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Workout Duration

P

PowerBuilder

New member
I thought i'd post this question here since it's possibly the most appropariate place to park it. i could've put it in the strength training area, but i'm not sure if it would be the right spot.

Ever since Adam was a boy (you guys know what that saying means...yeah?)...ok maybe not that long, but for a long time now, it's been promoted that training sessions should last between 45 minutes & an hour. Somewhat as dogma. The basis of this argeument is that if sessions were to go over this magical time zone, a catabolic hormone cortisol is created, which means game over for athletes who are wanting to become bigger, stronger, faster or whatever goal.


With what we know about nutrition & exercise science, surely we must be able to have longer training sessions, simply by sucking on a watered down powerade for some simple carbs, or for the keto guys & girls, some peanut butter, to combat of the production of cortisol. I'm not suggesting making training sessions go for 3-4 hours...at my age there's not many things i wanna do for 4 hours straight without a break. I'm just wondering if we as serious athletes could extend our training sessions by simply increasing a peri-training (intra training session) meal.

I'm interested to hear what the experienced guys & girls have to say, as well as the not so experienced ones have to say. Cheers
 
My training sessions last from 1.5 to 3 hours. My saturday sessions at PTC are 2.5 hours minimum.

Plenty of food and usually a coffee before I lift, protein and dextrose straight after, big meal within an hour of that.
 
We definitely have enough energy stored to train for longer than 45-60 mins. In my expereince it comes down to intensity, generally the higher the intensity the shorter the training session will be.

I don't think cortisol has to be feared. Cortisol increases catabolism which is going to metabolise fat and muscle. Fat for energy, muscle for aminos. If you supplement with aminos during your workout you're going to negate the impact cortisol has on muscle tissue. As Milos Sarcev puts it, if you're trying to build an extenstion on a house, why pull down the wall you want to extend on and rebuild it again, why not just add the extension. He highly recommends aminos duing a workout.

Leading in to a comp I tend to increase volume quite a bit and sessions can go close to 100 mins. Having the right pre, during and post workout nutrition really makes this achievable with minimal negative impact.
 
NPR said:
My training sessions last from 1.5 to 3 hours. My saturday sessions at PTC are 2.5 hours minimum.
Click to expand...
In the other thread you said you had long rest breaks, if you were to stick to strict 2-3 min how long would it take?
 
the things you are physically able to do two minutes after 155kg 20 rep squats would probably be fairly pointless... seems like a pointless question to me.
 
Most rest periods would be about 2-3 mins. What takes me longer is heavy squats, deadlifts or any overload work. I also do a few warm up sets.

Here is a squat workout from 2 weeks ago. It took me close to an hour from start to finish. First few sets would have been around 1-2 mins rest, but from 160 up it would have been 3-5. All reps on 180 were a max effort. I failed the next rep so I was pretty juiced after each set, I needed a decent rest.

Bar x 20
60 x 10
100 x 5
140 x 5
160 x 5
170 x 5
180 x 4
180 x 3
180 x 3
180 x 2
180 x 1
140 x 10

I then went on and did around 6 sets of close grip bench, the same of weighted chins and dips (around 2 mins rest per set) then finished off with some gay arm work (No rest, always do arm work as a superset).

All in all it was about a 2 hour session.
 
for me the duration comes down to other influences - 2 little kids, and the need to get their dinner, bath and into bed done by a certain time.

if i had no restraints i'd happily / prefer to train for 1.5 - 2 hours.
 
The fact is the longer we work the less intense or intensity of work does become less.

If you are pushed for time as most of us are it would seem shorter more high intense work would seem most efficient.

If your thing is to work for longer than one hour good for you, he'll if you could work for three hours do it.
There is no way I could do that it would drive me nuts.

I would say that most if not all on here are lifting hobbyists.

As I've said before you cannot make chicken soup out of chicken poo.
 
To answer the question - yes you can just eat some carbs to counteract the cortisol production in your body. Cortisol is released when your glucose levels drop, so if you can keep them up then it will delay the cortisol production process.
 
For me personally if any workout takes
more than 60min's it a WASTE of my TIME!

I want the least amount of time spent for
maximum benefit. Unless you are training for
an ultra marathon or something crazy like that!

Why waste my time in a gym when I can be 'out in
the world'...???!!!

Thanks
Devante.
 
I'm looking to get some big consistent gains over the next 12 months doing an abbreviated training program.
Just 2 workouts a week not exceeding 60 mins.

With my very busy worklife and less than average recovery abilities, I feel this is the only option for me to be able to train and gain long term.

This is inspired by recently re-reading Beyond Brawn by Stuart McRobert.
Progressive poundages with strict form will produce the results.
 
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