How Long Should I Exercise For? (01/10/2024)

If your goal this year is to get fitter for an adventure, burn fat to fit into your favorite jeans or add muscle to feel more confident and be stronger overall, how long does your training session need to be?

“It depends” is an answer that doesn’t give enough insight because each goal depends on the person, their schedule, and what exactly they’re training for.

The average person who wants to improve their general physical preparedness as well as their overall health can accomplish a lot in a 60-minute training session. There is no explicit research that proves 60-minutes is the sweet spot for exercise. Some franchise gym models thrive on a 30-minute time block while others can extend their training programs from 90-120 minutes.

A majority of our sessions at ELEVATE Strength & Performance are scheduled over an hour because our work is focused on an adult population where the warm up is critical for getting the body ready. Add in power, strength and metabolic conditioning, and you packed in everything you need in 60-minutes.

You’re not exercising throughout the 60-minutes. There is down time to rest between exercises and transition from one part of the training session to the other. You’re going to need drink breaks too.

There are other methods of training that we love, like working with kettlebells in the hard style fashion that RKC and StrongFirst promote, that can also deliver everything you need in 15-30 minutes (warm up and cool down not included). There is a prerequisite of skill needed to be able to dive into this style of strength and conditioning.

If you’re a runner or endurance athlete, you’re likely going to spend more time preparing for your event and sport to build up your endurance.

If you are a powerlifter, you will need to rest for a greater period of time than you work (5-10 minute between sets) due to the intensity and demands on your body and what it needs to recover. Some of these programs can take hours.

You may also only have 5-15 minutes and a brisk walk, some kettlebell swings or fan bike intervals will do the trick for the time you have available.

Whatever your goals are and whatever direction you’re taking your training in, give yourself adequate time to warm up properly, do enough work so you can recover and repeat that effort in a day or two.

If you don’t work hard enough, you won’t be wasting your time because “movement is medicine,” but you’ll likely not achieve your desired results.

On the flip side, if you over-exert most sessions, your body will respond negatively and you’ll be tapping out because you’re not recovering enough and limiting your readiness for your upcoming session. This can also lead to injury or needing additional rest days. If you have time sensitive goals, that’s not an expense you can afford.

If you plan the appropriate amount of work in the appropriate time frame, you’ll challenge yourself enough where you’ll experience positive outcomes and you’ll be able to repeat those efforts. This skill is being able to respond to exercise by adapting to imposed demands.

What could happen?

Strength gained ✅

Muscle gained ✅

Fat-loss ✅

Improved endurance ✅

Confidence ✅

Goal Achieved ✅

It’s hard to know what to do if you lack training experience and you’re unsure how much work you need to do or how long you need to work for. Most people start off with either too little or too much and have the setbacks mentioned above.

Your best option, if you’re new to training, is hiring a fitness coach who can guide you by designing a personalized program based on your goals, skills, health and movement history, while also considering your schedule.

Your fitness coach can help you improve your technique, monitor your results, and ensure compliance and consistency to keep you on the right track.

Walking for 30 minutes has incredible benefits to your mental health and is better than not moving at all, but it’s not going to help you improve your Beer Games 5K run.

Push yourself to do intervals of 100 yards sprints with at a 1:5 work to rest ratio, building up your run distance intervals and you’re likely going to break your 5K best time.

Being comfortable on an Incline Push Up for 3 sets of 5 reps is going to make you good at doing 3 sets of 5 reps but isn’t going to help you develop your Push Up so you can do it with strict form from the floor.

It’s not always about the amount of time you train for. Rather, it’s the intensity and intent of your training that could have the greatest impact. 

There are many important variables from personal goals to skill level to available equipment to intensity, etc.

Progress is made working at the correct intensity, for an amount of time, with the correct amount of recovery between.

People like structure and like to go into a gym like ELEVATE because of the coaching, community and structure. The warm up is based on the movements that day and the conditioning hits all the targets for energy system development.

The 60-minutes is not the magic.

It’s the planned work and the intent behind the work that delivers the results. We’re aiming for effectiveness delivering everything an active adult wants and needs to improve their lifestyle.

If you’re interested in learning more about ELEVATE Strength & Performance and how we have helped people with no exercise experience to competitive adults reaching their goals, click the link below and schedule your Free Intro ASAP.