Far too often when people who workout stop seeing positive improvement in there body, they result to the idea that “more is better.” In my earlier years, I too fell victim to this philosophy. I was in the gym over two hours at a time doing an absurd amount of exercises and repetitions only to see no kind of results. Unfortunately this continued for quite a while, but it doesn’t have to with you!

The ACSM recommends 30-60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (five days per week), or 20-60 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise (three days per week). They continue to recommend two to four sets of each exercise, and 8-12 repetitions to help adults improve strength and power.

I know what you are thinking though. If you go by the philosophy of progression, where you need to increase your intensity regularly to achieve new gains, then you should increase the amount you do, right? Wrong, you can receive the same gains by increasing your resistance (the weight you are lifting). Now all the women are probably in an uproar because they don’t want to increase their weight cause they don’t want to get big and bulky. First off, as a female it’s naturally difficult to become “bulky” without some kind of drug use. Secondly, that 3 lb dumbbell you’re swinging around is better served as a paper weight. Unless you are a 60 year old women or limited physically somehow, it is not benefiting you.

You also need to give your body time to repair. If you are doing biceps three times a week because you want to get them bigger, you need to rethink your workout. When you lift weights, you are essentially creating tears in the muscle tissue. These tears need time to repair and can lead to delayed onset pain. Failure to give proper rest time can result in over training. According to the ACSM “Excessive volume or intensity may produce less than optimal results, and may actually create a situation where performance is impaired. If physical performance is depressed for extended periods of time, and requires long recovery periods, overtraining has occurred.”

Overall, everyone is different, and what it comes down to is finding what works best for you! If you want to go to the gym for three hours so be it, guaranteed you could probably be doing something much more beneficial in that time.

-Scott