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7 Day Gym Workout Plan (How To Structure It The Right Way)

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7 day gym workout plan

If you’re committed to training seven days per week, the structure of your plan matters a lot. 

This is because you can easily overdo your volume, which is the amount of work you perform for each muscle group.  

Get the volume wrong, and it will negatively impact your recovery between workouts, which decreases how hard you’re able to train overall.    

That said, there are certainly ways you can be successful on a seven-day workout plan. 

Below, I’ll show you how Fitbod can build an individualized workout program custom to your goals, equipment, schedule, and training data.  Fitbod will recommend workouts that engage all of your main muscle groups and ensure you are allocating appropriate work to each muscle group

Key Takeaways

  • Before beginning a 7-day workout program, you must consider your goals, current fitness level, and how much time you can realistically dedicate to it.
  • Training 7 days a week is a huge commitment. You must also be prepared to follow a healthy, nutritious diet and get enough rest.
  • With Fitbod, you’ll have a customized workout plan that naturally progresses as you gain strength.

How To Structure a 7-Day Workout Routine

how to structure a 7-day workout routine

When building a 7-day workout plan, you must determine your overall goal, how much time you can spend in the gym, and what level you’re at when starting the program.

If your overall fitness levels and strength are relatively low, you can get away with a lot more in a single workout than if you are very strong, developed, and experienced. 

Keep this rule of thumb in mind: The closer you are to your peak potential, the more recovery you need, and therefore, fewer exercises are needed when training seven days per week.

Here are some examples of how typical 7-day plans are structured.

Training Split Into Muscle Groups

You could aim to train all major muscle groups or movements 2-3 times per week.

If you’re after muscle growth (bodybuilding), you could devote 2-3 days a week to each muscle group, with some days training heavier and others training lighter. 

An example 7-day workout splits for bodybuilding could be:

Push/Pull/Lower

Upper/Lower

If you are after more strength (strength sports), you could devote 2-3 days to training the major movements of your sport or goal (bench, squat, deadlift OR snatch, clean, jerk).

An example 7-day workout splits for strength sports could be:

Powerlifting

More Workouts: Best Workouts to Power Lift

Olympic Weightlifting

More Workouts: Best Workouts to Olympic Lift

You can follow any of these split examples for a 7-day workout plan. However, you can also let the Fitbod app determine your split for you to create the most appropriate workout based on your progress and strength.

Sets and Reps Vary Between Plans

The sets and reps in a 7-day workout plan can vary depending on your goals and are not any different than 3-5 day plans. 

However, since you won’t take a rest day, ensure at least one day during the week is not as intense as the others. 

You can do this by doing more accessories in one day (isolation or single-joint movements) or even working a lower percentage of work for speed and technique to give the joints and nervous system a break (this applies to the more strength-focused workouts).

When in doubt, do less on a single day, as the 7-day workout plan accumulates a ton of volume throughout the program rather than a singular day. Your goal should be to get a good workout but NOT be very sore or destroyed after a workout. 

Take Loading (Intensity) Into Consideration

The main concern when training seven days per week is not going heavy every single day.  

If you train in high volumes with also high loads, you’re just simply not going to recover well between workouts, which will impact the quality of future workouts. 

Exercise Selection Is Key

Exercise selection is also critical.  In other words, selecting the right exercises on each workout.  

If you find heavier compound movements cause muscle soreness or limitations in subsequent workouts, you’ll want to limit these movements to 1-2 times per week. 

For example, in the above Powerlifting 7-day workout plan, we utilize the split squat twice a week to train the lower body, rather than doing another back squat. 

This is because the program already has you squatting 2-3 times a week and doing deadlifts 1-2 times a week. 

That may result in a lot of fatigue in the lower back, so as a preventive measure, the split squat allows muscle growth in the legs without adding extra stress.

When you use the Fitbod app, you won’t have to worry about which exercise to swap out, so you won’t experience fatigue or soreness. It adjusts to your fitness level and builds upon your progress as you get stronger.

The 7-Day Gym Workout Plan

the 7-day gym workout plan

Are you wondering what a typical 7-day workout plan might look like? 

