How Much is Enough?

Do you have to go to the gym every day to get into great shape? Absolutely not.

How many days a week you go to the gym depends upon your goals, your available time and your personal preference.

What are your goals? If you want to get fit and maintain that level of fitness, you can do strength training as little as twice a week. If you want to really improve your strength and feel better than ever, shoot for three to five times a week. If your goal is to make strength training an integral part of your life, you may want to go to the gym six times a week, or even every day if you mix up your workouts enough.

Of course, you can supplement gym workouts with other healthy activities that you enjoy. As an example, here's what I do. I generally go to the gym four to five times a week. Once or twice a week I may opt to work out in the fitness room in my apartment building. I generally focus on cardio and core on these days since the weights in the fitness room are minimal, at best. Once a week, I take an hour and a half ballet class. Ballet is great for core strength, stamina, flexibility, speed, coordination and grace; sometimes it can even be quite an aerobic workout.

Before you decide to go to the gym every day, you need to consider some additional important points.

Never work the same muscle groups two days in a row. You don't actually build muscle while you're lifting weights. What happens is that as you stress the muscle, it breaks down at the cellular level, which starts a process in which the muscle begins to repair and strengthen itself. The muscle needs up to 48 hours to complete this process. You're actually strengthening the muscle in the time between workouts, not at the gym. If you work the muscle while it's in the process of repairing itself, you start breaking down the muscle fiber before it's had a chance to rebuild and strengthen, thus losing the benefit of your previous workout. It's also easier to injure yourself. Don't do it.

Work different muscle groups on different days. If you only go the gym a couple of times a week, you can work all your major muscle groups during your workout: chest, back, shoulders, arms, legs, core (abdominal muscles and lower back). This strategy can make for a long workout session. But, if it fits your schedule better, then, by all means, do it this way.

A better option may be to split your workouts. I generally do my upper-body workout on one day (about 10 to 14 different exercises). This always includes a five-minute cardio warm-up to get the blood flowing to my muscles. I find this absolutely essential, especially as I've gotten older. On alternate days, I focus on cardio, core and lower body. I do many fewer exercises for lower body and core since there just aren't as many options or as many different muscle groups as in the upper body. The lower body/core workout, even with 20 to 25 minutes of cardio, still usually takes slightly less time than the upper body workout. In general, I spend about an hour and fifteen minutes to about an hour and a half working out. This includes about 10 minutes of stretching, at the end of my workout. (That's a topic I'll tackle on another day.)

If you're just getting started, you may want to start slowly. Regular strength training is a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix. Give yourself time to build strength and confidence, and to rest. Make it enjoyable and rewarding so that you will want to keep doing it the rest of your life.