’t be that difficult. You can develop even if you practice rarely, but very accurately. Everything is in your hands! Good luck with your results and see you at Hardmeat!