Right up there with a balanced diet, strength training is the OG biohack for longevity, and the key to a strong, healthy body. But whether you’re a beginner or seasoned athlete, that begs the question: How much strength training do you actually need to see results? If you look to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for answers, they say that adults need at least two days of “muscle-strengthening activity" per week for their overall health.
But, resistance training even once a week was enough to make progress for beginners, per a study in BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation. "While it may seem the small amount of volume would be insignificant, this study demonstrates that some exercise is better than no exercise,” says certified personal trainer Natalya Vasquez. But as your skill level progresses, you’ll need to increase the intensity and volume of your workouts to elicit more muscle growth.
Below, experts explain exactly how much strength training is enough based on your fitness level and goals. Meet the experts: Tina Tang, CPT, is a certified personal trainer, strength coach, and founder of Iron Strong Fitness. Natalya Vasquez, CPT, is a certified personal trainer, health coach, and founder of On Your Terms Coaching.
The following cheat-sheet will give you an idea of how many days a week you should strength train. While once a week was enough for the folks in the aforementioned study to make progress, they only looked at a single exercise: the leg press. Vasquez says that ideally, beginners looking to build total-body muscle and strength should start with two, or even three, nonconsecutive strength training sessions per week.
This frequency helps build a habit (key for those just starting out) and provides your body with the necessary stimulus for initial muscle growth, while also allowing for plenty of time to recover. But, your sessions don't have to be long: Initially, each session can be as short as 15 to 20 minutes, and you can gradually increase to 45- to 60-minute workouts as you build endurance, says certified personal trainer Tina Tang, CPT. As for how you structure your workouts, Vasquez says you can either do two to three full-body workouts, or a three-day split, like a push/pull/legs workout, where your training is organized by muscle group.
For a full-body routine, Vasquez suggests completing one exercise per muscle group for three to five sets of five to eight reps per workout. For a three-day split, complete three to four exercises for the same muscle group for two to three sets of five to eight reps. Vasquez likes the five to eight rep range because she says this helps develop functional hypertrophy: “We don’t just want to gain muscle, we want to have actual strength where this muscle growth is functional,” she says.
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