How many exercises should be performed per workout?

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2012-10-23

Answer: as much as is necessary to adequately work all muscle groups throughout the week.

And with that, the article could, in principle, end)). However, I will allow myself to elaborate a bit on this topic.

Everything mentioned in this article applies equally to both men and women who wish to lose weight or gain mass. It doesn't matter. The laws of physiology work the same for everyone.

1. Basic and Isolated Exercises

So, the number of exercises primarily depends on the exercises themselves. The more muscles involved in a movement, the fewer exercises are needed to train all the muscles of the body. For example, in the classic bench press:

The muscles involved are:

So, one exercise substitutes for these 5.

For instance, I perform about 3 exercises per workout. Over the course of a week, this allows me to adequately train all the muscles of my body. Women who train with me for weight loss perform about 10 exercises per workout and also work all their muscles.

In general, the more basic exercises you have, the fewer of those exercises you need for complete workouts.

On average, with a standard approach for novice men, it’s 6-7 exercises per session. For women, it’s 8-10 exercises. Women tend to be more enduring than men, and they also have fewer basic exercises.

2. Training Experience

As your training experience increases, the number of exercises generally decreases. This is because more emphasis is placed on basic exercises in the training process. Additionally, the training becomes more targeted since many muscles have been sufficiently worked over the years. The need to specifically train them diminishes. For example, I do not train my biceps at all. Pull-ups are sufficient for me. Despite the fact that I can perform 50x15 curls with a barbell cleanly and without any assistance.

3. Number of Sets

Naturally, the fewer sets you perform per exercise, the more exercises you can complete before you get tired. As I mentioned earlier, I can only do 2-3 exercises in a workout. But the number of sets can go up to 20)).

4. Number of Workouts

I almost forgot about this important parameter. It is clear that if you train twice a week, you will have to “pack” all your exercises into those 2 sessions. If you train four times a week, with the same total number of exercises, there will be half as many in each workout. I advise you to train more frequently, but with fewer exercises—3-4 times a week is quite sufficient.

So, here are the four main criteria that determine the number of exercises you should perform. As you can see, neither your gender nor your training goals significantly influence this parameter. However, I want to emphasize again that women can perform slightly more exercises than men, assuming all other conditions are equal.

Personally, I see no point in doing more than 10-12 exercises per workout. The minimum threshold is at least one exercise.

I hope you learned something new and interesting. If so, share this article with your friends and subscribe for more. Good luck!