Q: Why is it when I did one whole body weight training once a week I struggled. As soon as I added one extra session in I got my strength back that I had lost and no longer struggled to lift the weights. I know you reccommend at least two hours a week - but if someone cannot do that surely something is better than nothing. I have a program of Hiit and weight trining that I do from Friday to Sunday - ie when I do not have to work or rush and it really works for me. Thanks in advance - good to see your site back

A: Yes, what you experienced is not uncommon. Much of our strength lies not in our muscles but in our nervous system. The truth is we all have far more muscle potential than we ever realize. The reason is that what we think of as one muscle such as a bicep or a quadricep is actually tens of thousands of individual muscle fibers, each of which is activated by its own nerve connection. The only way we can get maximal power out of one muscle is if all of its individual fibers are activated simultaneously by the nervous system -- except nobody's nervous system is capable of firing off all those fibers at exactly the same time. What we can do however is train our nervous system to fire off fibers more in unison -- this is where frequent training comes in. Optimizing nervous system training is a tricky subject but in virtually all cases best results come from training more than once a week. So the strength loss you are experiencing when training only once a week is your nervous system 'forgetting' how to do -- called 'detraining' -- that exercise.

That doesn't mean that training just once a week is useless, of course. It's still far better than not exercising at all and you'll still be able to burn fat, build muscle, and increase strength. It's just that your progress won't be as fast as if you could put in 2 or more sessions per week.