How long do you lift for?

Hello,

So I want to start putting more focus into lifting. I do some stuff at the gym- leg press, thigh press, pull-down lap bar (i think that's what it's called) and some free weights. I usually do 5 sets of 10 reps of all of those things. It doesn't really take me that long to do maybe 20 minutes. I'm just curious to know if I should be doing more. I guess I'm comparing it to my dvd workouts that are 30-45 minutes. I love to work-out and do it for 2 hours a day sometimes. I don't want to hurt myself and lift too much. I'm just curious to know what others are doing. Thanks.

Replies

  • FindingAmy77
    FindingAmy77 Posts: 1,268 Member
    to make my workouts more effective in less time I started doing circuits of upper and lower combined. I do two to three sets with some jogging for five to ten minutes on the tredmill in between each set. I just looked up circuit training on youtube (where I get most of my training advice) and thought it looked good to me and started it at the gym. I love it and will never go back to the normal wait in between each set kind of working out again. I would say warm up and cool down takes ten minutes each, and 8 machines takes about twenty to thirty minutes to complete so lets say one full circuit is around 40-50 minutes. Sometimes that is all I do unless I have more time to kill. IF I am not on a time crunch that day, when I finish my first full circuit I do a jog for five to ten mintues and go do my second circuit. I think this is most time effective and keeps you moving the entire time.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    My lifting session takes me about 50 - 60 minutes depending on whether or not I have to wait for any equipment.

    You're going to get a lot more benefit for your time if you do an actual program vs willy nilly doing your own thing. It takes a great deal of knowledge to program a quality routine that is going to render results. Just going in and doing some lat pulls and arm curls or whatever for 20 minutes is just slightly better than completely wasting your time.

    Look into a program like Strong Curves or New Rules of Lifting for Women (I like the whole New Rules series myself). New Rules of Lifting for Life is also good and geared more towards the 40+ crowd with little to no lifting experience and individuals who may have physical restrictions requiring substitution movements for more traditional lifting movements. New Rules Supercharged is also excellent, but I wouldn't recommend it necessarily for a beginner as the program isn't laid out for you...you get templates to work with and a laundry list of movements that fulfill the programming in the various templates which allows you to essentially write your own routine within the context of proper programming.

    Proper programming is pretty essential to getting the results you want with lifting/resistance work.
  • KseRz
    KseRz Posts: 980 Member
    It's good to get input from others, but you're going to receive a myriad or responses all of which vary due to each persons lifestyle, goals and available time they have and priorities they place on weight training. The question you should ask yourself is how much time do YOU have and/or want to spend lifting.

    From there, then you could begin modifying and adapting your weight training program off of that. You could also perform a lifting session of 60 minutes; one of 45 minutes; and one of 30 minutes that is the same exact routine, however there will be sacrifices (maybe sacrifice is a bad word) or rather pros and cons for longer duration vs shorter duration but the same overall work/output.

    I am providing a link for you to check out. In the article itself you can see that this topic is heavily debated (amount of sets and reps to maximize results).
    http://www.simplyshredded.com/strong-science-research-on-the-ideal-rep-range-number-of-sets-to-maximize-results.html

    Each person has different goals, abilities and preferences. If it were me I would starting with figuring out how much time I can devote to weight training and then try and select the exercises (sets and reps) that will be the best for me. Maybe I have extra time left over afterward? Maybe I wont get the entire workout in during that time? Its hard to tell though until youre actually executing. Especially if you plan on squatting that day and everyone decides to use the squat rack to do curls in. Then that of course throws everything out the window. :wink: