Whether you’re a beginner in the gym or an experienced lifter, determining how often you should be training your legs can be difficult.
I don’t blame you, there’s tons of conflicting information where ever you go; some people swear by one leg day a week where others swear you won’t grow unless you train them three times a week.
So as someone simply looking for a straight up answer to this question, determining who to listen to is difficult.
Regardless of what they say, training your legs at a correct frequency is key to maximizing your leg growth efforts in the gym.
That’s why I decided to write this post, to walk you through the best strategies to determine how many leg days you should be doing for the most effective leg growth.
In This Post You’ll Find:
Most Commonly Recommended Leg Training Frequencies
Most people recommend training your legs anywhere from one to three times a week.
Anywhere above this range would most likely be considered over training.
For me personally, I can’t imagine training my legs more than three times a week. With the intensity I train at, my legs need a solid two to three days to recover between my workouts.
Too many leg days without enough rest results in over training. Over training then results in decreased muscle growth.
Not something you want when you’re trying to grow your legs.
On the other hand, if you were to train your legs less than once a week, essentially zero times a week, you obviously wouldn’t be able to grow this way either.
However, some professional bodybuilders do opt for a bi-weekly leg training schedule.
But this isn’t a training schedule that would apply to most lifters. That is, those of us who aren’t professional body builders.
Generally, if you’re a non-professional lifter like myself, then you should be doing anywhere from 1 to 3 leg days each week.
Determining How Many Leg Days Are Right for You
Now you know the general recommended leg training frequencies, but again, these are just general.
So the question is now, how do you determine how many leg days you should be doing specifically?
In this section, I’ll give you some of my best tips to find your personal sweet spot for leg days each week.
Determine Your Leg Growth Goals
Your goals play a huge role in everything you do in the gym.
At least they should, if you’re training with intention.
As a result, before you determine your number of leg days, first determine your leg growth goals.
For example, determine things like, how significant the leg growth you want to see. Do you want to maintain your leg muscle or grow significantly more muscle?
Also, determine how you want to grow your legs. Do you want to grow all your leg muscles equally or do you want to grow some more than others?
Growing Muscle Versus Improving Aesthetics
For some of you lifters out there, your focus might not be on gaining strength or muscle specifically.
You might care more about the way your legs look, as opposed to how they perform.
In this case, you’re training will focus on growing your leg muscles separately and proportionally. Not solely on growing your legs altogether.
If this is the case then this gives you a lot more freedom when it comes to your training frequencies.
Instead of training your full legs every leg session, you can group your leg muscles together, focusing on specific muscle groups each session.
You can then increase the frequency of a specific muscle group you want to grow more than the others, without increasing the frequency you train your full legs.
For example, say you wanted to primarily grow your glutes more than any other leg muscle.
You could then try doing two leg days a week. One glute, quad, and calf day, and another glute and hamstring day.
You’re only doing two leg days throughout the week, but you’re prioritizing glute growth above any other leg muscle.
Allow for Enough Rest Between Leg Training Sessions
When it comes to any type of growth in the gym, rest is extremely important.
Your muscles don’t actually grow when you’re working out. Instead, they grow in the days that follow. When your muscles rest and recover, that’s when they grow.
Making your rest day just as important as your actual workout. If not even more important.
You should allow for a minimal 48 hours of rest between training the same muscle group. Sometimes, you might even need more than 48 hours rest.
It really all comes down to listening to your body here.
If your muscles are still sore, you shouldn’t workout. You should always wait until your muscles are fully recovered to train them again.
Sometimes, this full recovery may take three days where other times your body may be fully recovered after just one day.
Tuning into your body and listening to important recovery cues here is important.
Experiment to Find the Right Training Frequencies for You
Experimenting with Different Leg Training Frequencies
Along the lines of listening to your body that I was talking about before, try experimenting with a different number of leg training sessions each week.
See how your body responds to one leg day, two, and even three.
Observe if your body is able to recover fast enough between each workout and if you’re noticing the changes you want to see.
On top of that, it’s important to observe other things in your life that may seemingly be unrelated to working out.
Things like your energy levels throughout the week, the quality of sleep you’re getting, as well as any mood changes can all be indicators of over training.
Any routine that results in over training is not the right fit routine for you.
Experiment by Setting Your Number of Rest Days Instead of Training Days
When creating our routines, we like to determine the days we’re going to workout instead of the days we’re not.
But since rest of so important for growth, especially for leg growth, what if we reversed this?
What if we tried to have a set number of rest days each week, then fill in our workouts the other days?
