People want to exercise just once a week for two reasons.
Firstly, these are people who have not yet gotten involved in training and have decided to add a little sports on weekends to their regular lifestyle.
Secondly, these are people who have already “gotten enough” of sports and are afraid of completely losing their shape, so they decide to keep it to a minimum.
A lot of people go to the gym once a week. They say they are walking. In fact, “sometimes” “force majeure” occurs. In total, according to my statistics, if a person announces that he will go to the gym once a week, then he will check in at the reception 35 times a year.
Although, if there is absolutely no time = desire to do 75 sets or 90 minutes of cardio, then instead of training once a week, I would choose the “seize the moment” principle.
What results do 35 workouts a year actually lead to?
\"2-3 times a week can be 5 times a month\"
In sports there is a law of 10 days. After 10 days, fitness levels begin to fade.
For example, you can do 10 push-ups. On the ninth day after your last workout, you will do 10 push-ups, but on the eleventh day it can only be 9 times.
This is if you don’t train for 10 days. What if you don’t train for 10 years?
Obviously, a life without training makes a person weak.
For example, if a man in the army could do 20 pull-ups, then by thirty years of a sedentary lifestyle his record in pull-ups can reach 2 times. I have seen such examples often.
But if this man did just one working set of pull-ups once a week, then by the age of thirty he would retain the ability to do 20 pull-ups.
Simply put, one workout a week or 35 workouts a year will allow you to maintain the shape that you have, if this shape is not at a very high level.
At a low level of training, even one workout per week produces progress in results.
For example, if a woman has never been involved in sports: music school as a child, and work as an accountant after college, then by the age of thirty, even one workout a week gives her an increase in strength and endurance.
It should be noted that not every workout once a week gives an increase in strength from scratch or maintains average level gains.
A workout consists of exercises, and exercises are measured in sets or minutes.
In strength training, you need to do at least 5 approaches per exercise: four at half strength and the fifth at your best.
In endurance exercises, the workout should last at least 30 minutes, of which at least 6 minutes are spent at more than 80% of the maximum.
Create a strength training program
How to avoid overtraining?
This is an equally important topic compared to how often to exercise. First of all, you need to monitor your progress. If you stop progressing in at least one exercise, this may indicate that you are close to overtraining.
In the example we considered above, this is what happened, because the builder noticed that he had stopped improving his results in the bench press. If a similar situation happened to you, then you should rest. Here are the three main symptoms of overtraining.
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- The working weight in exercises does not increase. To progress, you need to gradually increase the load. However, for this, the body must fully recover so that you can work with heavy weights.
- The number of repetitions or the time of static holding of projectiles does not increase. If the working weight does not increase, then the number of repetitions or the time of static holding of the projectile should increase.
- You spend more time doing the same workout. The effectiveness of training is closely related to the concept of intensity, which is measured in units of time. Simply put, if it took you longer to do an activity you did a few days ago today, then the intensity has dropped.
Workout once a week for weight
Today there is an opinion that you need to train one muscle group for mass not more often, but less often, so that the muscle has time to recover. Many bodybuilders train one muscle group once a week, but go to the gym more than five times a week.
This means that if you decide to go to the gym once a week, then you need to train using the “full body” method - training the whole body at once.
With one workout per week, there can be no talk of dividing the muscles into splits by day.
You also need to remember about a minimum of approaches in motion. There must be at least ten of them. The Size/Quarter technique covers the entire body in three movements. This means covering your entire body with thirty sets.
If you decide to train once a week, then this is at least 30 approaches, of which 24 approaches are performed half-heartedly and 6 approaches as you feel.
A set of exercises for training once a week
A set of exercises for full body training once a week should give a total of 25-40 approaches: few can stand more.
Of course, these approaches should not be “to failure”, but with an intensity of 60-90% of “to failure”.
How to scatter 25 approaches per set of exercises? As you wish. You can do 3 exercises of 8 approaches or 5 exercises of 5 approaches. You can even do 8 exercises in 3 sets.
Doing less than 3 approaches per exercise is very little. The first approach, the body only remembers the movement.
In 1998, I recommended the following set of exercises to my clients:
1. Bench press
2. Pulley row 3. Squats 4. Deadlift 5. Seated press 6. Standing biceps 7. Triceps pulley 8. Abs or Calves
People did 8 exercises of 3 sets.
Now I recommend doing 3 exercises of 8 approaches:
1. Push-ups 2. Pull-ups 3. Single-leg squats
Training program once a week
A training program is a weekly plan for a set of exercises.
I wrote about the set of exercises above, now how to create a program from it.
The training program has a deadline and this period is determined in weeks. Typically, the training program is designed for a period of at least 6 weeks.
In our case with full body training once a week, we have a program of only 6 workouts that must be done in 6 weeks.
Every program must have a goal. For example, build a certain amount of muscle if the training is aimed at gaining muscle mass.
I wonder how many kilograms of muscle you can build in 6 workouts?
You will know this if you do this program with a constant increase in load from week to week. In our case, this is from training to training.
As experience shows, a person with no training experience can make excellent progress for 6 weeks, training only once a week and increasing the load from training to training by 3-10 percent.
The increase in load from training to training depends on the quality of recovery between training sessions.
People who recover well increase the load within 3-10 percent per week.
