How often should you exercise?

The age-old question of how often you should exercise is a question that's been thrown around since I can remember when I started exercising myself. Even as I ask new clients how often they are exercising now they will rebound with a response "Well what's enough to make a difference and how much is too much?". That kind of questioning is actually more important than the question I asked.

When we look at exercising, we first have to determine four key factors of training. The reason being that each area impacts progression or regressions in getting results, regardless of if it's gain muscle or drop body fat. These key factors are based on a term called progressive overload, it is the foundation in seeing results within your health, fitness and wellbeing goals.

Four key factors of exercise

• Intensity - The effort in which you perform each exercise.
• Volume - The duration of each training session and the exercises within them.
• Load - The amount of weight/resistance being moved in any given exercise.
• Recovery - The amount of rest between training sessions.

Each of these four factors can influence one another to either compliment progression or remain in plateau. If you were to look at what the optimal amount of training is each week, we would look at what the average for each of those factors and use that as a baseline. If we were to describe that now we would be doing the following.

• Training 2-3 times a week
• Moderate intensity
• Each training session lasting a maximum of 1 hour
• With low/moderate load/resistance

This is all dependent on where you currently are in your training, if you were already quite active with high intensity, switching to the above may not be a benefit and potentially regress your level of fitness. Take the time to look through these four factors and determine what the next step may be in getting you to your health, fitness and wellbeing goals. If you're ever unsure, that's when you seek advice and guidance through a coach.