How Long Should a Workout Be?

[Flytch]

Yeah, I'm on something of a thread rampage this week

In your experiences, how short can a workout be while still being effective? I did my first bout of 5x5 stronglifts yesterday and the whole thing took maybe 30/35 minutes including ten minutes on the cross trainer as a warm-up. This felt pretty short at the time despite being fairly intense. I compensated by doing some rowing and additional free weights which just made the whole thing feel a bit disjointed.

Have any of you had similar experiences, or used the stronglifts 5x5 program?

Ben

[SpacemanSpiff]

Ben:

As long as it takes to produce the desired adaptive or conditioning response. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it! I've seen people get absolutely DESTROYED by a correctly done 15 minutes body-by-science style workout to the point where their legs are so shot they can't walk.

[andygates]

SL workouts are quite short; they get a bit longer once you need more rest between sets and a couple of warm-up sets. Under an hour is very standard.

I think a Crossfit "for time" workout probably has the potential to be the shortest thing ever. On the flipside, if you were marathon running, a 3h run would be vanilla. Houses for courses .

[Knightwatch]

For standard strength straining, under an hour is very appropriate. As Andygates said, they'll get longer as you need more warmup sets to ramp up, and rest between working sets.

And yeah, trust me, this is as much of a workout as this guy needed that day:

Under two minutes.

It's all about intensity.

[aj_rock]

Yeah, your workouts will not reach any great length until you get a couple years in. 30 minutes sounds about right.

[BrendanTownsend]

As Knightwatch stated, under an hour is an appropriate amount of time for standard strength training. But, as far as in general, as the others have stated - it all depends entirely on the intensity of the workout. For instance, if you're doing a tabata workout you can easily smoke yourself in four minutes.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

To add on to everyone else, I'm also doing stronglifts and like you am in the early stages with lighter weights. I absolutely fly through it because a) I only do 1 warm up set before each exercise and I only need about 60 seconds rest between sets (I have to force myself to take it). As you get into heavier weights you'll be doing 3-5 warm up sets as you increment the weight from about 50% of you lift to 100%, which almost doubles the amounts of sets you're doing. Also, rest time between work sets will increase to up to 3-5 minutes depending on the workout. All this means is that once you get to heavier weights, even though you'll be doing the same amount of work sets, all the extra stuff that comes with them will make you take more than double the time you currently take.

For the TLDR summary: Enjoy the short sessions while they last, a year or so down the line, they won't be so short.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

For standard strength straining, under an hour is very appropriate. As Andygates said, they'll get longer as you need more warmup sets to ramp up, and rest between working sets.

And yeah, trust me, this is as much of a workout as this guy needed that day:

I saw a Crossift Montclair shirt there. These guys must be nuts, I know I saw multiple contestants on ESPN during the nationals from that gym.

edit: i can not do the typing good.

[js290]

Ben:

As long as it takes to produce the desired adaptive or conditioning response. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it! I've seen people get absolutely DESTROYED by a correctly done 15 minutes body-by-science style workout to the point where their legs are so shot they can't walk.

I think it was Georg Hackenschmidt that took a cold shower before working out and worked out until he was dry.

http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?p=442

http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?p=446

[WizardTrip]

I'm not doing 5x5 stronglifts, but my workouts are ~45mins. I'm working a beginner dumbbell full body workout (M/W/F) that includes 6 exercises per day, 3 sets, and 8-12 reps each set on average. I do 60 second rests in between sets.