Is One Gym Session a Week Enough?
At school I had a PE teacher who was a champion bodybuilder. He also owned the local gym and encouraged us to train there. I was 14 when I lifted my first weights, and I was hooked immediately. Every afternoon after school I headed to the gym. I knew very little about training, so I did the same five exercises each day: bench press, squat, leg press, sit-ups and shoulder press. Three sets of 10.
I also had very little idea of how often I needed to be there. It’s amazing how often athletes ask me, “How often should I go to the gym?” Usually, we’re trying to fit gym around sport, work and family. Before deciding how often to train, I want to be clear about what the gym work needs to achieve.
Sport asks us to produce force, often within a very short time, and cope with repeated loading. In the gym, we can target how much force an athlete can produce, how quickly they produce it, or the strength of a muscle group that is limiting performance. We can adjust the exercises and loading as they progress. They also need the sporting practice that develops their ability to apply that force. Often, the gym work addresses a strength limitation their sporting sessions are leaving unresolved.
For Masters athletes, changes in muscle tissue and the nervous system as we age can affect strength and explosive performance, with muscle power particularly vulnerable. Retaining muscle and the ability to express force quickly needs regular attention in the programme. We can still build muscle and improve strength well into older age.
I also need to know how long someone has been lifting, their injury history and the demands of their sporting week. Masters athletes vary in age and training experience, so I want to see how the individual is coping before deciding how much gym work to include.
Repeated exposure to appropriate loading, with enough recovery, is how we build strength. The weekly plan has to provide enough challenging work to produce that response. How often we train helps us organise it.
In studies lasting six to 12 weeks, people who already lifted weights made similar strength gains while training on different numbers of days. The studies kept the total amount of lifting similar and divided it across different numbers of sessions. That gives us some flexibility to fit gym work around sport and life. There is less research on Masters athletes who already strength train, so I’d use the findings as a guide and check how each athlete responds.
Holding on to strength can take considerably less work than building it in the first place. In one study, previously untrained adults aged 60–75 largely retained strength gains over a 32-week period after training was substantially reduced. Some of the muscle size they had gained was lost. Muscle size needs its own attention when we cut the work back.
How quickly we lose an adaptation after reducing or stopping training depends on what we’re measuring, our training history and how much loading we’re still doing. I’d keep checking the qualities we’re trying to retain as the reduced programme continues.
One weekly gym session can provide enough work to improve strength, and it can be useful for maintenance through a demanding competition period. I’d look at the athlete’s starting point, what we want to develop or retain, and how much effective work we can fit into that session.
My usual starting point would be two sessions a week. That gives us opportunities to practise important lifts, spread the loading and keep the work manageable. If we plan six working sets of an exercise across the week, we can organise those into one or two visits. Simply dropping one of the three-set visits halves the weekly work.
In a development block, two or three sessions may give us room to build the work progressively. A session might combine heavier lifting, explosive efforts and work for a particular muscle group. Each part needs suitable loading, repetitions and rest. I’d also account for the force and speed work already happening in the athlete’s sport.
We can continue developing strength during the competition season, particularly between lower-priority events. As an important championship approaches, I may reduce sets while retaining enough loading to support the qualities we want available on competition day. One well-planned session may suit that phase.
Two shorter sessions often make it easier to keep lifting well and give important exercises the attention they need. One longer session can work if the athlete is still performing the later exercises well. Travel and warm-up time also matter when deciding what someone can sustain.
Consecutive gym days can work when the loading and exercise selection are planned together. I’d look carefully at repeated demands on the same muscles and include the sporting sessions in that assessment. A hard track session on either of those days also adds to the legs’ workload.
Adding another gym session means finding the time and recovering from the extra work. I’d consider what it displaces and how it affects the sporting sessions around it. Tracking loads and repetitions at comparable effort and technique helps us judge strength progress over several weeks. A jump, throw or movement-speed measure can help us track the explosive work. I also want to know how the athlete is coping with their sporting training.
For a Masters athlete looking to develop strength, I’d usually start with two sessions a week and plan them around the important sporting work. One session can be enough during a busy competition period, and it can also produce improvement if the weekly dose is sufficient. If that’s the time you have available, I’d make good use of it. We can identify the main physical limitation, plan enough quality work to address it and follow your progress over the next training block.
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