For example, instead of saying something like, “I’m going to train legs twice a week”, what if you said, “I’m going to rest for two whole days between each of my leg days”.
Now you’ve shifted the focus from the number of times you’re training, to the number of days you’re resting.
If you follow this schedule, the number of times you hit legs each week will change. Some days you’ll hit legs twice a week, where others you’ll hit legs three times a week.
This is a great way to vary the volume of your workouts each week, while also avoiding over training.
Since you’re still always getting the same amount of rest between each leg session.
Experiment with Different Training Styles
One thing not a lot of people talk about is that the way you train plays one of the biggest roles in how often you should train.
Essentially, your training style and training frequency go hand in hand.
Know Your Training Style
If you’re wondering what I mean by training styles, I have this one chart I created that makes it easier to visualize what I mean.
I think it does a pretty good job of illustrating the different training styles based on goals and how that would look in your training.
The Importance of Your Training Style, Intensity, and Frequency
Varying your training style, intensity, and length of your workouts can help you experiment with different leg training frequency.
If you want to train your legs more or less frequently, then the way you train should reflect that.
Some training styles will give you better results at a higher frequency, whereas others require a lower frequency for the best results.
In this section, I want to explore the your training style, intensity, and length of your workouts should reflect your training frequency.
Experiment With Shorter Versus Longer Leg Days
If you prefer doing longer leg days, then you probably won’t be training legs as frequently.
The more time you spend in the gym, the more intense your workout is going to be (assuming you’re training effectively) and the more taxing it’ll be on your body.
You’ll need more rest after your workouts and will take longer to recover between sessions.
Resulting in longer, less frequent leg days.
Whereas if you don’t have hours to spend in the gym in a single day during the week, then maybe you’ll want to try shorter, more frequent leg days.
For example, instead of spending hours in the day doing your full leg day, you could split this workout up throughout the week.
Turn this single, lengthy workout into two or three shorter workouts.
If you do this correctly, your legs should be able to effectively recover between each shorter session.
At the end of the week, both the person who did the single, long workout and the person who did three shorter workouts should result in having done the same volume of training.
That is, the same number of sets, reps, and exercises throughout the week.
Experiment With Higher Intensity Versus Lower Intensity Workouts
Similarly to the length of your workouts, your training intensity also impacts your training frequency.
Experimenting with different intensity levels will help you experiment with different training frequencies.
A high intensity workout means lifting heavier and training closer to failure.
The higher the intensity of your workout, the more time your body needs to recovery between sessions.
As a result, the higher intensity at which you train, the less volume you’ll be able to do and the less leg days you’ll get in each week.
Anywhere from one to two leg days a week is ideal for high intensity training.
Whereas if you train at a lower intensity, you’ll need to increase the volume of your workouts to make up for the decreased intensity.
Low intensity trainers can get away with anywhere from two to three leg days each week.
Test Out A Combination of Intensity Levels Throughout the Week
Another common strategy to help you find an ideal leg training frequency is to combine multiple training styles.
Training with a combination of low and high intensity workouts is a great way to allow for more muscle growth and progress.
I find this is a great strategy for anyone who hasn’t found their ideal training style yet.
By combining different intensity levels into a week of workouts, you can get a feel for which workout style works better for you.
Additionally, combining training intensities is a great way to experiment with your training frequency throughout the week.
For example, if you were someone who was set on training legs three times a week, this might not be possible with three high intensity leg days.
Maybe instead you’d want to try two low intensity leg days and one high intensity leg days.
Allowing you to train legs three times a week, but without risking over training.
What This Combination Would Look Like
These combination workouts would include what I like to call “heavy days” and “lighter days”.
The heavy days would obviously include heavier weights but also lower reps. Somewhere in the 5 to 8 rep range would generally be ideal for heavy days.
The lighter days on the other hand would include lower weight and higher reps. Somewhere in the 8 to 12 rep range.
What this does is it gets your muscles training both for strength and hypertrophy, allowing you to maximize muscle growth and progress in different ways.
As well as helping you find your ideal training style and frequency.
Takeaways
There are tons of factors that go into choosing which leg training frequency is right for you.
Depending on your goals, training style, and intensity levels, more or less leg days might be a better choice.
But generally speaking, almost everyone will fall somewhere in the 1 to 3 leg days a week range.
By following the tips I gave in this article, you should be able to find your ideal leg training frequency.
One that works for you, meets your goals, and helps you avoid over or under training.
More of My Posts on Women’s Fitness and Weight Training:
The Best Strategies to Progressive Overload in The Gym