Your Guide to Getting Enough Strength Training

Just like we have a favorite sport or favorite day at the gym, there may be certain things for health and fitness we know we should do, but often find ourselves asking the question: ‘What’s the bare minimum I can get away with doing and still benefit?’ For many, strength training is that thing.

The great news is, the bare minimum to still benefit is actually much less than you might expect. So, let’s get into it.

“Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but nonetheless doing it like you love it.” — Mike Tyson

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This is your DRYWORLD guide to getting enough strength training.

Before We Begin

The DRYWORLD community is an athletic one. When we mean benefit from strength training in this context, we’re talking about general health and not maximizing performance. To maximize your performance, you’ll want to be adding weight, sessions, reps, and strategically overload during your strength training sessions to avoid plateaus and continue maximizing and optimizing your gains.

For those just looking to maintain basic health and fitness, and who may (or may not!) hate strength training and all the pain and perseverance it requires, this is for you.

Is There Such Thing As Too Much?

New studies suggest that doing more than a certain amount of strength training will actually begin reversing progress over time. Of course, athletes who are training for optimization want to push themselves to the point of depreciating returns. As in, when you start training you see lots of results, which lessen in gains slowly over time as your body gets stronger, generally resulting in a plateau. This is part of optimization!

However, we all know what can happen with over-training, for example, injury, fatigue, and low motivation. So, where’s the line in the sand?

Some resistance training can help reduce the risk of experiencing a cardiovascular incident or event, such as a heart attack or stroke. Great! That’s what we love about fitness—health. The flip side? Evidence suggests that too much resistance training might lead to a hardening of the arteries, eventually increasing the risk of a cardiovascular incident. In some cases, it’s better to not do resistance training at all than it is to over-train (for example, 4-5 hours a week). This is great news for those who believe you need to spend hours on hours on hours in the gym every day just to get the benefits.

Find the Minimum

In a recent study, which is a review of a compilation of other studies, researchers found that for resistance training beginners, a mere single session per week was enough. The set load can be fewer than three sets and 6-10 reps at 51% 1RM. This “minimalist training” allowed beginners to see improvements for at least the first 12 weeks of training.

In another 2023 study, the results showed that the benefits of strength training max out at two sessions per week, and begin to degrade beyond four sessions. Of course, with any new studies, it’s good to be skeptical of the results and to keep up with further studies that may be released. Like the great debate of whether or not one can run too much (to which ultra-runners wholeheartedly disagree), there’s always more to the story.

In this case, based on these studies, the answer for the minimum amount of strength training for the benefits is one hour per week. More than two, and you may even be setting yourself back.

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Casual Fitness Fans Unite!

So, while a mere session a week isn’t going to be getting you on top of fitness podiums and performing optimally, it seems to be enough to maintain some base muscular strength and reap the cardiovascular benefits of strength training. For those of us who cringe at the words “resistance training” or “lifting,” this is great news. For those who love lifting a lot, knowing you could be sending yourself backwards in terms of cardiovascular benefits is a bit discouraging. At the end of the day, your fitness journey should be what makes you achieve your goals and feel like your best self. If you’re not a high performance athlete looking to break records, then one session a week of strength training might be exactly what you need to get started.

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.” — Thomas Jefferson