The honest answer depends on what you are trying to get, and the two goals pull in different directions.
If you want to get better at the sport
Two sessions a week, minimum.
Motor skills consolidate between sessions, but only if the gap is short enough. A seven-day gap means each session starts by recovering ground; a three or four-day gap means each one starts from where the last finished.
This is why two sessions a week produces far more than twice the improvement of one. It is not a linear scale.
Three is better than two. Four starts to be limited by recovery rather than by learning, unless you are young and already fit.
If you want to get fitter
Three sessions a week, of anything, is the point at which people reliably notice a change — in sleep first, then in resting heart rate, then in how they feel climbing stairs.
One session a week is not useless. It is just not going to change your fitness, and expecting it to is how people conclude that sport does not work for them.
If you want to keep the habit
One fixed session a week beats three unfixed ones.
This is the thing nobody says. A person who plays every Tuesday at eight for a year plays fifty times. A person who intends to play three times a week and books ad hoc plays about thirty times, mostly in the first two months.
If you can only commit to one, commit properly and put it in the calendar.
The realistic pattern for most working adults
- One fixed weekday evening — this is the session that actually happens
- One weekend session — more social, longer, less rushed
- A third slot when the week allows — treated as a bonus rather than an obligation
That averages between two and three, keeps the habit anchored to two reliable slots, and does not collapse when a week goes badly.
Recovery
If you are over thirty-five and starting from little exercise, do not begin at four sessions. Tendons adapt far more slowly than muscles and lungs, and the gap between what you feel able to do and what your Achilles is ready for is where injuries live.
Build up over six weeks. It is slower and it is the only approach that does not end in a month off.
Sessions and packs
At KGB, entitlement is counted in sessions rather than visits, so half an hour costs half a session. That makes a short weekday game genuinely worth booking — it does not cost the same as a full evening.