Staying active is essential to being healthy, and considering 27 percent of Brits don’t exercise at least once a week, according to a 2020 YouGov survey, you can improve your activity level.
However, it’s hard to know how much exercise you need to do to achieve your health goals, whether it’s losing weight or gaining weight.
“The type of training you can do in the end depends on your ability, goals, likes and dislikes, the equipment you have, the injuries you have and how much time you have,” explained the personal trainer Tom Mans to The Independent.
While there is no one size fits all approach, Yes there is principles and guidelines that you can follow and apply to your training to ensure a balanced, effective, safe and enjoyable training regimen.
How many days a week should you train?
Unless you are a fitness enthusiast, you probably want to spend as little time as possible in the gym to achieve your health and fitness goals. But Mans says that training once or twice a week results in lower fitness levels.
“You need to train at least three times a week if you want to achieve your health and fitness goals in a reasonable amount of time, and to stay fit and healthy,” explains Mans.
The ideal is to train four or five times a week, but most people find this unachievable due to time constraints, so Mans says it’s best to set a goal. which three: “In this way you expose your body to a level “Enough stimulus to train throughout. of the week, which allows you to adapt, strengthen, lose weight and heal.
How long should the workouts last?
Some people argue that you can have an effective and efficient workout in half an hour if you use the time wisely, but Mans believes that if you want to improve, you need to exercise. for 45 minutes to an hour.
He recommends spending 10 minutes warming up and moving your body, 30 to 40 minutes weight training, and 5 to 10 minutes cooling down and stretching.
As such, a half-hour workout can be useful for conditioning or interval training sessions.
Can you train weights two or three days in a row?
Mans recommends taking a day off between sessions if you often lift weights. “You can train two days in a row, but definitely avoid doing three days in a row unless you’re an advanced lifter.”
If you don’t give your muscles time to heal, you’ll strain your joints and tendons, which can lead to pain or, worse, an injury, like tendinitis.
However, it is It’s okay to train with weights on consecutive days if you train a different body part each time. However, Mans believes that full body exercise is best for the general population who want to lose fat and improve their health.
A balanced exercise regimen should include a combination of weight training and cardiovascular (aerobic and anaerobic) work, but Mans says that if you don’t have time for both, it’s better to -focus on doing two or three weight training sessions a week.
How important is sleep?
In short: quite a bit.
“For everyone, and especially for people who train regularly, getting seven to eight hours of sleep on average every night is very important,” says Mans.
“After training during the day, the body becomes stronger, burns fat and rebuilds damaged muscle tissue while you sleep.”
So if you don’t sleep enough, you put yourself at a disadvantage, your workout suffers, and you don’t have enough energy to train.
