How long is the right time to exercise in the gym?

For ordinary healthy fitness enthusiasts, it is most cost-effective to limit the effective training time in the gym to 45-90 minutes each time, without being out of breath or overloading the body.

To be honest, I also suffered from "duration anxiety" when I first applied for the card. I always felt that if I didn't stay for two hours, I didn't spend enough money. Between sets, I would play short videos and gossip with my acquaintances. It took me two and a half hours to leave. I was so tired after training that I even climbed the stairs. I didn’t have the energy to do the ladder, and I was still groggy when I went to work the next day. I later calculated the effective training time and found that it was only 40 minutes when I hit the full limit. It was not as effective as the 50 minutes of training with my watch on my hands. During that period, the weight of the bench press increased faster than in the previous three months.

There is quite a quarrel about this topic on the Internet now. Some people say that training for less than 1 hour is equivalent to wasting training, while others claim that 20 minutes of efficient training is enough. In fact, these are too extreme. Think about it, for ordinary fitness enthusiasts, it takes about 10 minutes to warm up and activate. If there are only 10 minutes left to practice formal movements, you can’t even touch the stimulation threshold of the muscle groups. At most, you can move your muscles and bones, but you can’t achieve the effect of building muscle or burning fat at all. ； But if you exercise hard for a long time and stay too long, your cortisol will rise. Not only will you lose strength later in the exercise and your movements will become deformed and easily injured, but it will also consume muscles, which is not worth the gain.

Let’s just talk about most office workers who work from 9 to 5. After get off work, they rush to the gym with a bag in their arms. They change clothes for 5 minutes, warm up for 10 minutes, and the formal training is controlled to about 40 minutes, whether it is a set of chest exercises such as presses, clips, and flyes, or leg exercises such as squats, deadlifts, and walking lunges. During the whole process, the intervals between sets were kept at 1-2 minutes, just enough to complete the capacity of the training plan. At the end, I spent another 5 minutes stretching and relaxing, taking a shower, changing clothes, and leaving. It was only a little over 1 hour, so I didn't delay going home for dinner, nor did I get overdrafted and affect my work the next day.

Of course, this does not mean that this length of time is a strict rule. If you are a bodybuilding enthusiast preparing for a competition, your training capacity will be large, and you will also supplement carbohydrates and supplement your chain in the middle. It is normal to train for 1.5 to 2 hours each time.； If you are just recovering from an injury, or if your physical condition is particularly bad that day, it is perfectly fine to practice for 30 minutes and then stop. It is better than enduring the injury. To put it bluntly, fitness is like simmering rice. If the heat is high enough, the rice will be enough, and it will be fragrant in 20 minutes. If the heat is too low and you forget to cover it, it will be cooked for an hour. The core thing is the effective density of training, not how long you spend in the gym.