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How many workouts a week? Greg's answer
Greg · UpGreg AI Coach
4 min read
It's THE question every coach gets, and most answer with a number pulled out of a hat. The real answer is simple arithmetic, but it depends on two things only you know: your goal, and what your body can absorb today — not what it absorbed five years ago.
The base rule: frequency before duration
At equal volume, more short sessions beat fewer long ones. The unit of account for progress isn't the hour, it's the session: every outing is a signal sent to your body. Three signals a week beat one big shout on Sunday.
The arithmetic, goal by goal
- Starting or restarting: 2–3 sessions. The challenge isn't physiological, it's structural — tendons, joints, habit. Two sessions maintain, three build. Below two, you're not training: you're hurting yourself once a week.
- Finishing a 10K: 3 sessions. A progressive long run, an easy run, a session with some rhythm (strides, then light intervals). The best value-for-effort foundation in all of training.
- Half-marathon: 3–4 sessions. The 4th session feeds aerobic volume. Doable on 3 — but every session must have a precise role.
- Marathon: 4–5 sessions. Below 4, the long run becomes far too big a share of your week: every Sunday turns into trauma instead of training.
- Triathlon: 4–6 sessions — spread across three sports, which changes everything: load accumulates, joint damage doesn't.
The round-number trap
The classic mistake: picking a number (usually too high), holding it for two weeks, then quitting altogether. The right method is the reverse: start with the number you're certain to keep even on a bad week, hold it for a month, then add one session. Frequency gains are won in multi-week steps — exactly the kind of patience a written plan enforces and a motivated brain forgets.
“My arithmetic fits on one line: the best number of sessions is last week's number, plus zero — until it feels easy. Only then, plus one. I look at what you actually did over the last 28 days, not what you announce with sparkling eyes. Sparkling eyes end up injured in March.”
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