How many days a week should a beginner train?

Three, for most people

Three full-body sessions a week, on non-consecutive days, is where the research and almost every coach lands for a first year. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. It gives every muscle two or three exposures a week, leaves a day between sessions to recover, and fits around a life.

Two is enough. If three is the difference between training and not training, do two. Beginners make real progress on two sessions a week, and two done for a year beats four done for three weeks by a distance that is not close.

Why four is usually worse, not better

Four or five days sounds like more commitment and therefore more progress. In practice it does three things to a beginner.

• It leaves less recovery between sessions, and at the start you are recovering from learning the movements as well as from the load.
• It pushes you toward splitting the body up, which means each muscle gets trained less often, not more.
• It is fragile. A week with two evenings taken up destroys a four-day plan and barely dents a three-day one.

Add days when three has been comfortable for a couple of months and you want more, not because more sounds better.

What the week looks like

• Two days: two full-body sessions, at least two days apart. Everything gets trained twice a week.
• Three days: three full-body sessions with a day between each. The default, and what most beginner programs are written around.
• Four days: usually two upper-body and two lower-body sessions. Worth it once the basics are automatic; a distraction before that.

Rest days are not days off from the plan. Muscle is built while you are not training, and a session done on tired legs is a worse session, not a braver one.

What to do after you have missed a week

You will miss a week. Everybody does, and it is the point at which most people quietly stop.

• Do not start again from the beginning. A week or two off costs you very little. Your body has not forgotten.
• Do not test yourself. The urge to prove you have not lost anything is how people get hurt in their first session back.
• Go back about ten per cent lighter for one session, do the same reps, and carry on where you left off from the session after that.

After a month or more off, take two lighter sessions rather than one, and treat them as a rebuild rather than a test.

What OneMore does about it

The coached programs are written around three days a week, and the session you owe is on the home screen when you open the app, so the decision each week is whether to train rather than what to do.

It also knows how long it has been since you last trained, which is the difference between resuming a plan and restarting one.