How many times per week should you strength train?
It’s all well and good having been told that you ought to be strength training for your health and well-being, but how does that look practically?
The most important things to think about are, in my view, that you’re training consistently and progressively. In order for your training to be consistent, it needs to be realistic - what can you commit to doing relatively consistently most weeks? Don’t get me wrong - I’m never one to dissuade people from grafting and being ambitious, but if you’re planning 4 sessions per week and only hitting 1 or 2, you might be better off re-framing things a bit. On the flip-side, if you have enough spare time and inclination to get 2 or 3 sessions done and only do 1 - you might be being overly cautious.
Essentially, you’ll get more out of training more as long as you’re actually doing it - if you’re only hitting half of your planned sessions per week, the way they are structured (in terms of which muscle groups you’re training, the length of the sessions) probably won’t be that conducive to being done twice per week. In this example, somebody might be due to use an “upper lower split” - 2 upper body based days per week and 2 lower body, with different emphases in each session. To just do 1 of each will under-train some muscle groups, and odds are the amount of work planned is gonna be quite a bit less than for somebody intentionally doing 2 sessions, both of which I’d also make into full body training.
To put it a little bit more concisely - 1 session is infinitely better than 0, 2 better than 1 and so on. Occasionally missing a session (and if it’s done frequently, accounting for this) is no big deal, but it’s worth either taking steps to find that consistency or changing things up if it’s constant.
The good news is, the benefits will kick in from doing any strength training at all - the speed of them appearing is turned up by putting in more time and effort. For most people, I find 2-3 strength sessions per week to be the sweet spot - 3 allows for seriously quick improvements all around, whilst still allowing time for life and for some cardiovascular training (which is incredibly important!).