Average gym fitness frequency

For ordinary healthy adults with no exercise foundation and no special training goals, going to the gym 3-4 times a week, with an interval of 1-2 days between each time, is the optimal frequency that takes into account training effects, physical recovery, and daily time costs.

This number is not something I made up. It is a reference value that I came up with after five years in the gym, following three coaches, and seeing hundreds of training friends come and go, combined with the basic logic of exercise physiology. Some people must be dissatisfied and say that I saw those bloggers on Xiaohongshu who go to the gym every day and win bodybuilding competition awards after practicing for one year. When will the frequency of your three or four times be effective? Come on, take a look at their living conditions first: I know a professional fitness blogger who goes to the gym to practice for 2 hours at 10 a.m. every day. At noon, he eats a precisely proportioned fat-reducing meal prepared by his aunt at home. He takes an hour's nap in the afternoon specifically for recovery. In the evening, he or she Personal training or video editing, people’s lives revolve around fitness. You, an ordinary person who has to catch the 7:30 subway in the morning, work overtime until 9 o’clock in the evening and tutor your children with homework, insist on setting the training frequency of others, isn’t this just looking for trouble for yourself?

Let’s talk about some practical physiological logic. When you train large muscle groups such as chest and legs, the muscle fibers will be slightly torn. It will take a full 72 hours to complete the repair and growth. Small muscle groups such as shoulders and arms will also take 48 hours to recover. If you go to the gym every day, you will either fail to do the strokes every time, or you will be training with fatigue. In the end, you will either injure your joints or your immunity will weaken and you will easily catch a cold. It is really not worth the gain. Last week, I met a young man who had just applied for a card in the gym. He had been practicing shoulder training every day for five consecutive days. In the end, his arms were shaking when he lifted the empty bar. The instructor advised him to take a rest, thinking that he was trying to sell his class. As a result, he went to the emergency room that afternoon because of unbearable muscle soreness. It was found that he had mild rhabdomyolysis, and his good fitness turned into a disaster.

Of course, this does not mean that this number is stuck. There are different training logics in the fitness circle now. For example, the high-frequency and low-volume training method has been popular for several years, which advocates training each part 2-3 times a week for 30-40 minutes each time. Calculating, you need to do it 5-6 times a week. This method is indeed helpful for building muscle and is not easy to get injured. The premise is that you can spare 40 minutes every day, and you can completely concentrate on not paddling during training. This is indeed suitable for freelancers who have a lot of free time, but for 996 workers, it is not as practical as squeezing in 3 nights a week, practicing for an hour each time, and training the shoulders, back, chest, legs, and core in turn.

There are also many people who say that I just want to move and sweat. There is no need to make it so complicated. It’s totally fine to go there 1-2 times a week. I have a friend who works in an investment bank. He works hard all year round. It would be great if he could spare time to go to the gym twice a month to swim and do core exercises. Although he has not developed any obvious muscle lines, at least the old problem of shoulder and neck pain has been alleviated a lot. It is better than lying on the sofa every day. If you have a short-term assault goal, such as taking wedding photos or participating in amateur competitions, then it is completely feasible to go 5 times a week for a month or two as long as you have a good diet and sleep plan. However, it is best to adjust the frequency back to normal after the assault, otherwise the body will not be able to withstand the long-term high load.

In fact, many people struggle with frequency. In essence, they fall into "clock-in anxiety". It seems that if they don't go five times a week, they will feel sorry for the thousands of dollars in fitness cards they have applied for. When they go, they take photos for half an hour and post them on WeChat.com, and then just move a few times in the remaining half hour to complete the task. It is really unnecessary. I specifically talked to the girl at the front desk before. There is a long queue of people who apply for cards after the Chinese New Year, but those who can insist on coming more than three times a week, less than 10% are left after two months. Most of them rush too hard at the beginning, and they are so painful that they quit immediately. On the contrary, there are those experienced practitioners who come three or four times a week, and can't leave after practice. They have been practicing for three to five years, and their condition is very stable.

To put it bluntly, the frequency of "average people" is a reference for most people. It is never an iron rule that must be followed. What you have to do is not to compete with others in how many times you go, but to find a rhythm that you can stick to for a long time. After all, fitness is to make your life more comfortable, not to find more KPIs for yourself to complete, right?