How Many Exercises Should I Do Per Workout?

There are a lot of things that influence the number of exercises that can be done per workout. To answer the question; how many exercises can be done per workout; you should consider the muscles groups, individual’s nutrition, health, gender, age, and many other factors. This article seeks to answer the question; how many exercises per workout can be done.

The instant answer to his is that you can train each muscle group twice per week. In that, you have to make sure that you at least train your muscles 2 to 6 times a week depending on your level of experience in training. The text below will give you more answers on how many exercises can be done regarding various instances.

How Many Exercises Per Workout For Mass?

How Many Exercises Per Workout - upper body workout

Most people who want to build muscle mass use heavyweights. Some exercises that they do include chin-up, pull-ups, deadlift, bench press, barbell shrug, and more. You may train 2 to 4 days a week to build good muscle mass. Then you can do 3 to 5 exercises per workout. As you do the exercises, you must make sure that you target various including the lower and upper body.

For Bodybuilding

Most bodybuilders focus on building muscles. These bodybuilders focus on lifting weights and other workouts to build major body muscles. Some muscles that they focus on include triceps, biceps, shoulders, back, chest, abs, calves and many others. As such, all these muscles need to be developed and built using various exercises.

Hence, how many exercises per workout if you are into bodybuilding?

The number of exercises may depend on the individual’s level of training. For instance, a beginner may not do the sets and reps that are similar to those of a pro or an expert. A pro may do more exercises than a beginner.

However, regardless of the level of training, a bodybuilder can do a minimum of 3 exercises per workout. These exercises must target various body muscle groups. However, this is not cast on a stone. The training pros can do as much as they can depending on targets and intensity.

In addition, you can train major muscle groups at least twice a week. The major muscle groups are forearms, chest, shoulders, back, quadriceps, calves, hamstrings, abs, trapezius, triceps, and biceps.

How Many Exercises Per Workout - hamstring workout

Most of the bodybuilding exercises involve the use of the weights. As such, some of the exercises that you should expect to do when you are into bodybuilding include deadlift, dumbbell lateral raise, pull-ups, and more.

For Full Body

A full-body workout must target the entire body. For instance, the full-body muscles include calves, legs, back, chest, shoulders and arms. You can do 1 exercise per day that targets 1 muscle group. When it comes to sets and reps; you can at least do three sets and 8 reps or more.

Note that when you do fewer reps, it means you may do more sets. But if you do more reps you may do fewer sets. Most importantly, there is no need to do a workout that trains all the muscles. But you can train more than one muscle per workout.

Calisthenics

Calisthenics involves the use of your body weight for resistance exercise.  Additionally, you will be training large muscle groups such as chest, triceps, traps and many others.  Some of the exercises that you may do for calisthenics include push-ups, squats, pull-ups, burpees, crunches and more. You may not use equipment when doing the exercises.

A beginner can do 3 to 6 exercises under calisthenics workout. An expert can do the same number of exercises as a beginner but do more sets and reps. Most importantly, some of the calisthenics exercises require one to do more reps than the other exercises.

How Many Exercises Per Workout - pull-up exercise.

For instance, you may do more than 50 crunches in one set but you may do the same number of reps for a pull-up exercise.

Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy exercise involves the use of weights such as a barbell, kettlebell, and others. However, you can do other exercises that don’t require weights.  In addition, the hypertrophy exercises involve the moderate-intensity but with more volume on sets and reps. The exercises are good for developing and increasing the size of the muscles.

Beginners can train 1 to 3 times a week depending on the muscles that they want to increase. The experts can train more than beginners. As the number of exercises, the beginners can start with 2 to 3 exercises per session or per day.

Then the pros can do 3 or more than that. As you work on increasing the size of muscles through the hypertrophy workout, you can minimize the rest time between the workouts. This can make you increase your muscle size faster. However, always remember that the hypertrophy workouts are moderate-intense.

For Push Pull Legs

In push pull legs exercises, involves splitting your body into three parts. Your training schedule will be having different exercises for different parts. In addition, you also train one part per day. Your body becomes split to legs, push and pull parts.

The push part is about the upper body pushing muscles such as the chest, triceps, and shoulders. As for the pull, you will be training the upper body pull muscles. For example, the push muscles in the upper body include the biceps and the back. When it comes to the leg part, you will e exercising the lower body muscles. For instance, you will be targeting the legs, hamstrings, abdominals, quads, and more.

You can train 3 or more times a week in push pull legs split. As for the number of exercises, you can do 4 to 6 exercises per workout. For instance, if you are targeting the legs, you can exercise such as leg press, squats, calf raise, hip thrusts, lunges per day.

How Many Exercises Per Workout - dumbbell pullovers exercise

For push, you can do exercises such as push-ups, military press, barbell bench press, dumbbell flys, skull crushers and many others. As for pull, you can do barbell row, dumbbell curls, lat pulldown, pullovers, upright row, and more.  Remember, you have to train a group of muscles twice a week.

