Most of us believe the more we workout, the more calories we burn, the quicker we're on our way to ideal body. Exercising three, four, or five days a week to stay in shape seems to work for beginners to advanced gym goers, but what happens if we go seven days a week? In the video, "How Many Times a Week Should I Workout?" PictureFit explains a "bro split" could help maximize recovery and training for a better fitness routine.

A bro split refers to training a subset of muscle groups on one day, and then a different subset the next day. This technique will allow one set of muscles to rest while training the others. The bro split consists of splitting up "pull movements", such as pull-ups and back rows, from "pushes", like bench and shoulder presses. Somewhere in between we throw legs, or attempt to do so.

Read More: Why Working Out In The Morning Is Best For Stress, Not Muscle Size

This will lead to four to five days of training per week, allowing us to hit each muscle group at least twice — the optimal amount. This can lead to fatigue, therefore, more rest days are necessary, or changing the intensity or volume of the workout can also help. PictureFit suggests we should strive for 48 hours of rest in between training, since previous research has found muscle protein synthesis will run its course in this timeframe, but this doesn’t mean we have to skip the gym entirely during rest.

Deciding how often we should go to the gym will involve us evaluating the intensity, or the heaviness of the weights we move, and the volume, which is the intensity times reps and sets. When we adjust these three factors, the other two will be affected, and this will change the answer of how many times we should be training per week. Beginners and intermediate lifters tend to get away with higher frequency training whole elite athletes or long-term lifters benefit more from recovery.

After all, rest days are important, because strength and growth adaptations occur when we sleep and during recovery.

We need to test things out, listen to our body, and go with the frequency that gives us the best results.

See Also:

Why Your Gym Workout Plan Yields No Results, Plus How To Fix It

6 Mistakes That Can Stop You From Reaching Your Fitness Goals