How Much Strength Training Should You Do Per Week?

Strength training comes with a host of benefits, from stronger muscles and bones to a speedier metabolism to better mobility. But you only see those benefits if you are strength training often enough to create change in your muscles and your body—while simultaneously ensuring you’re leaving enough time for recovery to maximize your workouts and prevent injuries. 

So, how much strength training should you do per week? Here, we’re detailing everything you need to know to create the best strength training program for you that will help you see results while avoiding injury. This blog will cover:

• Factors that affect how often you should do strength training

• How often should you strength train?

• How to structure your weekly strength training program

• Signs you’re overtraining with your strength workouts

• Signs you’re under-training with your strength workouts

Let’s get started!

Factors that affect how often you should do strength training

When you’re deciding how many strength training workouts to incorporate into your weekly exercise regimen, there are a few factors you should consider. They include:

• Your fitness goals

• Your experience level

• Your workout intensity

• Your age and recovery ability

• Your lifestyle and schedule 

Your fitness goals

Any well-rounded workout program should include at least a little bit of strength training (say, one or two sessions per week) to help you maintain the muscle strength and stability you need to protect your joints and maintain good flexibility and mobility. Beyond that, if your primary fitness goal is to build muscle and get stronger, you will likely be incorporating more strength training sessions into your schedule.

Your experience level

Proper form is key when it comes to strength training. Doing exercises incorrectly, especially if you’re working with weights, can increase your risk of a muscle strain or joint injury. The more experience you have, the more the world of strength training will open to you—and the more frequent, complex, and varied your workouts can become. 

Your workout intensity

There are many different ways to strength train. You can strength train at a high intensity, incorporating plyometric movements or AMRAPs, in which you are trying to do as many reps as possible in a set amount of time. You can also strength train at a low intensity—working with light weights or your bodyweight—or by doing just a few reps with heavy weights and taking extended rests between sets. 

Regardless of which you prefer, it’s important to balance high-intensity workouts with low- or-moderate intensity ones to avoid overtraining. So, if you like to do your strength work as high-intensity intervals, try incorporating some endurance cardio on different days of the week as well. However, if you're tight on time, a HIIT-style workout will work your cardiovascular system all while engaging your strength and maintaining your gains.

Your age and recovery ability

Think you need to ease up on your strength training as you get older? Think again! In fact, strength training only gets more important as you age and begin to slowly lose muscle mass (which it is possible to maintain—and even grow!—with a proper exercise regimen). 

Even though older people should be strength training just as much, if not more, than younger folks, their workouts may look slightly different, including more recovery time between workouts. 

Your lifestyle and schedule

Ultimately, the right number of strength training sessions you do per week is whatever number you are able to complete consistently without causing injury. You want your exercise regimen to work for you, not the other way around. If you enjoy strength training and you can fit in three or four sessions per week, go for it. If you can only fit in two short workouts, that works, too.

Do note here that even if you love your strength training workouts, you still want to ensure you have enough time between sessions to recover so your muscles can repair themselves, grow stronger, and adapt to training. 

How often should you strength train?

Okay, that was a lot of information. Now to the big question: How often should you do strength training? A good place to start is with the CDC’s official physical activity guidelines, which say that adults should do at least two days of muscle-strengthening activity each week, aiming to work all the major muscle groups by the end of the week. From there, we suggest taking the above factors into account and tailoring a program that fits your body, goals, and lifestyle. 

How to structure your weekly strength training program

When it comes to structuring your weekly strength training regimen, there are (again) a few factors to consider. They include:

• How many days you want to exercise: This should be your first and biggest consideration. Figure out how many weekly workouts your schedule will allow, then start breaking them down into different formats from there.

• What you want to work each session: You can hit every major muscle group in one strength training workout, or you can split things up. For example, if you are doing three sessions of strength training per week, you could work chest and back in one, arms, shoulders, and core in the second, and legs and hips and core in the third. Or, if you’re doing two sessions, you can break things up into upper and lower body, or do a full-body workout every time.

• Where you’ll fit in rest and/or cardio days: You want your exercise regimen to be a mix of cardio and strength training. Now here’s the good news: Depending on the form of cardio you prefer, your cardio day may double as a rest day from strength training, since it’s giving your muscles a break from the kind of work you are putting them through on strength days. That said, it is important to try to schedule at least one true rest day every seven days.

Sample week of strength training

Let’s assume you have time to do at least a bit of exercise every day. Here’s an example of what one week of strength training might look like. 

• Monday: Lower-body strength training

• Tuesday: High-intensity cardio, like HIIT or rowing

• Wednesday: Upper-body strength training 

• Thursday: Moderate- to low-intensity cardio, like rowing or dancing, in order to support recovery. 

• Friday: Full-body strength training

• Saturday: Low- to moderate-intensity cardio, like hiking

• Sunday: Rest day

Signs you’re overtraining with your strength workouts

Even if you’re following all the guidance above, it will take some time to find your groove with how much strength training per week is best for you. Here are some signs to look out for that you are overtraining, or doing too much, not giving your body enough time to recover, and putting yourself at risk of injury:

• Extreme fatigue or lack of energy

• Frequent muscle soreness

• Decreased performance or plateaus

• Lack of motivation

• Slower recovery after workouts

• Heavy-feeling muscles

Signs you’re under-training with your strength workouts

The flip side of overtraining is under-training, or playing it too safe and not pushing yourself enough to challenge and change your muscles. Here are some signs that you might be under-training:

• Lack of progress

• Not feeling fatigued or challenged after workouts

• Feeling bored during workouts

• Rarely experiencing muscle soreness

Time to get stronger!

As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into how much strength training per week you should be incorporating into your exercise regimen, including your fitness level, goals, and age. But the most important factor is finding what works with your schedule and lifestyle that you can stick to. 

If you’re not sure where to start, check out Hydrow’s growing library of workouts, which include classes both on and off the rower, a machine that works 86% of the muscles of the body in every stroke while offering killer cardio at the same time. Our library of strength training workouts is also the perfect place to get a routine off the ground, with experienced instructors helping you every step of the way. 

Learn more about the benefits of rowing and a Hydrow rowing machine today!