Here’s a sample 7-day routine designed to build maximal amounts of muscle. 

Note: If you are a Fitbod user already, these workouts are merely for example.  The exact workouts in the app will be personalized using your training data and other workout preferences. 

Day 1: Monday (Lower)

More Workouts: Best Lower Body Workouts

Day 2: Tuesday (Upper)

More Workouts: Best Upper Body Workouts

Day 3: Wednesday (Upper)

More Workouts: Best Upper Body Workouts with Dumbbells

Day 4: Thursday (Lower)

More Workouts: Best Lower Body Workouts with Dumbbells

Day 5: Friday (Upper)

More Workouts: Best Upper Body Workouts with Barbells

Day 6: Saturday (Lower)

More Workouts: Best Lower Body Workouts with Bodyweight-Only

Day 7: Sunday (Upper)

More Workouts: Best Upper Body Workouts with Bodyweight-Only

How To Progress Over Time

how to progress over time

Week-to-week progressions should be very conservative during a 7-day workout plan, simply because recovery is very tough. 

It may be helpful to choose one exercise or movement per day that you try to progress, then aim to match your previous week’s numbers (or at least not crush yourself on every exercise, every week). 

Lastly, it is important to recognize that some weeks or days you might feel run down or beat up, so make sure to listen to your body. 

If this is a regular thing (more than one week at a time) then you may need to adjust the amount of weight you’re lifting or go back to a split that allows for more recovery.

Is It Okay To Train 7 Days a Week?

Training every day of the week is not necessarily good or bad, but more a question of what is the most effective way to reach your goals.

A 7-day workout program, while ambitious, does not offer much more benefit than training with intensity 5 to 6 days a week UNLESS you can stay consistent and recover properly. 

If you are looking to train every day of the week, be ready to commit yourself to training hard, eating better, and getting enough sleep. 

Seven-day workout plans can be very effective, but also intense and damaging if you do not recover properly and train smart. 

Dr. Ila Dayananda, Chief Medical Officer at Oula Health, explains:

“As a doctor, it’s vital to understand that rest and recovery are integral to any effective fitness regimen. Working out seven days a week without adequate rest can actually hinder your progress rather than promote it.

Your muscles need time to repair and rebuild after exercise, and continuous strain without sufficient recovery can lead to overtraining, fatigue, and increased risk of injury.”

If you cannot commit to being 100% focused on your efforts in and out of the gym, then you may want to rethink your ambitious efforts and put that 7-day workout energy into a highly effective and intense 5-day or 6-day workout program. 

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Benefits of Training 7 Days Per Week

benefits of training 7 days per week

Increasing your weekly training frequency has its benefits, which are listed below.

You Can Train Muscle Groups 2-4 Times Per Week

When you’re looking to increase muscle growth, training volume is a key ingredient that can be achieved by training a muscle more than once or twice a week. 

When you lift seven days a week, you allow for more opportunities to train a muscle, rest a muscle, and repeat that structure. 

For example, you can easily train your lower body 3 days a week on a 6-7 day split, which could be the added volume you need to bust through a lower body strength and muscle growth plateau. 

Workouts Can Be Shorter in Duration

Adding more workouts per week also allows you to keep workout duration shorter, as you spread out the total weekly volume across more sessions. 

In doing so, you can do less, or at least not as much as you would need to do if you trained a muscle only once or twice a week to get similar results. 

Sessions lasting longer than 75-90 minutes often result in low stimulus, highly fatiguing work, meaning you are “working out hard” but not getting the most effective muscle-building stimulus.

By training more, you can keep workouts to a more manageable time allowance and ultimately put in higher-quality workouts.

It Can Help You Break Through Plateaus

Adding an extra workout or two to your training week can be the difference between staying the same and busting through a training plateau (unless you are not recovering between sessions, then adding more may not be the best idea). 

When it comes to muscle growth, understanding how to manipulate training frequency (workouts per week) and overall training volume (how many sets and reps you do in a given week) is key. 

By adding an extra session or two to an existing 5-6 day workout program, you may be able to add one more high-quality training session to a muscle growth that is on the edge of leveling up.

