Is Twice Per Week Really Often Enough?

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Jul 17, 2024

Exploring the optimal fitness routine, experts argue that exercising twice a week can yield the best results. High-intensity workouts stimulate fast-twitch muscle fibers but require a critical 48-hour recovery to maximize effectiveness. Overtraining can hinder rather than help fitness goals. Discover how structured strength training coupled with focused nutrition is key to enhancing muscle strength and overall health. It's all about balancing effort with recovery for lasting benefits.

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INSIGHT

Why Exercising Twice a Week is the Perfect Amount for Optimal Fitness

Exercising twice a week with high-intensity, whole effort workouts is not only enough but actually optimal for achieving the best fitness results. The key to effective exercise, especially as we age, is stimulating fast-twitch muscle fibers through brief, intense sessions that trigger adaptations like increased muscle size, strength, and insulin sensitivity.

However, the critical factor is allowing adequate recovery time—at least 48 hours—for the body to fully recover and super compensate. Exercising more frequently can disrupt this recovery, leading to overtraining and stalled progress.

The Exercise Coach program uses technology to track client improvements session-to-session, emphasizing that if results aren't showing, the exercise might not be intense enough or recovery insufficient. This explains why adding more workouts often isn't the answer; rather, quality and recovery matter most.

INSIGHT

Twice Weekly High-Intensity Training

Exercise twice a week with high intensity is enough and more can be counterproductive.
This frequency allows muscle fibers to recover and adapt, producing strength and metabolic benefits.

INSIGHT

Recovery Drives Exercise Results

Fitness results come from adaptations during recovery, not exercise itself.
Adequate recovery including rest and nutrition is essential for muscle improvement.

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Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about the optimal amount of exercise...

One of the most common questions we get at the Exercise Coach is “Is exercising twice a week really often enough?” Listen in as Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson explore why whole effort exercise twice a week is not only enough, it’s the optimal amount you need to achieve the best fitness results for your body in the shortest amount of time possible.

Exercising twice a week is more than enough. In fact, exercising more often can actually be counterproductive.
The most important thing you can do as you age is addressing the health of your fast-twitch muscle fibres. To stimulate and improve the quality of your fast-twitch muscle fibres the exercise needs to be intense and brief.
When we work our muscles in this way it forces adaptations, which are the end results that we are seeking from an exercise program. The flipside of this intense exercise is that you need to give your body enough time to fully recover and super-compensate, which takes at least 48 hours.
All the results we want from exercise, like increased muscle mass, strength, neurological efficiency, and improved insulin sensitivity, are not actually caused directly by exercising. Our bodies produce the results we want once we’ve achieved adequate recovery.
If you exercise more frequently than twice a week, all we are doing is interrupting and disrupting the body’s innate ability to produce the very results we want. Overtraining can cause people to stall out and even go backward in terms of their fitness improvements.
We should be able to measure the results of any exercise program, which is why this idea is built into every program at the Exercise Coach.
If you’re not seeing results from your exercise routine, question whether your exercise is intense enough and whether or not you are giving your body enough time and resources to recover properly.
During a workout, you are depleting the stored energy in your muscles so that they will build themselves back up over time. Your recovery time is just as important as your workouts. The consumption of your muscle’s fuel is a major metabolic signal that triggers these kinds of transformations.
The answer to getting the best possible results is almost never just exercising more. The key is combining whole effort exercise and whole food nutrition to get all the results we want.

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exercisecoach.com

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