Lifting for a few min thru-ought the day?

rapat

My question is simply:
What are the upsides and downsides of spreading a lifting session over 8 hours instead of doing it all within 30 minutes?
It seems to me the downside is you are losing some endurance training. But you're also nearly fully recovered by the time you do the next few sets, so you should be able to get in more reps overall -- so hopefully that leads to more muscle gain or calories burned?
Is there any negative effect on muscle recovery/breakdown?

Background:
I've been doing P90x for the past 2.5 weeks (I'm on phase 1).

My knee has been feeling a bit weak -- in part due to all the impact from the P90x dvds (it was injured a few years ago and it gets stressed out easier than my healthy knee) -- so I've been skipping the running in place / jumping portions of the warmup and skipping the pylometrics/kenpo for the past 5 days until it gets better.

Anyways, I've got alot of free time at work, and there's a work gym 150 feet away from my desk. So this week I've been doing the weight exercises in there -- 1-3 exercises/sets at a time, then going back to my desk, then back to the gym 30 minutes later, etc

Game8

You can do this and still achieve muscle hypertrophy, but the downside is that you'll have to warm up before each set or risk injury. And if you don't warm up properly, you'll be losing even more endurance.

rapat

Thanks for the reply. I haven't been warming up -- that makes it a more difficult to do the few minutes at a time, unless I do 10 minutes at a time ,then warming up for 2 minutes won't be as bad.

What do you mean by:
And if you don't warm up properly, you'll be losing even more endurance.

Game8

Thanks for the reply. I haven't been warming up -- that makes it a more difficult to do the few minutes at a time, unless I do 10 minutes at a time ,then warming up for 2 minutes won't be as bad.

What do you mean by:
And if you don't warm up properly, you'll be losing even more endurance.

If you over do it on the warm up, you'll be eating into your muscle glycogen and lose endurance. But please make sure to warm up properly (your joints AND muscles), and when you start your sets, keep your rep range between 8 - 12 (as heavy as you can without sacrificing good form)

kimothy38

I never skip warm up or cool down. My muscles definitely perform better when they're properly warmed up. Not stretching will also cause issues.