How often do I need to work out to maintain muscle?
So I try to exercise every day, or at least not skip days often, so 5/7 days usually. But most of that is not all that strenuous. A lot of that exercise is walking a couple miles, which is ok, but probably doesn't build any muscle. I would say that I only do strenuous exercise 2-3 times a week, and I don't do any weights.
So my question is: am I likely to be getting anywhere, or will my strength pretty much stay the same? I was hesitant to do weights because the last time I was regularly doing both weights and gym classes I hurt myself, but would it help to do weights on days I don't do classes? Does anyone have experience with this?
Hurting yourself likely had more to do with how much weight you were lifting and what your form/technique was. Most workout programs recommend weightlifting 3-4/week, to enable both recovery and regular progress.
If you aren't prioritising strength and hypertrophy in your workouts, you're unlikely to develop strength or hypertrophy.
You may need to sit down and list what your goals are - that will help direct/structure how you choose to program your workouts.
To clarify, my primary goal is weight loss, but a part of that is building muscle so that I burn more calories throughout the day. Strengths is a minor goal, mainly because I want to be able to keep up at the classes I'm taking.
Well depending on the classes you're doing and your individual physiology, you may build some muscle, but not much.
A pound of muscle only burns ~50kcal/day, so it's not a huge contributor to fat loss in that sense. However, resistance training has many additional benefits; such as increasing strength and stability to help prevent injury, adding muscle to the 'right' places to improve overall aesthetics, helping to remediate muscular imbalances, hormonal reactions and EPOC after anaerobic activities, etc.
But I think you've answered your own question: if you enjoy the classes you're attending right now, stick with that! If you plateau, or get bored with the classes, then you may decide to swap a few out classes for lifting instead. But I generally understand that you're better off to ensure proper recovery time between intense workouts, rather than working yourself into the ground by adding too much all at once.
to maintain muscle you need to eat the foods that high-protein foods ,Fruits ,water (3 liter in day) ,high-calories foods , and do workout .
if you just do workouts ,you will can not maintain muscle ,
you need of something gives them energy to work .
like the car engine ,It's needs fuel in order to function, but it also needs the oil so as not to burn
How often do I need to work out to maintain muscle?
