Benefits of Training 7 Days Per Week

When you’re looking to increase muscle growth, training volume is a key ingredient that can be achieved by training a muscle more than once or twice a week. 

When you lift seven days a week, you allow for more opportunities to train a muscle, rest a muscle, and repeat that structure. 

For example, you can easily train your lower body 3 days a week on a 6-7 day split, which could be the added volume you need to bust through a lower body strength and muscle growth plateau. 

Workouts Can Be Shorter in Duration

Adding more workouts per week also allows you to keep workout duration shorter, as you spread out the total weekly volume across more sessions. 

In doing so, you can do less, or at least not as much as you would need to do if you trained a muscle only once or twice a week to get similar results. 

Sessions lasting longer than 75-90 minutes often result in low stimulus, highly fatiguing work, meaning you are “working out hard” but not getting the most effective muscle-building stimulus.

By training more, you can keep workouts to a more manageable time allowance and ultimately put in higher-quality workouts.

It Can Help You Break Through Plateaus

Adding an extra workout or two to your training week can be the difference between staying the same and busting through a training plateau (unless you are not recovering between sessions, then adding more may not be the best idea). 

When it comes to muscle growth, understanding how to manipulate training frequency (workouts per week) and overall training volume (how many sets and reps you do in a given week) is key. 

By adding an extra session or two to an existing 5-6 day workout program, you may be able to add one more high-quality training session to a muscle growth that is on the edge of leveling up.

Drawbacks of Training 7 Days Per Week

Training seven days a week has its benefits. However, many lifters should ask themselves if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. 

It’s important to note the outcomes of training, such as muscle gain, strength building, and fat loss, are also done outside the gym, via diet, recovery, and sleep. 

Adding an extra session may be beneficial if you already train 5-6 days a week. However, it can just as easily detract from your ability to put in high-quality workouts on the other days.

It Can Be Very Easy to Overtrain

Overtraining happens after a prolonged period when you are not recovering properly. 

This usually follows after a stage of overreaching, which is a transition period where you are training very hard and accumulating fatigue. 

Unlike overreaching (part of any good program), overtraining occurs when you do not allow the body to rest, such as when you take rest days or deload weeks.

When training every day of the week, you may find it very difficult to allow muscles and more importantly connective tissues (joints, tendons, and ligaments) to heal from the stress of a workout. 

If this happens, you may find yourself not able to workout at all, or at the very least, have limitations in workouts that now negatively impact your training more than the benefits of training every day of the week.

It’s Not Ideal for Beginner and Intermediate Lifters

There are better ways to acclimate a beginner or intermediate lifter to sound training than every day of the week. 

If someone has not been lifting consistently (at least one full year, without any workout breaks longer than one week at a time), they should not try a 7-day workout program. 

Why? 

Not only is it intense on the body, it may only be as effective as sticking to a program for a full year, without breaks, and training with intensity and focus 4-5 days a week, every week.

If you are a beginner or intermediate lifter eager to work out hard and often, let Fitbod build a customized workout program that suits your needs and has you master a 4-5 day muscle and strength building program.

It Requires Extra Attention to Proper Form 

Proper form and attention to detail should always be a key emphasis in your workouts. 

However, training every day leaves very little margin for error in your recovery needs. 

Since you are limited with the overall recovery you can get in without taking some rest days, you need to listen to your body. 

Don’t push yourself too hard in a singular day. You can still train hard; just don’t get overzealous one day and be sore for the next week.

It Requires Smart Load Selection (No Ego Lifting)

Smart load selection and overall training volume are key points of emphasis (and concerns when doing it incorrectly) when training every day, as more advanced lifters may run into issues with overuse injury and or excessive fatigue. 

With the “train every day” mentality, you need a long-term mindset rather than a short-sided, crush-yourself-every-day vision for your workouts. Slow and steady wins the race when training seven days a week, so allow the body to adapt slowly and do not overtrain it by lifting more than your body has in it on a given day.

You May Need to Adapt Daily Workouts Based on How You Feel

It’s unrealistic to think you will never experience an “off day” when training regularly. 

Stress comes in all forms, such as family, bad sleep, poor nutrition, work stress, and lifestyle changes. 

Because you train every day, you need to become even more in tune with how you feel on a given day and not put yourself in situations where you may get injured or even derail recovery. 

If you walk into a gym or start lifting and realize that your body is very sore, or that you feel weaker, or that you have a small, nagging pain, pushing through it will only set you up for failure or injury.

