IDENTITY & THE HABITS OF YOUR TRAINING SCHEDULE
At the time, moving from 5 to 4 resistance training per week was very hard for me to accept. For the last year, I've engrained this habit of running early in the morning and getting my resistance training done in late morning or in the afternoon. I taught that by removing a strength session in my week while being focused on improving my running skills would let me to "LOSING ALL MY GAINS". Well, keeping my body in a stressed, enflamed and tired state let me to actually lose some gains, not to reduce the training frequency.
I started to experience all of the "tiredness" syndromes: poor sleep, low mood, lethargic, performance plateau, constantly fatigued, hair loss, hormonal imbalances, constantly being cold.
If you are serious in your fitness journey, it can be easy to feel attached to past routines, PR, body image or sensations we once experienced. But adjusting the training demand based on your goals, life circumstances and stress level is part of auto regulation. Being fix or to "stick to the plan" such as I did let me to a burnt out state that lasted way too long.
Added to that, I was also under-eating (which massively contributed to all the statements below).
This vicious cycle of lots of training, not eating enough, storing body fat due to high stress level and metabolism shut down had to stop.
FROM 5 to 4
It took me a while to realize that it might be the time for me to reduce training frequency. Since this January 2024, I've changed my split to train on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. This reduction of 5 to 4 resistance training let me to realign with my current goals of building muscle mass back on and working on my weaknesses.
It has also enable me to auto-regulate more, place a 5th "bonus workout" if I'm feeling good and to have a larger time spam for placing my workouts based on life, work demand.
FREQUENCY VS INTENSITY
You might have heard at one point that "LESS IS MORE". Well, it is absolutely true. Since the training load has reduced (mentally and physically), I'm now able to bring much more intensity in my workouts, have more time to recover session to session and to automatically feel better.
Frequency has reduced, but intensity has increased.
Once you've reached a certain training age (+10 years), the time and energy demand from the workouts and your ability to recover from them is not the same than when you only had 2-3 years of experience.
At the time, hitting the gym hard 5 times per week was not a problem (which is kind of obvious - as a student, I only had to focus on eating, training and occasionally studying). Now that I have more responsibilities and that my attention needs to be placed elsewhere, having an added afternoon to recover and focus on other areas of my life allows me to fully be present when the time to hit the gym arrive. Thanks to that time, I'm looking forward to my training time and give my full effort.
KNOWING WHEN TO PUL OFF AND WHEN TO DIVE IN
Obviously, we all have different life circumstances. The answer on whether you should hit the gym 2,3,4,5, or even 6 times per week will inevitably comes down to how you recover from them and how your progress is being measured.
As a general rule of thumb, I'd generally suggest for a new trainee to stick to 3-4 resistance training per week for a full one to two yeasr. This will make sure that the foundation is slowly being built and that the overall training volume can easily be increased by adding another session if the athlete can handle the added stress. Your goal during that time is learning how to properly move you body, create neuronal pathways, understand the biomechanics of the basic compounds movements, build your pain tolerance and the "mind-muscle connection".
For an intermediate athlete, depending on the fitness goals, sticking to 3-4 resistance training per week can work perfectly fine. If the adequate level of effort, stress and recovery is matched, you can absolutely still make valuable progression. Movement complexity and difficulty can be increased and added skills incorporated. Adding sessions will be interesting once training stress can be added and depending on the program's structure. If you've been training for a few years but don't see progress anymore, adding a resistance training in your week could be beneficial.
As an advanced athlete, training load will change between peak season and off seasons. During off seasons, you might need to pull off volume but bring high intensity in the areas you want to maintain/improve. In season, frequency and volume might be high, and intensity slightly lower. Again, things can be vastly different for each individuals and physical activity.
With experience, you might also find that, just like me, reducing the frequency of your workouts in order to bring full effort and intensity to less overall workouts could also be the solution to continuously see progress.
Currently, the training split I'm following require to have Wednesday to fully recover after the first two training sessions. Having 2 or 3 consecutive workouts will depend on your movement patterns, compound movements and the muscle groups you target.
My training splits at the moment looks like this:
DAY 1 - SQUATS & HIP FLEXORS
DAY 2 - BACK & SHOULDERS
DAY 3 - DEADLIFT & GROINS
DAY 4 - CHEST & T-SPINE
With this current splits, I need to recover after the first two days to come back fresh and strong for the Deadlift. In contrast, if you were in a classic PUSH, PULL, LEGS type of split, it could be easier to fit 3 days of resistance training in a row.
In the end it will always come down to preferences, what you enjoy, makes you feel good and a training style that elevates all areas of your life - not just fitness. We've discussed about the frequency of your workouts but the type of stimulus you apply to your body will drastically impacts your progress. This is where trying new things and following a thoughtful program that aligns with your current fitness endeavors comes into play.
I hope you found some insightful information today. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are looking for answers or think we could hep in any shape or forms.
Passionately,
Max & Ben
Written by Benjamin Desmet
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