What Everyone Ought to Know About Training Frequency

A few times a year I give presentations at large businesses aimed at improving the health of their employees. Generally, in these presentations I emphasize the importance of a varied approach to fitness; one that promotes improvements in Strength, Cardio, and Joint Health.

Most people come to terms that they mostly focus on only one of these three dimension of fitness. The gym enthusiasts do lots of resistance training, but typically avoid cardio and have sore joints. The yogis admit they’re not very strong. And the runners & cyclists admit that they have lots of joint issues and are quite stiff.

During these presentations I emphasize that it’s important to cover all three dimensions, I teach them simple ways to train each modality, and I give them some homework to try at home. Then at the end of my presentation I field questions, and generally people ask some variation of this question: “how much ____ should I do per week?”

As is almost always the case, the best way to answer a question like this is: it depends. It’s a bit tempting to say something like  “everyone needs to train 3-5 hrs of cardio per week, do 3-4 days of lifting, and stretch for 10-20 minutes every day”. But the fact is that this may be too much for some people, or not nearly enough for other people, and has the potential to make the all-or-nothing people say “oh, I’m not doing all of that”.

That said, one of the main aspects of my job is to tell my clients exactly how much they should do. So, how do I determine how much everyone should do? I like to focus on two things:#1 -  Minimum Effective Volume or “MeV” is the smallest amount of training someone needs to improve.

No one would do one set of one rep of biceps curls and expect their arms to be bigger. How about one set of 12 reps? Probably not. How about one set every week for 6 weeks? Maybe someone who has never worked out before will see some improvement. How about two sets, 12 reps, twice a week for 6 weeks? I think for a lot of intermediates, this might be their MeV. Someone more advanced might need closer to six sets, 12-20 reps, twice a week, for 12 weeks to see improvements.

As you noticed, the MeV depended a lot on someone’s experience level. So what’s your MeV? Arbitrarily saying “I’m an intermediate, so probably 4 sets a week” is not as good an option as finding out your MeV experimentally. So my best advice is: measure your arms. Try doing 4 sets a week for six weeks. If your arms grew, we know it was enough. If your arms didn’t grow, we need to try doing more. This is the reason my practice is called “Quantified” Fitness Coaching. We need to measure your baseline, measure your training stimulus, and measure your results. If we can see that you’re improving, we know we’re doing things right. This process is one of the incredible benefits of working with QFC.

#2 -  “Maximum Recoverable Volume”. More is always better, right? It’s almost certain that someone who does 8 sets per week will see better improvements than someone who does 4 sets per week. By the same toke, 12 sets will usually get you better results than 8 sets. Some people might see better results with 20 sets per week than 12. But how about 30 sets? Or 50 sets? Most people will either see worse results, injure themselves trying that much volume, or simply have no time/energy/mental-bandwidth to get through that kind of workout. The most you can handle, physically or mentally, is your Maximum Recoverable Volume (MrV).

I work with a few elite, high-performance athletes, but most people I work with have full-time jobs, and many have spouses and children. Suffice to say that for most people, the MrV is determined by the time they spend in the gym, and the effect that the gym session has on their energy levels the next day. Most of my clients cannot spend hours in the gym, and don’t want to feel like their brains are at 50% capacity when they go to work the next day. Therefore almost everyone’s MrV is determined by the point at which training stops making their lives BETTER and instead starts making their lives more difficult, stressful, and a chore.

I always, always, always, as a rule, make sure that I am improving people’s lives, and giving them more energy as a result of their improved fitness, than what they put in.

So when I’m writing your program, I need to very carefully consider what’s the minimum amount of exercise YOU need to improve, what’s the most exercise YOU can comfortably handle, and then what’s the dose in the middle which will make your life better, and your body stronger than ever.