Lifting

How Many Days a Week Should You Lift Weights

January 08, 2025 5 min read

Finding the right lifting frequency is essential for maximizing gains, avoiding injury, and ensuring consistent progress.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced lifter, determining how often to hit the gym can be a bit of a puzzle. This becomes even more complex if you're also training Jiu-Jitsu 1-3 times a week and training relatively hard.

In this blog post, we'll explore the factors that influence lifting frequency and provide guidelines to help you design an effective workout schedule that balances both lifting and BJJ.

Factors Influencing Lifting Frequency

Experience Level

Beginners: If you're new to lifting, start with 2 days a week. This allows your body to adapt to the new stress without overloading your muscles and joints, especially when combined with BJJ training.
Intermediate: For those with some lifting experience, 2-3 days a week can provide a good balance between work and recovery.
Advanced: Experienced lifters who also train BJJ frequently might find 3-4 days a week effective, focusing on different muscle groups each day to ensure adequate recovery.

Goals

Strength: For strength training, 2-3 days a week is typically sufficient. This allows you to lift heavy with enough rest between sessions and BJJ classes.
Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth): For muscle growth, aim for 3-4 days a week. This frequency helps maintain a high training volume while allowing recovery.
Endurance: For muscular endurance, 2 days a week with higher reps and lighter weights can be effective.

Nervous System Fatigue

Impact of BJJ: BJJ is not only physically demanding but also taxing on the nervous system. Hard training sessions in BJJ can lead to significant neural fatigue, affecting your lifting performance and recovery.
Balancing Act: Ensure you’re spacing out your lifting and BJJ sessions to allow adequate recovery. If you have a particularly intense BJJ session, consider a lighter or rest day for lifting.
Note: If you want to learn more about nervous system fatigue, click here to read our resource about the basics.

Recovery Ability

Individual Differences: Everyone’s body responds differently to training. Pay attention to how your body feels and adjust your frequency accordingly. If you're feeling consistently fatigued, it might be a sign to reduce your frequency or intensity.
Sleep and Nutrition: Ensure you're getting enough sleep and proper nutrition, as these are critical for recovery. Without adequate recovery, you risk overtraining and injury.

Training Splits

Full Body Workouts: Ideal for beginners or those with limited time. Training 2 days a week can be very effective.
Upper/Lower Split: This split allows for more focused workouts and can be done 3-4 days a week, alternating between upper and lower body.
Push/Pull/Legs: This common split involves training 3-4 days a week, with each muscle group being trained at least once. This is suitable for advanced lifters with high recovery capacity.

Lifting frequency

Unfortunately, we are not machines. Our bodies are incredible creations, but our bodies also have limits.

We need to take this into account when creating our training and lifting schedule. Personally, I train a total of 6 days a week. 3 lifting days, 2-3 BJJ days (1-2 of which being hard training).

However, even this approach is not sustainable entirely. What you should do to combat this is periodically give your body breaks, and also focus a lot of time and energy on recovery.

After 1-2 months of hard training 6+ days a week, you may start to feel foggy, sore, and tired more often. Once you start to feel the effects of nervous system fatigue and breakdown, give yourself 2-3 days off. Sometimes even a week where your only exercise is long walks can help this a ton.

Your competition cycle also matters. Different times before competition effect your training as well.

For example, if it is January, and I know I am competing in a tournament in May, I will spend Jan, Feb, Mar lifting 4+ times a week, and train BJJ lighter 2 times a week. Then, April and May will be more focused on BJJ, where I will train hard 3 times a week, and lift 2-3.

During the 6 weeks before competition, my lifts will also decrease in length from 1 hour 15 minutes to 45 minutes as my Jiu Jitsu sessions increase in intensity.

You have to balance the volume. Know your competition cycle and how to train during certain times of the year.

Listening to Your Body

Regardless of the frequency you choose, it's crucial to listen to your body. Signs of overtraining include persistent fatigue, decreased performance, and increased injury risk.

Incorporate rest days and active recovery to keep your body and mind fresh.

Conclusion

How often you should lift depends on your experience level, goals, recovery ability, and the additional load from BJJ training. Beginners should start with 2 days a week, while intermediate and advanced lifters can train more frequently.

Remember to listen to your body, ensure proper recovery, and adjust your schedule as needed. By finding the right lifting frequency and balancing it with your BJJ training, you can optimize your workouts and achieve your fitness goals more effectively.

For more insights on training, recovery, and performance, stay tuned to our blog and subscribe to our newsletter!

Sources:

American Council on Exercise (ACE)
National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

FAQ

Porrada is a Portuguese term commonly used in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) and Brazilian culture to describe a tough, intense, and gritty style of training or fighting. The direct translation of porrada from Portuguese to English is "beating" or "brawl." It embodies the spirit of going all out, giving your maximum effort, and pushing through challenges. In BJJ, practicing porrada means training with high intensity and determination.

This website is a collection of resources curated by grapplers, for grapplers. Our goal is to provide you with all the information you need to succeed. Whether you want to learn about nutrition, training on the mats, lifting, or anything in between, we are here for you. We want to see you on the podium most of all, and we hope to help you do exactly that. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us an email or DM us on any of our social profiles!

There are two main ways you can get started with training: 1) You can find a BJJ gym near you and do a trial day, or 2) you can create your own mini home gym and start training with friends. Option #2 is how our team at Porrada got started! We ordered 1-inch thick puzzle mats in a 10’x10’ square and began training using online resources. If you do start with the second option, we recommend eventually finding a gym down the road in your career. It will help you by allowing you to roll with more people and receive high-level instruction.

BJJ is quite similar to wrestling. Both start standing and use takedowns as a method to score points. Both use very similar mechanics overall. The main differences are that there are no pins (you can be on your back in Jiu-Jitsu), BJJ involves submissions, and the points system for each is very different. BJJ grants points for takedowns/sweeps, back control, mount, guard passes, and knee on belly. Wrestling grants points for takedowns, escapes, and back points (back exposure for freestyle).

BJJ is a very unique sport in many ways. There are so many incredible benefits to training Jiu-Jitsu. The biggest reasons we advocate for it are the mindset training and the added ability to defend yourself. In BJJ, you are forced to humble yourself over and over again, every single day. This sport is a great way to mature rapidly and generally become a better person (in our opinion). You will also have a better ability to defend yourself than 99% of the population—a pretty big bonus.

You’re never too old to start training! We see people on the mats of all ages and sizes. Large and small, old and young can, and should, train BJJ. If you are on the older side, it is perfectly acceptable to take it slow and learn at your own pace. You don’t always have to go full speed—don’t worry. There are typically also classes that separate people by goals. Certain classes are for those who want to compete, some are for general instruction, and some are specifically for self-defense teachings. There is a place for everyone on the mats.