Frequency of Strength Training/Loss of muscle?
 

Hey guys. I've been at my new lifestlye for quite a few weeks now, and I began it with a few (free, came with the gym membership) personal training sessions that started me strength training. I have also added some things I read about in BFL for Women and that I have read in this forum.
I was thinking today though, and I have a question...

Basically, my question is how often should I strength train? I am not looking to be a body builder or anything, I'm not too concerned with a huge amount of muscle, I just want to be muscular, strong, and toned. I want to look nice. From what I've read, I should be doing 2 or 3 days a week. In accordance to that, right now I do cardio everyday and then I do upper body on Mondays, lower on Wednesdays, and Abs/Stomach on Fridays.
HOWEVER, then I also read in self or women's health or something like that, that you can begin to lose muscle in as little as 4 days after you work that muscle out. So by waiting a week between my Upper body workouts (or example), am I "undoing" my progress? I feel as if this is a good balance for me, because I give my muscles a rest and I am not spending 2 hours at the gym everyday, but I want to make sure I am doing this right and I WILL rework my schedule if I'm not doing it the right way.
Opinions?

Thanks!

I think that the 2-3 days/week that you read about is for each muscle group. That is, you should do upper body 2-3 X/week, etc.

I do full body weights and abs Monday & Thursday and cardio on four of the other days. One day of rest.;)

I've always understood it as being for full body work, too. If you work on resistance (that is, on higher weight/lower number of reps and not on lighter weight/higher number of reps), you should be able to do a full body workout, or close to it, in less than 2 hours--and if you happen to do free weights, those can be great also for more than just one group of muscles (cf. squats).

As a relative beginner, I would suggest that you lift the same muscle groups at least twice a week. Kery is right- you can design a program that hits full body using free weights and some machines that should take you about an hour, NOT two. have a couple of variations to so that you aren't doing the exact same thing each time you lift.

If you want to do an upper-lower body split, I'd follow an alternating day scheme spread over two weeks: week 1 :Upper, cardio day, lower, cardioday, upper. Week Two: lower body, cardio day, upper, cardio day, lowerbody.

The research that I've read (an you'll find research backing up just about anything) indicates that muscle loss occurs at about 7 days for already fit individuals with plenty of muscle mass. If you've only been lifting for a few weeks, I'd go to full body workouts or a more frequent short split.

Mel

Oy. So I was right in selling a kidney (;)) in order to be able to pay for a gym membership this summer! And I was feeling guilty thinking it was only a whim and I should suck it up and wait for the campus gym to open again... Not so much of a whim, huh.

Wow - you guys are amazing! :)

I added strength training on days I don't run, so I do about twenty minutes, three times a week. It takes me twenty minutes to work my way through the stations on my home gym three times, and I do ten-twelve reps at each station (fifteen on the leg press).

Based on that, it seems I am not doing enough... but I feel okay with it! :lol: For now, at least...

Heather :D

Heather- what you are doing is obviously working for you! Keep at it ;)

Mel

Thanks for the advice. Originally I was doing 2x a week upper body and legs, then I switched to 3x a week, as I described in my original post. I think I'm gonna go back to the original way, and ad in my stomach exercises every other day or so since I have so little.
When I said two hours, I was including travel time, 30-45 mins of cardio, plus the strength training. I think I am going to stick to 30 mins cardio on strength days and 60 on other days to balance it out and make it more time manageable. Once again, thanks for the advice!

Well, i'm glad this question was asked because i guess i'm not doing to well either. HAHA! I've only been doing weights for a few weeks. I only have about 45 minutes to work out so my schedule looks like this:

Mon, Wed, Fri = Cardio
Tues = Upper body weights
Thur = lower body weights
Sometimes on Saturdays i workout but it's usually Cardio

I am only into "toning" right now but is this acceptable or should i try to do something else? I think i need to sit down and jot down some routines so i can do full body weights 2 days a week or something beause it takes me 45 minutes just to work my upper body. I usually do 3 sets of 10 reps. I know i need to work different mucles groups but other than the obvious triceps and bicepts i'm pretty dumb when it comes to things like that. So does anybody have any advice or can you point me to a good website that will help me make a couple of routines to use different muscles. That way i can do one routine on Tue and one on Thur or something like that.

Thanks,
Amy

Amy, there's a thread a couple of pages back called "Questions, Questions" in which people helped me to put a routine together. I do upper and lower body splits, but you could combine them and still get it all done in 45 minutes. I opted for the compound exercises that work many muscle groups at once rather than bicep and tricep curls and things like that, so all the exercises discussed in that thread are nice, efficient compound ones.

I do upper and lower body each about twice a week and I've seen great toning results over the last 5 or so weeks. It's pretty cool :)

Thank you very much baffled! I'll take a look.

Amy