How long should a workout be?
Is two hours in the gym too much? In many cases, one and a half to two hours is quite reasonable and I suppose that it depends what you are doing. If you’re training with a partner, that will definitely slow things down. I used to train with a partner and the exact same workout that I do today used to take 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete. On my own, I can get the job done in 1 hour 20 minutes.
But you can do too much. If you’re feeling tired a lot, you could be over training or you could be lacking some nutrients in your diet. Overtraining is just as bad as not working out at all and not consuming a nutrient dense diet is a big mistake!
What are your intentions?
Are you planning to do an all-over body workout or are you doing a split routine? Clearly an all-over body routine will take longer, while a split routine could take less time – though advanced split routines could involve more exercises!
When you visit the gym, you should allow time for an adequate warm up and even a cool down at the end. Personally, I like to add thirty minutes of cardio work at the end of every workout and it’s nothing for me to spend thirty minutes walking fast on a treadmill. Should I count this thirty minutes toward my workout total time? I’m not so sure.
What is the timing of a workout?
To keep things simple, let us suppose that you are doing three exercises per body part, it will probably take ten minutes to perform four sets of ten reps for any given exercise. So ten minutes multiplied by three exercises (one body part) is thirty minutes per body part. Therefore, if you’re doing chest, shoulders and triceps on one of your split days, the entire thing could take around one hour and thirty minutes. Factor in a fifteen minute warm up with stretching and a fifteen minute warm down, that would pretty much add up to two hours.
If you’re doing an all-over body routine, you might struggle to fit in three exercises, so let’s suppose that you are doing two exercises per body part. Well, two times ten minutes is twenty minutes per body part and assuming that you’re doing chest, back, shoulders, arms and legs – all on the same day, one and a half hours is quite easily eaten up very quickly. In actual fact, this full-body routine is my favourite and my best finishing time stands at one hour and twenty minutes. As you can imagine, this is a very intense workout and I only allow a forty second rest in between sets. I will point out here that I do thirty minutes of cardio at the end of all of my workouts, so if I add that to my one hour and thirty minutes, that takes me up to exactly two hours – it depends upon which way you look at it.
A Final Word
Finally, I would say that two hours is fine, but if you can fit your workout into one and a half hours (whilst training with more intensity), you’re bound to see even better results. As I always say to my students – Don’t count the time, but make the time count!
Remember, if you’re not sure, don’t be afraid to ask an expert – and if you’re lucky enough to be a member of Gym 21, our coaches are always on hand to advise you.
In this short video, Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about repping out until failure.
