Ernest Dion

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Writing IV—Essay Final Draft

Less is More—Three-Day Gym Workout Plans

Physical exercise is crucially important if one is to maintain health. That is why many people

nowadays incorporate fitness exercises (gym) into their daily/weekly routine for various reasons, like

to lose weight, to gain weight, or to attain some form of body shape they desire. When exercising at

the gym, many people use a weekly routine of 5-day split working out different muscle groups each

day with breaks on certain days to either rest or do a cardiovascular workout. It is of no denying that

many people, like us students, have a lot to do on their weekly agenda, and such crammed up schedule

does not really accommodate a 5-day split weekly gym routine. Thus, I believe that there is a better

alternative to that workout plan, and it is the 3-day full-body split which works out several muscle

groups instead of one each day. Surely some people would say that the less frequent you work out the

less significant the progress you made. I do understand such sentiments and while in some cases it

may be true that fewer workouts means slower progress, there are more factors to what constitutes an

effective workout plan and quantity does not always mean quality. What I mean is that by focusing on

a muscle group for one day is perhaps not more effective, and here are some reasons why workout

people should just go for a 3-day weekly plan.

The first reason is that frequency beats intensity. The 3-day split will work out the muscles

more often in a week than in a 5-day split. This is because the full-body workout implemented in the

3-day split works out almost all the muscles in the body and as a result the interval/day gaps are

shorter because one would train, say, the arms in Monday and again in Wednesday. In a 5-day split

you would work out separate muscle groups for only a day in a week and it would take seven days

before you train them again. This stimulates the muscles more often, leading to faster growth.

Another reason is that fewer sessions mean more recovery time. This rings true especially for

older people who needs more recovery time between heavy activities than younger people. Although

genetics may play a role and thus people from the same age groups may have different stamina and
recovery time, as the body age the physical capabilities of a human being is inevitably declining. A

teenager may actually afford a 5-day workout in terms of stamina, but a middle-aged man would not.

There is a reason why athletes retire at age 33 (on average).

The last thing I would like to talk about here is time. Let’s just be honest; not everyone has

the chance to go to the gym for 5 days, even in weekends. This is especially true for workers and

students. On some days you may have meetings to attend, or essays to write, or partners to have a date

with, or even all those things to do simultaneously that will leave you occupied for the whole course

of the day from dawn to dusk or even beyond. Such days and errands may be put on higher priority

and as there is only 24 hours a day, and you also need sleep, you have to sacrifice a day at the gym. In

a 5-day plan, this means that you leave out a muscle group untrained for the whole week. In a 3-day

plan, this can be avoided as the full body workout means that in a day, no muscles are left untrained.

All in all, it will perhaps suffice to say that: people want to live healthy, and exercising at the

gym, and doing so for five days or three per week are both good ways to achieve that. However, we

should remember that some of us simply cannot devote their entire time to lift, and investing time on

lifting weights as intense as five days a week or even more is generally not a wise decision to make

(unless you are a professional bodybuilder, that is). Between the desire to be fit and the work need to

be done, the three day split workout plan offers the best balance.