How many times per week should i work out?

The frequency of training has been a controversial topic as there are many theories about how many times per week should you hit the gym. The truth is that there is no rule of thumb for this question. The correct answer depends on various factors such as your personal goal, physical condition, type of training and many others that we will examine below.

A really important factor that defines the optimum training frequency is the intensity of the workout. Intensity simply refers to how hard you are training your muscles, or in other words how much energy do you spend while exercising. A high intensity workout program is more taxing for your body which means that you will need more time to recover.

Protein synthesis also needs to be taken in consideration. This is the process by which the body recovers the damage caused in muscle tissues and leads to muscle hypertrophy. This anabolic state lasts for 24 to 48 hours after the workout and in this period of time your diet will massively determine the impact on muscle growth. So, technically after 48 hours your body is not recovering any more and you are just resting. This is why i suggest training each body group twice per week in order to experience more muscle gains faster.

Sometimes, you might not feel like training so frequently because of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) which means that your muscles still hurt and you can't workout efficiently. In this case you should lower the volume of your training and add more frequency. For example, if you perform 6 sets of high intensity exercises in your chest day, it is highly possible that you won't be able to train chest again after 2 or even 3 days. So, you should split those 6 sets into 2 different days and also add exercises that target other body parts too.

The law of diminishing returns, apart from its economic use, it also applies on natural bodybuilding too. Your first set is the most beneficial in terms of potential muscle growth and the efficiency deteriorates, or can even have negative impact, as long as you add more and more sets for the same muscle group.

Personally, i have experienced massive muscle hypertrophy by training each body part twice per week. I have found out through my experience, that leaving a 3-day gap before i hit the same muscle group again, leads to the best results for me.

You definitely don't need to hit the gym 6 times per week in order to have a great body. You can achieve great physique with 4 or even 3 times per week if you train smart, but for maximum results bare in mind that you need to train each muscle group 2 times per week.

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11255140