How Often Should I Workout At Home For A Better Body Shape

Finding the optimal home workout frequency is vital for achieving your fitness goals from exercising at home.

In this article, you’re going to learn exactly how often should you workout at home.

As someone who has been doing home workouts for over six years, I’ll explain everything you will need to know about how often should I workout at home based on – your fitness level, workout goals, workout type and if you just want to do home workouts to be fit and healthy.

Suggested read: Are home workouts as effective as gym workouts?

How often should you workout at home for your fitness level

Here’s how often you should workout at home as a beginner, intermediate and advanced level.

As a beginner.

When you are brand new to exercise and just starting to do home workouts your body strength and stamina are appropriate for home workouts that last 20 minutes or less.

Also to stick to your home workout routine you need to develop exercising at home into a habit.

For those reasons, it’s better for a beginner to exercise 4-6 days a week and do short home workout sessions. Estimated total exercise time a week 2 hours or 120 minutes.

Once you build up some strength and stamina you can increase your home workout session duration and reduce the number of days you do home workouts.

Here’s what a beginner’s weekly home workout plan should look like.

Day 1: A full-body workout for beginners that trains most of the major muscle groups. It can last for 15 -20 minutes. Exercise to include – warm-up – simple body stretching, jumping jacks, planks, spot jogging, and vertical spot jumps. Main workout – knee pushups, regular pushups, wall pushups, lunges, bodyweight squats, burpees, bodyweight dips etc.

Day 2: The lower body workout for beginners should be completed within 15 minutes. Exercises to do – jumping jacks, bodyweight squats, high knees, frog jump, lunges etc.

Day 3: Rest day. Or you could walk or do slow jogging for 10-15 minutes. You can also do cycling, swimming or jump rope.

Day 4: Core training. Workout duration 10 minutes. Exercises to do – planks, mountain climbers, situps, crunches, bicycle crunch, straight leg lift and hold etc.

Day 5: 15-minute full-body workout. Same as day 1.

Day 6: Rest day. Or do cardio for 10-15 minutes.

Day 7: Upper body workout for beginners at home. Estimated workout duration 15-20 minutes. Exercises to include – pushups, knee pushups, wall pushups, bodyweight tricep dips, bird dog, burpees etc.

Intermediate.

For someone at the intermediate level, it’s recommended to workout four to five days a week if your average home workout session duration is between 30-40 minutes.

For an average home workout session duration of 20-25 minutes, it’s better to workout at home 6 days a week.

But if your average home workout session duration is above 50 minutes then you can work out 3-4 days at home.

For better results from your home workouts someone at the intermediate level should try to workout 3 hours or 180 minutes at home per week.

To have an effective workout at home make sure you do both cardio and strength training at home. Also, include some weight training like a dumbbell workout for better muscle toning results.

Advanced.

If you are at the advanced level and want to take your home workouts to the next level then make your home workout session last for 30-45 minutes.

At a minimum, you should do a home workout 2 days per week if you are also doing weight training along with bodyweight exercises.

If only doing bodyweight exercises 4-5 days of home workout per week.

For those of you who train hard and most of your workout sessions last longer than 30 minutes and you are mainly doing strength training then it’s better to avoid exercising every day. Rest days are also crucial after an intense home workout session. Not giving your body adequate amounts of time to recover after a workout can increase the chances of overtraining and can cause workout injuries.

At most, you can work out 5 days per week.

If you want to do home workouts every day then there’s a way to do it I’ll tell you how later in this article.

How many days a week should you workout at home for muscle gain and weight loss

Here’s how often should you work out at home if your primary goal from home workout is to build muscle mass or you’re trying to lose weight.

For better muscle growth results here’s how often to do home workouts

First I’ll tell you how often should you do home workouts if you want to build lean muscle mass.

For muscle building, it’s best to do a home workout four days a week.

To make your home workout sessions much more effective for muscle building you need to incorporate weight training exercises. To keep things simple you can just do dumbbell training for weight training exercises at home.

You can still build muscle without any equipment but if you want to have better muscle volume and a little bit faster results use some free weights like dumbbells in your home workout.

Here’s what a muscle-building home workout can look like:

Day 1: Chest and arms (biceps, triceps) training with bodyweight exercises and dumbbells. Workout duration 35-45 minutes. Additionally 5-minute ab workout.

Day 2:  Rest day. Or you could do aerobic exercise/cardio or abs workout

Day 3: Upper back & lower back plus shoulder workout. Workout duration 35 minutes.

Day 4: Rest day. Or you could do a small cardio session for 10-15 minutes only.

Day 5: Chest and arms training as mentioned in day 1.

Day 6:  Leg and lower back training with bodyweight exercises and dumbbell exercises. 5-minute core workout. Estimated workout duration 40 minutes.

Day 7: Rest day.

How many days of home workout if you want to lose weight

To get the best weight loss results from home workout you need to workout frequently. You should consider working out 5-6 days a week.

For fast weight loss results focus on doing exercises that burn the most calories.

In those 5-6 days you focus on doing strength training for 1-2 days.

After you have completed 40-50 days of home workout include some weight training exercises into your workout routine.

Additionally running in the morning empty stomach can shed a lot of extra body fat. Start by slow jogging or fast walking for 10-15 minutes then after 2-3 weeks increase the time.

Apart from doing home workouts you need to maintain healthy eating habits and avoid eating fast food and unhealthy snacks which contain high amounts of calories as much as possible.

How often should you exercise at home based on workout type

Here’s how frequently you should do home workouts based on your home workout type.

If you just want to be fit and healthy with easy-to-follow home workout routines.

Workout type: basic bodyweight exercises and cardio.

If you are just trying to be fit and healthy with home workouts then it’s recommended that you workout 150 minutes or more per week doing workouts of moderate intensity.

While doing 150 minutes of moderate-intensity workouts can help you be healthy and improve your fitness, if you are not adding strength training like doing pushups, squats, lunges etc. then you might not get good results in terms of building muscle or muscle tone.

Where if you have less time to workout at home then it’s better to include exercises that are more intense like – doing home workouts with dumbbells, jump rope, and bodyweight exercises like burpees, Increasing the intensity of your home workout sessions means you need to workout for 75 minutes or more per week just to maintain your fitness and stay healthy.

Bodyweight exercises with multiple sets

If you want to train at home with only bodyweight exercises but want to do multiple sets then it’s best to do home workout for 5 days and take 2 rest days.

Home workouts with weights and bodyweight exercises

If you are doing both bodyweight exercises and exercises with weights then you can exercise at home for 4-5 days.

Based on your workout intensity you can take 2-3 rest days.

Is it good to do home workouts every day or is it too much

If you want to do home workout every day then it’s best to limit your home workout session duration to 20-25 minutes.

Doing home workout is good for staying in shape or maintaining your body shape and toning.

Avoid high-intensity home workout sessions or long workout sessions if you want to do home workouts daily.

Drop sets should also be avoided and training until failure should be avoided for most exercises. In a workout session, you should only do one exercise for not more than two sets.

Final thoughts

In general, you could do home workouts 4-5 days a week.

If you prefer long home workout sessions over 40 minutes then you will need more rest days especially if you are doing strength training. You can train more days and do home workout sessions over 40 minutes if you do body stretches, cardio or low-impact home workouts.

Read next: Here’s why I shifted to home workouts and stopped going to the gym.