Glutes

There are various exercises that you can do to tone your glutes. Some of the exercises that are good at building the glutes muscles include mini band squats, barbell thrusts, cable kickback, band sumo walk, and more.

However, the question is how many exercises per workout can you do to target the glutes. You can for at least twice a week. If you have the energy, you can train up to 6 times a week. As for the number of exercises, you can do four exercises per workout.

How Many Exercises Are Too Much Per Workout?

In some cases, you are advised to do several reps until you are exhausted or you can’t do the exercise in the correct form. Going beyond that can be regarded as too much. If you feel any abnormal pain, you may also stop.

Injuring your body can be anti-progressive. Besides that, you might also injure yourself permanently. Hence, you should take care of yourself when you are exercising. Do relevant warm-ups to prepare your body for the main workout.

In some cases, it’s not about doing more exercises and more reps. But it is about doing the in a correct form and to hit the targeted muscles correctly. Remember, doing more reps can leave you exhausted and it increases the chances of getting injured.

However, some exercises require more rep while others are the other way round. Therefore, you should be able to differentiate between the exercises that need more reps and sets. For instance, you can do more 50 reps on traditional squats. But you cannot do the same number of deadlifts per set.

How Many Exercises Per Workout - squat exercise

When it comes to the number of sets, doing 2 to 6 sets per workout is normal. However, anything more than that is too much.

In addition, some exercises depend on age, gender, and nutrition. As you grow older, the muscles and power deteriorate. As such you cannot do more sets and reps. In other words, you become limited by your ability.

Final Thoughts

Your exercise workout routine can be your guideline to how many exercises per workout should be done. Some people depend on their bodies to calculate the number of sets and reps that they should do per day. However, training smart is important.

It saves you from injuries and fatigue. Therefore, the above text answers your question of how many exercises should be done per workout. Every workout has its own number of exercises that you should do. In addition to that, you also do a number of sets and reps depending on your goals.

The above paragraphs detail the number of exercises that you should do for different workouts. It can be said that most workouts need about 2 to 6 exercises. Anything more than 6 exercises per workout is not recommended. You might injure yourself due to anxiety and fatigue associated with a longer workout session. More exercises result in a longer workout session, and that can exhaust you and cause fatigue.

To know more about the number of exercises that you can d per workout, you can revisit the paragraphs above for detailed information.

May you share your experiences below on the number of exercises that you do per workout.

9 thoughts on “How Many Exercises Should I Do Per Workout?”

  1. This is a good one, I believe that we all have different endurance level and strengths, so when it come stop workout, we should understand that it can vary from each other. I like this article, I think what makes an exercise effective is you being consistent with it and you completing each goals you set.

    Reply
  2. Well, I believe and agree with you that there can only be a minimum and no maximum to me. I feel, it all depends on what we want to achieve as individuals and how we plan to achieve it too in all. This is definitely great to see here. Workouts can surely be enough worthwhile. Surely great to see

    Reply
    • Thank you for your understanding and interest. I am also happier about this post. anyway, if you have any suggestion or question, feel free to ask by comment.

      Reply
  3. This is really nice and this post is also very good. When I first kicked off doing my own work out routines, I had this question to ask but there was nobody to give me an answer to this so I didn’t even think of it at all. In he end, I just decided that I should just workout till I get tired for at least two times a day. Now I understand how to do this and how many exercises I’m supposed to do per workout.

    Reply
    • Thanks for your interest and your comment. I think you can get more important information from this post. if you have any questions or suggestions please comment on me.  

      Reply
  4. Hello Saman, its really good to exercise and like many people out there, most of us do know if there is a specified number of exercise to do per work out and we just have ourselves going on and on and sometimes we end up breaking down and unable to exercise the next day. It’s a great article to see a guide on how many exercises to try out. Cheers 

    Reply
    • Thanks for your comment and understanding about this. But, If you have anything to know, please inform me by comment. I will engage with it.

      Reply
  5. Hi, I love this article. I have a heart condition that limits my ability, is there anything that you would reccomend for mr to do that would not be to strenuous on my heart. I have tried to just walk, and that does not seem to help me to loose any weight that I so desperetly need to loose. My family and have begun to change our diet, and would love to know if there was some exercise that could help me to loose weight, without putting my heart at risk. If you have any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them. Sincerely; John D.

    Reply
    • That means, you are a heart patient, according to my experience, I can suggest you to do very simple workout with a more effective diet plan to lose weight. Because many exercises are with weight lift and workout with increased heart rate. firstly, I suggest, start your effective diet plan, then it will naturally change your weight. anyway, if you have an interesting workout, please ask your consultant before start workout. Thanks your comment and if you have any questions, feel free to comment on me. 

      Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.