How Carrie Underwood Stays in Great Shape With One or Two Workouts a Week
Carrie Underwood has become something of a celebrity fitness icon over the past few years—she launched her CALIA by Carrie Underwood fitness collection in 2015, and her killer leg workouts from trainer Erin Oprea are a thing of lore. So it might come as a bit of surprise that even though fitness is a big part of Underwood's life, these days, she sometimes only fits in one or two workouts a week.
"I used to work out six days a week, but now that's a little rare," Underwood told E!. "Sometimes it's one or two times a week and that just kind of has to be OK. And it is OK because whatever I'm doing that's keeping me out of the gym is important." Just like anyone, spending time with her family, working on her professional goals, and just having fun wins out over workouts sometimes, and that's what balance is about.
For Underwood, though, scaling back on her rigorous workout schedule doesn't necessarily mean losing out on the results she's worked hard for. While going from six days of working out a week to just one or two may sound like a big step down, two days of training a week can absolutely be enough to maintain muscle mass, exercise physiologist Tom Holland, C.S.C.S., tells SELF. And that's particularly true when you've reached a high fitness level like Underwood.
Here's why: Spending years training consistently like Underwood means you've not only developed your muscles themselves, but also your neuromuscular connections, or the signals your brain sends to your muscle fibers to contract (which is how they grow). "The brain is literally connecting to the muscle in the movements you're doing and making those movements more effective," explains Holland. Stronger signals mean more muscle engagement, which experts suggest comes from either recruiting more muscle fibers or getting those fibers to fire more quickly and efficiently.
Once you've developed these pathways and reached your strength goals by putting them to work (which takes a different amount of time for everyone), you can actually get away with doing less without sacrificing your results. "The muscle memory effect is just incredible once you establish those connections," says Holland. He says two to three 20-minute training sessions a week where you're hitting all of your major muscle groups at least once and including compound exercises (which target multiple muscle groups at once, like squats and push-ups) is enough to prevent losing any significant muscle mass.
Even though muscle mass is more resilient than you might think, though, your muscle fibers will start to decrease in size if you don't train them at all, explains Holland. That said, this detraining doesn't happen anywhere near overnight—research suggests that you won't see a significant difference in muscle fibers even after four weeks of inactivity, so there's no need to freak out if you miss a couple weeks of workouts (it happens).
Aerobic fitness, on the other hand, is a different story—even for super-fit people, cardiovascular ability can go down in just a couple of weeks of inactivity. But since it's quick to lose, it's also relatively easy to build it back up within a few weeks, says Holland (especially if you were in great shape before).
It's also worth noting that nutrition plays a big role in maintaining your muscle mass, says Holland. You still need to make healthy nutrition choices, particularly when it comes to getting enough protein, which is the nutrient that acts as the "building block" for muscles.
Ultimately, even if you're not in a maintenance phase like Underwood, how often you work out comes down to what you can be consistent with, says Holland. And if that's two days a week sometimes, that's totally fine. "If you're doing two full-body workouts twice a week and you're doing compound movements for 40, 50, or 60 minutes, you can totally get away with that," says Holland. If you're working toward a certain goal, like a 200-pound deadlift or a 5K race, you might need to put in more time. But for general health, just do as much as you can. A pace you can be consistent with is more important than struggling to keep up with a five-day plan and then falling off the wagon completely, stresses Holland.
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