I’m going to lay a hard truth on you.
Here is what I have witnessed in my 40 years around the fitness industry and my 17 years as a personal trainer:
- Most women workout 2-3 days per week.
- Those workouts are mostly cardio and group class based, yoga or pilates.
- The number of women doing true strength-based training more than 2 days per week significantly goes down from the group and cardio based classes, yoga and pilates.
- As women get older, start careers, and have children, the days/week for workouts can go down to 1 day per week
General guidelines recommend strength training at least 2 days per week. hitting all major muscle groups. In practice, that often looks like 20-30 minutes, 2-3 sets per exercise, in the 10-12 rep range. This doesn’t seem to matter if the woman is younger or older, pre-, peri-, or post-menopausal.
Here’s the hard truth:
Minimal effort yields minimal results.
The minimal recommended amounts are fine for beginners. It’s a great way to enter the strength training realm, see some results, and begin to learn the movements and proper technique.
But this prescription won’t give you the results most women tell me they are seeking.
The clients I have who do the best strength train 3-5 times per week.
Our programs include 3 strength training days per week, with 2 conditioning/cardio days per week. The programs are in 4-5 week cycles, which allows you to learn the movements and see some strength gains.
Why Does This Matter So Much?
Your body adapts to what you consistently ask of it – nothing more. Training twice a week is enough to introduce your muscles to the stimulus and start seeing early strength gains. But once your body adapts to that minimal stimulus, progress stalls unless you give it something more to respond to. That’s called progressive overload, and it’s the entire engine behind getting stronger, building muscle, and protecting your bones long-term.
There’s also a recovery piece most people don’t think about. Muscle isn’t built during your workout – it’s built in the 24-48 hours after, as your body repairs and rebuilds stronger tissue. More frequent training sessions (spaced properly) give your body more opportunities to go through that build-repair cycle. Fewer sessions means fewer opportunities, which means slower results, even if each individual workout is a good one.
None of this means you need to start at 5 days a week. That’s not realistic, and honestly, it’s not how we build anyone’s program – beginner or advanced.
What it does mean is this: if you’ve been training consistently for months (or even years) and still aren’t seeing the changes you want, the amount and structure of your training is probably the missing piece – not your effort, and not our body’s ability to respond.
This is exactly why we don’t hand our clients a generic plan and hope it works.
Every program at StrongGirl Revolution is built in 4-5 week cycles, so you’re never guessing what to do next. We start you where you are, then intentionally increase your training frequency, volume, and intensity as your body adapts – so you keep making progress instead of plateauing at “good enough.”
If you’ve been putting in consistent effort and still feel stuck, it might not be about working harder. It might be about training smarter, with a plan that actually evolves with you.