Drawbacks of Training 7 Days Per Week

Training seven days a week has its benefits. However, many lifters should ask themselves if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. 

It’s important to note the outcomes of training, such as muscle gain, strength building, and fat loss, are also done outside the gym, via diet, recovery, and sleep. 

Adding an extra session may be beneficial if you already train 5-6 days a week. However, it can just as easily detract from your ability to put in high-quality workouts on the other days.

It Can Be Very Easy to Overtrain

Overtraining happens after a prolonged period when you are not recovering properly. 

This usually follows after a stage of overreaching, which is a transition period where you are training very hard and accumulating fatigue. 

Unlike overreaching (part of any good program), overtraining occurs when you do not allow the body to rest, such as when you take rest days or deload weeks.

When training every day of the week, you may find it very difficult to allow muscles and more importantly connective tissues (joints, tendons, and ligaments) to heal from the stress of a workout. 

If this happens, you may find yourself not able to workout at all, or at the very least, have limitations in workouts that now negatively impact your training more than the benefits of training every day of the week.

It’s Not Ideal for Beginner and Intermediate Lifters

There are better ways to acclimate a beginner or intermediate lifter to sound training than every day of the week. 

If someone has not been lifting consistently (at least one full year, without any workout breaks longer than one week at a time), they should not try a 7-day workout program. 

Why? 

Not only is it intense on the body, it may only be as effective as sticking to a program for a full year, without breaks, and training with intensity and focus 4-5 days a week, every week.

If you are a beginner or intermediate lifter eager to work out hard and often, let Fitbod build a customized workout program that suits your needs and has you master a 4-5 day muscle and strength building program.

It Requires Extra Attention to Proper Form 

Proper form and attention to detail should always be a key emphasis in your workouts. 

However, training every day leaves very little margin for error in your recovery needs. 

Since you are limited with the overall recovery you can get in without taking some rest days, you need to listen to your body. 

Don’t push yourself too hard in a singular day. You can still train hard; just don’t get overzealous one day and be sore for the next week.

It Requires Smart Load Selection (No Ego Lifting)

Smart load selection and overall training volume are key points of emphasis (and concerns when doing it incorrectly) when training every day, as more advanced lifters may run into issues with overuse injury and or excessive fatigue. 

With the “train every day” mentality, you need a long-term mindset rather than a short-sided, crush-yourself-every-day vision for your workouts. Slow and steady wins the race when training seven days a week, so allow the body to adapt slowly and do not overtrain it by lifting more than your body has in it on a given day.

You May Need to Adapt Daily Workouts Based on How You Feel

It’s unrealistic to think you will never experience an “off day” when training regularly. 

Stress comes in all forms, such as family, bad sleep, poor nutrition, work stress, and lifestyle changes. 

Because you train every day, you need to become even more in tune with how you feel on a given day and not put yourself in situations where you may get injured or even derail recovery. 

If you walk into a gym or start lifting and realize that your body is very sore, or that you feel weaker, or that you have a small, nagging pain, pushing through it will only set you up for failure or injury.

Primary Care Physician, Dr. Marc Kai, advises:

“I would be very cautious about working out 7 days per week, as the body needs recovery time to repair and recharge. Your muscles and connective tissue need 1-2 days off each week to adapt and heal, and your muscle glycogen (sugar/energy) stores also need time to replenish. Sleep and diet are crucial for this as well. For those adamant about doing something every day, you can use yoga or some other easy stretching program on those recovery days instead, but I would avoid intense lifting or cardio.”

Being flexible when needed and understanding how doing so will not derail a long term program is the mark of any experienced lifter.

Your Diet, Sleep, and Stress Management Must Be on Point

As you may have guessed by now, recovery between sessions is one of the biggest challenges when training every day. 

Dr. Dayananda explains:

“Rest days are critical for allowing your body to replenish energy stores, repair muscle tissue, and adapt to the stress exercise puts on us. Without resting sufficiently, your muscles may not have the chance to grow stronger, and you may experience diminishing returns on your efforts.”

