How often to workout is an important question when it comes to creating a balance between fitness and lifestyle. The answer to how often you should exercise first depends on your goals. If you want to lose 20lbs+, you’re probably going to need to workout at least 3-4 hours per week. However, if you’re close to your goal weight, you can go through periods where you don’t exercise as much. You won’t gain ground, but you won’t lose ground either. Summer is a perfect time for these maintenance periods.
This is perfectly relevant to my situation over the past month in which my schedule has included a bachelor party, traveling to 2 separate weddings, and a case of bronchitis that I am still recovering from. These have not only contributed to a lack of blog posts, but a lack of workouts as well. Because I worked hard for a few months, I didn’t think some reduced time exercising would materially impact my body. Additionally, it will actually help me prep for my next phase of aggressive exercising.
Using Myself as a Test Case
Over the past month, I’ve gone from exercising 4 times per week to 2 times per week. I haven’t exercised at all this week due to my bronchitis. So what are the end results? My measurements haven’t changed at all. My weight is up 0.8lbs and my body fat is up 0.7%. Therefore, I’m still within striking distance of my best weight and body fat. Not bad considering I only exercised 1-2 hours per week for the past month. So my ideal amount of exercise is probably 2-2 ½ hours of exercise per week to maintain my fitness level. I’ll have to ramp up my amount of exercise over the next couple weeks to get back to where I was, but it’s a small price to pay in the long-term to participate in weddings…and recover from being sick as well. One important consideration is that even though I reduced exercise time, I still maintained a focus on my diet.
Gradually Reduce Your Workouts
If you feel like exercise is dominating your life, it might be time to try to reduce your workouts. You won’t ever know how often you need to workout unless you try. The best thing to do is just gradually reduce the amount of time you exercise a little at a time. If you exercise for 4 hours per week right now, try cutting back to 3 hours. Track your measurements or body fat, if you have an accurate method, and check back in a month. If you’re still making progress, you may be able to cut your exercise back to 2-2 ½ hours per week. If your measurements are unchanged, then you know 3 hours is a good amount to maintain your current fitness level. If you lose ground, then unfortunately you need to workout longer than 3 hours to maintain your fitness level. Go one month at a time until you find a happy medium between staying in shape and spending less time in the gym.
Not All Workouts Are Equal
Generally speaking, the above example provides a good template for reducing how often you exercise. However, everyone’s workout routine is different. Intensity is really going to effect how long you need to exercise per week. The more intense your routine, the less you’ll need to exercise. As I’ve discussed in other posts, you can easily reduce your workout time just utilizing things like HIIT and superset.
Maintenance mode is good every once in a while…even if you want to lose weight…
This might be counter intuitive, but sometimes to take 2 steps forward, you have to take 1 step backward. Your body can’t push itself too intensely for too long. It can lead to over training and burnout. There are times when it’s best to just reduce the frequency of your workout and go into maintenance mode. Once you know how often to workout to maintain your weight, you could cycle maintenance mode with a short term aggressive approach that will help you gradually burn fat throughout the year. All this depends how close you are to your fitness goals.
Not Your Average Fitness Tips
- How often to workout depends on your goals and how close you are to those goals.
- Exercising more intensely allows you to workout less often. Diet must remain a focus regardless of your workout decisions.
- Try to determine your maintenance exercise level, the minimum amount of time you can workout per week and still maintain your appearance.
- The best way to determine your maintenance level is through trial and error, one month at a time.
- Reducing how often you exercise every once in a while can actually help prep your body for those short-term aggressive workouts designed to burn fat fast.
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