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Stepping Up To Four Workouts a Week, Pt 1
December 15, 2011
By Chris White
Over the course of my 15 year career I’ve had the opportunity to experience, observe, and contemplate the most effective strategies for gaining strength, getting lean, and being healthy. I’ve read over a thousand articles on strength and conditioning, written several myself, and had the pleasure of learning from some of the best strength coaches in the world.
In the past two years I’ve trained an average of 70 people a day, five days a week. That’s 350 people a week I’ve either evaluated, coached, or consulted! This makes me uniquely qualified to make certain claims on what I think works and what I think doesn’t.
One of the most important factors in the quest for results in the gym is training frequency (i.e. how often an individual trains in a given week). Recently I cross-referenced body fat numbers with training frequency and discovered something very interesting.
Go Primal by the Number
The average training frequency of our athletes is approximately 2.3 workouts a week. However, the average bodyfat of our athletes training just twice a week for the last three months for both males and females is well over 20%. Their average loss of bodyfat over that same time span is approximately 2%.
Conversely, the average bodyfat for male athletes training three times a week is 15.6% and the average bodyfat for females is 17.1%.
Our male and female athletes training four times a week or more have an average bodyfat of 11% and 16% respectively. Interestingly, the average body fat loss for athletes training four times a week in the last three months is over 7%!
When athletes add four extra training sessions a month (one additional workout a week) they also get leaner faster, averaging a 3% drop in bodyfat in their first month!
The take home message is simple: The more you train the faster you get results. In fact, stepping up your commitment from three workouts a week to four can accelerate results by as much as 50%.
In part 2 of this blog entry I will discuss how I organize training in the gym to accommodate for more training frequency and the various supplements I recommend to promote training drive, mental focus, and recovery/sleep. Make no mistake, training four times a week is hard to do and most people aren’t ready to make this sort of commitment. But rest assure if you do decide to take the plunge results are virtually guaranteed.
There is no drug more powerful than self-improvement. The formula is not complicated: Consistency + Effort = Results. When you point someone willing to make a commitment in a direction that bares change there is no end to their potential.