Primary Care Physician, Dr. Marc Kai, advises:

“I would be very cautious about working out 7 days per week, as the body needs recovery time to repair and recharge. Your muscles and connective tissue need 1-2 days off each week to adapt and heal, and your muscle glycogen (sugar/energy) stores also need time to replenish. Sleep and diet are crucial for this as well. For those adamant about doing something every day, you can use yoga or some other easy stretching program on those recovery days instead, but I would avoid intense lifting or cardio.”

Being flexible when needed and understanding how doing so will not derail a long term program is the mark of any experienced lifter.

Your Diet, Sleep, and Stress Management Must Be on Point

As you may have guessed by now, recovery between sessions is one of the biggest challenges when training every day. 

Dr. Dayananda explains:

“Rest days are critical for allowing your body to replenish energy stores, repair muscle tissue, and adapt to the stress exercise puts on us. Without resting sufficiently, your muscles may not have the chance to grow stronger, and you may experience diminishing returns on your efforts.”

She continues:

“Incorporating rest days into your fitness schedule is a science-informed strategy for optimizing performance, benefitting progress and gains, and preventing burnout. Opt for a balanced approach that includes both high-intensity workouts and sufficient rest periods to support long-term progress and overall well-being. Remember, fitness is a gradual journey, and resting empowers your body to recover and is key to achieving sustainable results.”

You must control the other variables of your life (diet, sleep, work, family, and lifestyle stressors) or at least recognize them and adapt your training when needed. Otherwise, you MAY find yourself run down and missing multiple days or weeks of good workouts. 

Registered Dietitian, Trista Best, also emphasizes the importance of proper nutrition and hydration:

“Training physically seven days a week places significant demands on the body, requiring adjustments to one’s diet to support energy levels and meet nutrient needs adequately. Increased physical activity increases calorie expenditure, necessitating a higher intake of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to fuel workouts and support muscle recovery. Proper hydration becomes crucial to maintain optimal performance and prevent dehydration.”

Who Should/Shouldn’t Train 7 Days Per Week

Seven-day workout plans can be beneficial for some individuals, and completely derailing for others. Because this type of workout plan requires so much energy and focus inside the gym, and attention to recovery outside the gym, only the most dedicated and experienced lifters should attempt it. 

If you are a lifter who has already been training for more than 6 months consecutively, and have adjusted well to 5-6 day hard training splits, you may benefit from adding one additional training day and devoting it to an area you want to place more emphasis.  

This can be thought of as a short-term approach. Do it for 6-8 weeks and then go back to a 5-6 day split to determine if the added day provided a long-term benefit and did not impact recovery or progress.

If you are someone who has not trained for more than 6 months following a 5-6 day hard training split, then a 7-day workout plan is not recommended until you gain more experience training in higher volumes. 

Mistakes To Avoid On the 7-Day Workout Plan

Below are a few of the most common mistakes that can be made when training 7 days a week and ones you should avoid when doing a 7-day workout plan.

Training Too Hard on a Given Day

This is something that’s very common, even when you’re not training 7 days a week. 

A workout program is a systematic, long-term approach to training. Each workout is designed to complement the next. Therefore, if you go off the program or get overzealous on a single day and derail the next, you undermine the entire program. 

In a 7-day workout plan, this issue is even more important because there is no margin for error and no days that you can take off as a rest day to recoup.

Training a Muscle Too Frequently

With a well-thought-out training split, you should not have too much of an issue here. However, it’s still something that comes up during high-frequency training programs. 

Most major muscle groups can be trained 2-3 days a week, with smaller muscle groups like arms and abs trained 2-4 times a week. The more times a week you train a muscle, the lower the total number of sets you need to do on a given day.

Ignoring Joint Pains or Discomfort

This is something that is part of every program, however when training every day of the week, it becomes very important. Whenever you get nagging joint pain or even slight discomfort, you need to pay attention to it and listen to the body. 

Training 7 days a week leaves very little margin for error and if ignored could leave you sidelined for days, if not weeks. In that case, you’re better off training 4-6 days a week instead of 7.

Not Recovering Enough

This last one is an obvious one, as all of these other issues come strictly from under recovery (and potentially poor programming). If you are not recovering, you will notice more soreness, stiffness, and lower energy as the weeks progress. 

You may even find that you are not progressing or able to do the same loads with the same relative intensity as prior weeks. If this is the case, you are not recovering properly, and need to focus on eating better, staying hydrated, and sleeping more. If this does not fix it, then I recommend you do not do a 7-day workout plan.