The squat is widely recognized as a foundational compound movement, engaging a large amount of muscle mass across the lower body and core. Many individuals look for the most time-efficient way to incorporate it into a busy schedule. The core question is whether performing this complex exercise only once per week can generate meaningful progress. Relying on a single weekly session places significant demands on both the session’s structure and the body’s subsequent recovery. The effectiveness of this low-frequency approach depends heavily on how the single workout is executed and what the individual’s specific fitness goals are.
The Biological Role of Training Frequency
The adaptive response to resistance training is governed by muscle protein synthesis (MPS). After a challenging workout, the rate of MPS elevates significantly, signaling the body to repair and build new muscle tissue. This elevated state is transient, peaking around 24 hours post-exercise and rapidly returning to baseline levels within 36 to 48 hours.
Training the squat once every seven days means the lower body receives this stimulus for less than two full days. Following this short anabolic window, the muscles go without a new stimulus for five to six days. Optimal muscle growth requires re-stimulating the muscle once the MPS rate has returned to normal, maximizing the total time spent in an elevated anabolic state.
This prolonged gap can limit continued adaptation, especially for experienced lifters. While a single weekly set performed with high intensity can induce initial strength gains (the Minimum Effective Dose), two or three sessions per week are generally more effective for maximizing strength and size. Restricting frequency to one session risks a detraining effect and stalled progress.
Optimizing Volume and Intensity in a Single Session
Since training frequency is fixed at once per week, the single session must be engineered to deliver a maximal stimulus to compensate for the lack of repetition. This requires careful attention to both the total volume and the intensity of the work performed. Volume is typically measured by the number of hard, or “working,” sets completed for a muscle group per week.
For hypertrophy, research suggests a weekly volume threshold often falls in the range of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group. While cramming this entire volume into one session is possible, the effectiveness of later sets diminishes due to accumulated fatigue. Evidence indicates that a practical ceiling for highly productive sets in a single session is often around six to eight hard sets per muscle group.
To ensure these limited sets are effective, intensity must be maximized, meaning each set should be taken close to, or sometimes even to, muscular failure. This level of effort is commonly quantified using the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), with sets targeting an RPE of 8 to 10. An RPE of 8 means the lifter has approximately two repetitions left in reserve, whereas an RPE of 10 is absolute failure.
The high-intensity, high-volume nature of this singular weekly session demands extended rest periods between sets, typically two to five minutes, to maintain performance and intensity across the entire session. Focusing the initial part of the workout on heavy, low-repetition squat variations (e.g., three to five reps) is beneficial for strength development. This can be followed by higher-repetition sets (e.g., six to twelve reps) or a different squat variation to accumulate the necessary total volume.
Matching Frequency to Fitness Objectives
The answer to whether squatting once per week is enough depends entirely on the lifter’s experience level and primary objective. For individuals seeking to maintain existing muscle mass and strength, a single weekly session is generally sufficient. Studies show that performing one heavy session every seven days can effectively preserve gains made during periods of higher training frequency, provided the intensity remains high.
For optimal muscle growth (hypertrophy), training the squat just once a week is suboptimal. Spreading the total weekly volume across two or three sessions is superior for muscle gain because it allows the lifter to activate the muscle protein synthesis pathway more frequently. This approach results in a greater cumulative anabolic state over the course of the week.
Novice lifters, those new to resistance training, can often achieve initial strength and size gains even with one weekly session due to their high responsiveness to a new stimulus. For the advanced lifter, however, a single weekly session is unlikely to drive significant strength progression. Continued adaptation requires a higher frequency, typically two to three sessions per week, to apply consistent progressive overload.