Create a strength training program
Recommended Sports Nutrition
If you want to maintain and enhance the effect of your training, then even with exercise once a week, you can help your performance grow with the help of properly selected sports nutrition products and their intake regimen. When training once a week you can use:
- Protein.
Take it before training, respectively, also once a week. - Vitamins and minerals
. Take according to the regimen indicated in the product leaflet, especially during periods of increased morbidity. - Fatty acid
. They will not only improve the condition of your muscles, increase the elasticity of ligaments and improve the condition of joints, but will also be beneficial for your skin, hair, and so on. Take according to the instructions in the product leaflet.
Take other types of sports nutrition only when necessary. Watch your nutrition between workouts.
Moreover, after the release of Mike Mentzer’s book “Heavy Duty”, which states that most modern athletes are overtrained, and studies can be maintained and maintained by training only once every five or seven days. The result of this study was confirmation of Mentzer's theory. Indeed, strength indicators and form decreased only in a group of elderly athletes over 60 years old. For younger athletes, training once a week had meaning and a right to life.
From all of the above, we can conclude that to maintain shape, it makes sense to train once a week. For greater effect, you can combine training in the gym with home exercises.
How many workouts per week is optimal?
The number of workouts per week is determined by the level of training. The level of training is determined by the length of training.
In trained people with more than one year of training experience, training once a week allows them to maintain shape, but not improve it.
To make optimal progress in the first two years of training, you need to train for 3 hours or 3 times a week for an hour.
Two workouts per week provide a progression between optimal progress and maintaining fitness.
These data are valid for people with an average level of willpower and an even psyche. There are people who are very strong-willed and ready to perform great deeds during training. Such people progress faster at first, but are more likely to get injured and fall back.
As a result, it is not the one who showed more heroism in the first training sessions who remains in the best shape, but the one who has been injured less over several years.
Another problem with such training
The other big problem with training once a week is that you lose an entire week. Even despite a fairly heavy load and maintaining training progress.
Think about it. By training a muscle group once a week, you get 52 workouts per year per muscle group.
If you trained twice a week, you would get 104 training sessions per year.
What do you think will give you the best results in the same amount of time?
Obvious, isn't it?
What I'm getting at is...even if you do everything right by training each muscle group once a week, you're still wasting a lot of time .
You could hit the gym again and increase your progress instead of sitting out for a week.
And it doesn’t even make sense to say that there is nothing special or magical about training once every 7 days.
This is just a random period of time that is not based on anything. There are no advantages here.
It’s just that there are 7 days in a week, so it’s quite convenient to plan workouts once a week.
Training 3 times a week
To write a training program for 3 times a week, you need to divide the weekly volume of training into three days.
In your plan, both strength training and cardio training take away your strength.
People with full-time jobs should do at least one hour of strength training per week.
In my experience, people with full-time jobs can't handle more than six hours of strength training per week.
The basic recommendation is for people with a full-time job and more than two months of training experience to achieve 3 hours of strength training per week.
These three hours are filled with 75 approaches at a density of about 25%. That is, 30 seconds of execution of the approach, 90 seconds of rest - 2 minutes per approach.
In total, a weekly plan for 3 workouts per week can be made up of 24-30 approaches in three movements, in three or six series.
Three movements can be divided into 9 exercises per week.
For example, push-ups can be divided into: weighted dips, bench presses, and wall handstand push-ups.
Dips with weights
Bench press
Handstand push-ups against a wall
Pull-ups can be divided into: chest-high pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, and archer pull-ups.
Pull-ups to chest
Pull-ups with weight
Squats can be divided into: stand-ups, back squats, and shrimp squats.
You need to score 25 sets of each movement, which can be broken down into three exercises of 8-9 sets.
Training sets for three times a week might look like this:
Day 1 (gym)
1 Bench press 2 Squats 3 Weighted pull-ups
Day 2 (street)
1 Pull-ups 2 Dips with weights 3 Pull-ups
Day 3 (at home in bad weather)
1 Shrimp 2 Archer Pull-Ups 3 Wall Handstand Push-ups
Training program.
Workout A: Lower Body.
- Back squats – 4 sets of 5 reps.
- Barbell lunges – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Leg extension in the simulator - 3 sets of 10 reps
- Leg curls in the simulator - 3 sets of 10 repetitions.
- Standing calf raises – 3 sets of 15 reps.
- Hanging leg raises – 3 sets of 15-20 reps.
Workout B: Upper body.
- Dumbbell bench press – 3 sets of 6 reps.
- Bent-over barbell rows – 3 sets of 6 reps.
- Military press – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Dumbbell raises while lying chest-down on an incline bench – 3 sets of 10 repetitions.
- Dumbbell lateral raises – 3 sets of 10 reps.
- Backrest push-ups – 3 sets of 15 reps.
Workout C: Lower Body.
- Romanian deadlift – 4 sets of 5 reps.
- Lifting onto a bench with dumbbells – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Leg press – 3 sets of 10 reps.
- Seated calf raises – 3 sets of 15 reps.
- Standing calf raises – 3 sets of 15 reps.
- Crunches from the upper block while standing on your knees - 3 sets of 15 repetitions.
Workout D: Upper Body.
- Incline bench press – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Wide grip lat pulldown – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Horizontal row on the lower block – 3 sets of 8 reps.
- Lifting dumbbells for biceps – 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions.
- Extension of arms from behind the head from the lower block while standing – 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions.
- Extension of arms from the upper block (use rope) – 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions.
