How Often Training Muscle Groups Should Be Done

Trainer Scott Keppel shares how often a woman should train the same muscle group.

When a woman is developing a strength training program and she is like, "Okay, I want to go and work out now." You know you should give a muscle group anywhere from 48 to 72 hours to recover. Larger muscle groups, legs, back are going to take longer to recover. So, you’re not going to want to do legs necessarily on Monday and then come back and do them on Tuesday. As far as how many days a week a woman should work out, two days, three days, four, five, it’s so hard to say because it depends on your goal. If your goal is to build muscle, you should lift more days because you want to separate the body parts and have a day maybe specifically for shoulders, for back, for chest, for arms, for legs. If your goal is to just maintain what you have, then you might go to three days a week. If your goal is to lose body fat and lose weight, then you might want to stick with that three days to build muscle, to burn more calories because a pound of muscle will burn 20 to 100, a pound of fat will only burn 8. So, you shouldn’t neglect weight training but you may not need it as much as a woman who is trying to put on weight that maybe for whatever reason, has recently dropped the weight. I had some women that need to put on weight because they are at unhealthy weight for themselves. So, they are going to lift a little more and do less cardio than that woman who is trying to lose weight. As far as cardio goes, you should give yourself a day off, a day to recover because cardio is stressful, lifting is stressful; life is stressful. Your body cannot tell the difference between stress of work and stress of lifting, so you need a day to recover and rest. If you feel guilty about that, which I have several women that are like, “Oh no, I can’t take a day off,” then go harder the other days. See how many calories you would've burned that seventh day and make up for it those other days. So, if you would have done 45 minutes of cardio, 7 days a week, maybe do 56 and then that way you’re not losing anything and your body is getting the recovery that it needs. Stretching is something that can and should be done daily, especially if you have an area that’s tight. Most individuals sit all day so their shoulders round forward, they compress their spine, they contract their hamstrings, so that’s a lot of tense and then when they go and maybe pick up a child, pick up groceries, do whatever they’re picking up, maybe at the work they are required to pick up weights, they are more prone to injure their back or their hamstrings. So, the more limber we can be, by stretching or taking yoga, Pilates but if you don’t want to take either one of those, just stretch every night before your go to bed.