Kenneth Gardner

Regular exercise will help to improve your health and fitness. The ideal number of exercise sessions per week depends on your fitness goals.

For most persons, a frequency of three to five days of exercise sessions each week is recommended. This will improve blood pressure, heart rate, blood circulation and endurance. If you take more than two rest days between sessions you are less likely to see improvements.

There can be some improvement in heart and lung function with less than three days of exercise each week. However, such improvement is likely to be minimal to modest, at best. Likewise, very little body fat is likely to be lost overall.

Every other day

Exercise sessions are recommended for every other day, especially for those who run or jog. The injury rate, related to foot, ankle and knee joints increases dramatically when beginners exercise more than three days per week. Without in-between rest days, injuries tend to occur more frequently.

For those who are just starting an exercise programme (such as running or jogging), if you want to exercise more frequently than three days each week, alternate with other activities. Other activities such as walking, bicycling and swimming can be alternated with running or jogging, since these activities are easier on the joints.

Exercising less than two days per week does not show adequate change in lung function, but exercising more than five days per week does not bring much improvement above that gained in a five-day exercise programme. The body responds quickly to certain amount of exercise, as we go beyond that level our improvement decreases.

Muscle recovery

Three to five sessions of exercise each week can provide us with enormous benefits improving general strength and flexibility while giving our muscles time to recover between sessions.

If you do resistance exercises every day, this could cause you to become tired and fatigued, increasing your chances of sustaining injuries and eventually impeding your progress. Persons who are doing strength exercises and have peaked, can exercise less frequently each week since they are likely to be exercising the same muscle groups. However, by changing the exercises for that group of muscles additional strength development can be achieved.

Arthritis problems

In cases where persons have arthritis or circulation problems, exercise may be done daily. Some persons can exercise only for short periods at a time because of structural and functional limitations. In these cases, exercise sessions will need to be shorter, less intense and more frequent (which could mean daily). As our functional capacity improves, the duration and intensity of the exercise can be increased while the number of days are reduced.

Other persons who are exercising more than five times each week, quite likely, are not exercising for their health and fitness but for competition. How often we exercise each week could also be a sign of our tolerance, which can lead to an addiction to exercise.

Kenneth Gardner is an exercise physiologist at the G. C. Foster College of Physical Education. Email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.