"How often do I need to work out?"
Great question; first, let's answer some other questions
what is your goal?
What are you doing right now?
How much time can you commit with 80% confidence
how often do you enjoy working out?
What's your social/work/family schedule?
When do you want to achieve that goal?
These are a handful of questions to ask yourself, helping us paint a picture of where you are and where you want to go.
We know that acquiring 180 minutes a week of aerobic work and 180 minutes of resistance training should be the ultimate end goal. These 360 minutes will create the most robust, capable, healthy, and lean human.
We also know that exercising for 20 minutes 2x a week is highly effective when doing zero minutes of exercise a week.
Anything and everything in the middle of those two options may be an excellent solution for you as an individual.
A sit-down conversation with a professional would be a great place to create a plan for you.
until then, let's look at some myths about how much we need to exercise
Let's start with fat loss. At Prevail, we understand Fat loss is high on the list for most students. Prevail looks at exercise through a much bigger lens.
here's why
Increasing exercise frequency does not guarantee changes in the scale.
If you go from zero days of exercise to 3 days, you will most likely lose weight IF you don't change anything else. That's a big IF. If you go from 3 days to 6 days, you may see another small change. However, is six days of exercise sustainable forever?
Or, as we increase exercise, our hunger cues also increase, and we still have a net zero change in EI/EO.
When we look at weight loss (fat loss), exercise only accounts for 10% of the total equation.
On the plus side, Increasing exercise frequency may increase your awareness of nutrition and habits consistency.
When we lift in the morning, we are more likely to make better nutrition changes throughout the day. So does exercising in the morning help us lose weight? Or does paying attention to nutrition help us lose weight? ........
Increasing exercise frequency will increase your overall health
The more often we move, the more often we improve our health scores. Bumping from 2 days to 2 days of lifting and three days of walking is moving toward better health.
Increasing exercise intensity does not mean an increase in weight loss or health. For those that embody the western philosophy of "more is better," this can become a trap.
We start chasing intensity because it makes us feel like doing something. It strokes our ego and smothers our Doubtfire. Veteran strength coaches have a saying
"if you don't take a rest day, your body will take one for you."
This shows up in injury/sickness/burnout.
Intensity is essential; we should be cycling bouts and programs of varying intensities.
it's still only 10% of the energy equation
Managing EI and EO as an individual will result in a scale change when an individual is crazy consistent with taking notes on both sides of the equation.
Exercise is not the driver of results; it's 1 part of the equation to maximize the results as long as nutrition/habits are in check
Exercise prescription will change the type of non-scale results tho
Exercise is essential, and having clear expectations and intentions as an individual is more important.
At Prevail, we use exercise to create a wide range of results.
-Decrease in pain
- increase in ability and capability
- increase in durability
- increase in muscle mass
- increase in strength
- increase in conditioning
- an increase of feel goodness ( science)
- increase in social culture and community
- "toning"
- increase in function
oh yeah, decrease in body fat
So what do you want out of exercise? What do you want for the highest elevated self? These questions answer how often I should exercise.
The Prevail system is intentionally a 3-day week system. Three days that intentionally create strong/capable/durable adventure-ready humans. We then coach individuals on how and if they need more than 3.
As a reference - Prevail Instructors average 5-6 days of the movement. Cycling in 3-4 days of strength/muscle work and 2-3 days of easy/medium/hard conditioning and walking/hiking/play.