The question I get most from new clients isn't which exercises to do. It's how much is enough. Short answer: three sessions a week, about an hour each, training the whole body. The longer answer is why that number suits almost everyone starting out.
The body needs time to adapt
For the first eight to twelve weeks, most of your progress comes from your nervous system learning to drive the muscles — not from new muscle. Train too often and you're just tired. Train too rarely and technique never becomes automatic. Three sessions on alternating days give you forty-eight hours to recover between hits on the same muscles.
Full body beats a split
Chest day, back day, leg day only makes sense once you've got a year behind you and can bring real intensity to each one. Starting out, a full-body session built on five basics — squat, press, row, overhead press and something for the core — will do far more for you than twelve isolation exercises.
Signs you're doing too much
Sleep goes bad, joints ache dully, and your lifts stall or drop three weeks running. If two of those three show up, drop a session instead of pushing through. What matters is that you're still showing up six months from now — not that you trained seven days in your first week.
Once you've held three sessions a week for two months and your lifts are climbing steadily, you can look at moving to four on an upper/lower split. I'll write about how to make that switch separately.
