Exercising a lot is known to be good for you, but what about intensive movements such as strength training? Women in particular have difficulty planning their strength training and how often per week they should perform strength training. In this article we describe how a woman can do this most efficiently and purposefully.
How often is strength training recommended per week as a woman?
Research has shown that you need strength training at least twice a week to stimulate muscle growth. For optimal results, training three times a week is recommended. There is no proven difference whether men should train more than women, but there is a difference in the types of exercises. For example, women often focus too much on the lower body, which actually hinders growth. The result is also sometimes less clear, as the woman has a lower starting point for muscle mass and strength than the man, which means the woman can train as often and hard as the man but remains lower in muscle mass. The man can move more weight with power at once and the woman can recover faster and repeat this more often.
Typical schedule
You can create a schedule that suits you best, below we have added an example of a four-day strength training schedule for women:
Monday – Upper body strength training
Tuesday – Lower body strength training
Wednesday – Rest or walking/cardio
Thursday – Upper body strength training
Friday – Lower body strength training
Saturday – Rest or walking/cardio
Sunday – Rest or walking/cardio
Strength training causes small tears in the muscles, making it important to rest properly so that the muscles can recover and ultimately grow. This has been taken into account in this schedule by taking two days of rest between each body part and thus focusing on a different body part.
Distribution with three times strength training as a woman
A good distribution is important if you want to do strength training three times a week. You want to hit the right muscles during those three days, but also give them rest. For example, consider a day for your lower body, a day for your upper body and another day for the entire body. Another option for three days is to use the lower body twice and then the upper body once or vice versa. For the latter, for example, you can divide upper body strength training into two sections, namely “push” and “pull”. This means that on ‘push’ days you train your chest and triceps and on ‘pull’ days you train your back, shoulders and biceps. There are also two lower body sections for this, for example hamstrings and glutes one day and quadriceps and calves the other. Through the correct distribution and focus you ensure that the muscles are not overloaded, but in a targeted manner.
Three important things to keep in mind
- Power supply
With all that intensive exercise, a good diet is important. This could include increasing your protein and calorie intake. Proteins are important for your muscle recovery. An example of protein-rich products are meat, chicken, fish and dairy products. An additional tool to get enough proteins could be from supplements, such as whey or clear whey. - Schedule
A functioning schedule is necessary to properly build muscle mass. The idea is not that you change exercises every training, but that you do the same exercises for that body part for a period of time. It is also important to take the weight to repetition ratio into account in your schedule. This way you can use “progressive overload”. Here you ensure that you can do a certain weight for 10 to 12 repetitions and then you increase the weight by a few kilos and ensure that you can do at least 8 repetitions. This supports the muscles and prevents you from loading up on weights too quickly. - Sleep
As described above, rest is important during strength training. During your sleep the process of recovery of your muscles and the creation of new muscle fibers is greatest. It is therefore important to get enough sleep hours, but also to improve the quality of your sleep. The recovery process works best in the anabolic state. You can improve sleep quality by, for example, sleeping in a good, dark room. You can also improve this by not eating or drinking alcohol in the last hours before you go to sleep.