Hi everyone 👋
For those focusing on strength training — especially older lifters — how many days per week has worked best for you?
I’m trying to balance building/maintaining strength with good recovery.
Appreciate your insights 💪
p.bxtrm
:
More days with lower volume is your best bet.
First set you do for a muscle give you the most bang for the buck. After that adaptations per set drop of quickly, while recovery needs is still about the same for each set.
First two sets a muscle get easily contribute to more than 75% of total adaptation, even if you do 15 sets in that session.
So doing those two sets as often as possible should be the goal.
Full body with 1-2 sets every other day should be quite mild on fatigue and yield great results.
JaapVos
:
62 here. Have been lifting off and on most of my life. Work out 5-6 days a week. Do an increasing amount of stretching and balance work noways. Works well for me. The problem is to find enough time in the day. Finding that it is still possible to increase muscle mass. But have a much better “feel” for what my body can handle now that I am one of the old guys in the gym
TheBusyDad
:
48 years old. I've been doing 6 days for the last 4 months. It can be rough at times, but that's generally when I need to deload which is every 6 to 8 weeks.
I've mostly done 5 days which works well. My only problem was I like getting 2 days for each muscle group each week. I felt like I was always missing one or two groups each week.
amgym19
:
3 days a week for heavy training. I generally have a short exercise session on non-gym days, which is more mobility-focused, but often includes light weights, as well as bodyweight exercises, such as planks. Currently age 72.
carlosfromspain
:
I can only go 4 days a week now to the gym but if I could I'd go 6 days and split my volume accordingly, like ai used to when I was at the house with my home gym.
The lower volume per day yields higher quality sets and allows for quicker recovery, 24hrs is more than enough for that.
Even now with 4 days a week I'm doing 24 sets per session followed by 30 min cardio session and I can repeat it the next day again, so 6 days would be even less to recover from. We can recover from much more than we think or we "feel".
The problem with 6 days is not recovery but having the time to go so many times to the gym per week. Just my two cents.
13 comments
First set you do for a muscle give you the most bang for the buck. After that adaptations per set drop of quickly, while recovery needs is still about the same for each set.
First two sets a muscle get easily contribute to more than 75% of total adaptation, even if you do 15 sets in that session.
So doing those two sets as often as possible should be the goal.
Full body with 1-2 sets every other day should be quite mild on fatigue and yield great results.
I've mostly done 5 days which works well. My only problem was I like getting 2 days for each muscle group each week. I felt like I was always missing one or two groups each week.
The lower volume per day yields higher quality sets and allows for quicker recovery, 24hrs is more than enough for that.
Even now with 4 days a week I'm doing 24 sets per session followed by 30 min cardio session and I can repeat it the next day again, so 6 days would be even less to recover from. We can recover from much more than we think or we "feel".
The problem with 6 days is not recovery but having the time to go so many times to the gym per week. Just my two cents.