She continues:

“Incorporating rest days into your fitness schedule is a science-informed strategy for optimizing performance, benefitting progress and gains, and preventing burnout. Opt for a balanced approach that includes both high-intensity workouts and sufficient rest periods to support long-term progress and overall well-being. Remember, fitness is a gradual journey, and resting empowers your body to recover and is key to achieving sustainable results.”

You must control the other variables of your life (diet, sleep, work, family, and lifestyle stressors) or at least recognize them and adapt your training when needed. Otherwise, you MAY find yourself run down and missing multiple days or weeks of good workouts. 

Registered Dietitian, Trista Best, also emphasizes the importance of proper nutrition and hydration:

“Training physically seven days a week places significant demands on the body, requiring adjustments to one’s diet to support energy levels and meet nutrient needs adequately. Increased physical activity increases calorie expenditure, necessitating a higher intake of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to fuel workouts and support muscle recovery. Proper hydration becomes crucial to maintain optimal performance and prevent dehydration.”

Who Should/Shouldn’t Train 7 Days Per Week

who shouldn’t train 7 days per week

Seven-day workout plans can be beneficial for some individuals, and completely derailing for others. Because this type of workout plan requires so much energy and focus inside the gym, and attention to recovery outside the gym, only the most dedicated and experienced lifters should attempt it. 

If you are a lifter who has already been training for more than 6 months consecutively, and have adjusted well to 5-6 day hard training splits, you may benefit from adding one additional training day and devoting it to an area you want to place more emphasis.  

This can be thought of as a short-term approach. Do it for 6-8 weeks and then go back to a 5-6 day split to determine if the added day provided a long-term benefit and did not impact recovery or progress.

If you are someone who has not trained for more than 6 months following a 5-6 day hard training split, then a 7-day workout plan is not recommended until you gain more experience training in higher volumes. 

Mistakes To Avoid On the 7-Day Workout Plan

Below are a few of the most common mistakes that can be made when training 7 days a week and ones you should avoid when doing a 7-day workout plan.

Training Too Hard on a Given Day

This is something that’s very common, even when you’re not training 7 days a week. 

A workout program is a systematic, long-term approach to training. Each workout is designed to complement the next. Therefore, if you go off the program or get overzealous on a single day and derail the next, you undermine the entire program. 

In a 7-day workout plan, this issue is even more important because there is no margin for error and no days that you can take off as a rest day to recoup.

Training a Muscle Too Frequently

With a well-thought-out training split, you should not have too much of an issue here. However, it’s still something that comes up during high-frequency training programs. 

Most major muscle groups can be trained 2-3 days a week, with smaller muscle groups like arms and abs trained 2-4 times a week. The more times a week you train a muscle, the lower the total number of sets you need to do on a given day.

Ignoring Joint Pains or Discomfort

This is something that is part of every program, however when training every day of the week, it becomes very important. Whenever you get nagging joint pain or even slight discomfort, you need to pay attention to it and listen to the body. 

Training 7 days a week leaves very little margin for error and if ignored could leave you sidelined for days, if not weeks. In that case, you’re better off training 4-6 days a week instead of 7.

Not Recovering Enough

This last one is an obvious one, as all of these other issues come strictly from under recovery (and potentially poor programming). If you are not recovering, you will notice more soreness, stiffness, and lower energy as the weeks progress. 

You may even find that you are not progressing or able to do the same loads with the same relative intensity as prior weeks. If this is the case, you are not recovering properly, and need to focus on eating better, staying hydrated, and sleeping more. If this does not fix it, then I recommend you do not do a 7-day workout plan.

Looking for a workout program? Try using the Fitbod App, which will design your program based on your logged training data and goals. The workouts will adapt automatically to your levels of recovery and rate of progress. With over 600 movements and exercises videos, you can be sure to perform the movements correctly for optimal results. Take the guesswork out of your workouts. Try Fitbod for free.

About The Author

Mike Dewar

Mike holds a Master’s in Exercise Physiology and a Bachelor’s in Exercise Science. He’s a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), USA Weightlifting Advanced Coach, and has over 10+ years of experience working with collegiate athletes, national level lifters, and beginners alike. Mike is Founder of J2FIT Strength and Conditioning, a growing global training company with gyms in New York City, Cincinnati, and online offering personal training, online custom coaching programs.

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