A popular theory in the fitness industry is that full day of rest, or multiple rest days per week is better for muscle building, injury prevention, and longevity. This opinion is often misrepresented as a fact in the fitness community. This idea is often ingrained in the heads of beginners that rest days are mandatory.
The fact is that recovery and rest days are not mutually exclusive. Everyone's body recovers at different rates and there are multiple ways to speed up recovery. Another factor to keep in mind is that our body will adapt to different training styles and volumes over time.
Results of 7 days per week training method
1. More Training Volume
More training volume in the long run. If you break down one week of training for someone who trains 5 days per week vs someone who trains 7, even if the person training 7 days has less volume per day over the course of a week the 7 days per week method will yield more reps and sets.
Broken Down in Reps and sets over a 1-year span
7 Days per week 296 reps per week = 15,392 per year
4 Days per week 196 reps per week = 10192 reps per year
Over a 1 year span, the 7 days per week method will yield 5,200 more reps
2. Competitive Edge/ Sped up learning curve
No matter what aspect of life you are looking to improve in, the more practice/reps you put in the more confidence you will gain and the more proficient you will become at your craft.
What I have noticed specifically through training calisthenics skills daily, and implementing the greasing the groove method, is that it slices the amount of time it takes to be proficient at a skill or movement in half, if not into a third of the time.
The 7 days a week method works in the mental world as well. We can improve at computer programing or video editing at faster rates with more daily practice. The more proficient we become the more confident we become in the space.
3. The Power of Habit
Training 7 days a week instills a habit that is etched in stone. Days off feel foreign and even flat-out wrong once you get into the groove of daily training. There is a momentum factor involved in the mindset of 7 days per week. Your momentum is like a freight train heading cross country, as opposed to a Greyhound Bus taking multiple rest stops
One thing that I and other 7-day method athletes have noticed is that when they do take days off or have in the past, it's much harder to build up that training momentum. Especially after a weekend of cheat meals and lack of sleep.
4. Greasing the Groove
Greasing the groove is a practice of getting sets and reps in throughout the day. Allowing the body to recover within hours and be ready for fresh sets throughout the day. This allows for more daily volume and is like sharpening your tools periodically throughout the day.
Instead of a 1-hour workout in the morning, you could spread your workout throughout the day with three 15 min workouts and one 30 min workout. Recovery will be much better and this method can bring more volume to your training.
Greasing the groove is perfect for busy professionals.
5. Faster Recovery
What most people think about when the 7 days per week mindset is brought up is that there is far less recovery with this method. The contrary is actually true. Human beings are built to adapt mentally and physically. The human body adjusts to different climates while traveling and can adjust to a different training workload as well.
If you incrementally increase volume, difficulty, and frequency over time, the body will become more resilient and can handle a higher workload.
Back in the days of some of our fathers' or grandfathers' childhoods, there was no such thing as a 5-day work week. You worked until you could provide. Our ancestors also had to hunt and roam until they could find food and shelter.
The fact is, that modern humans are very privileged and some could say spoiled.
The 7 days per week method will eventually provide an upper hand in recovery.
Most Recovery information online is not based on facts, but hypothesis. Be your own science experiment.
6. Mental Advantage (Feeling mentally stronger)
The mental advantage is the confidence that is built through more volume. This compounds over years and eventually, the process is the most rewarding aspect of this training method, because there is no final result.
Personal bests will pop up unexpectedly. The body and mind will reward the dedication because it subconsciously knows that anything done daily is second nature and can be pushed to new levels.
7. Communicate with your body
We can communicate with our subconscious minds through verbal, visual, and written messaging. Even daily meditation. The same principle holds true when communicating with our bodies. Giving it daily reminders that building strength, improving a skill like the front lever, or shooting three-pointers is extremely important. So important that we do it every single day and often multiple times per day.
The body and the mind respond to these constant reminders and eventually give us what we are looking to manifest.
Final thoughts
One thing I want to make clear before ending this article is that the 7 days a week method can be implemented in a multitude of ways. Light greasing the groove workouts, to intense longer sessions.
I will recommend for beginners and for people just starting out on their 7 days per week journey that starting off slow is best.
Don’t push yourself to the point where your body needs 2 days to recover. Build up your muscle endurance gradually. Start off with maybe ½ to ⅔ of your normal workout until that workout gets too easy. Then we can move on to higher daily volume and harder progressions.
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