Long Workouts

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  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    Is exercising for long periods of time a negative thing? I workout for 3 hours, sometimes up to 4 days a week.
    Lately I've been feeling symptoms of overreaching and I did slow down last week.
    Let me know your thoughts and experiences.
    Thank you!

    It's pretty excessive if you're not actually training for something. To boot, you also need to understand the relationship between all of that activity and your calorie requirements.

    Even when I'm training for an event like I am now, I will generally only have one session per week that goes beyond 60 minutes...that would be my long ride which will eventually get into the neighborhood of 4-5 hours on a Sunday morning. But I also eat around 4000 calories on those days and still lose weight. As it is, I'm eating around 3,000 calories on a given Sunday to accommodate those rides and I'm losing.

    If you're training hard you have to provide your body appropriate energy (calories) and nutrients for recovery and repair...otherwise your body is just ultimately going to go to waste.
  • lisalsd1
    lisalsd1 Posts: 1,520 Member
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    Yeah, I personally think 3 hours at a time is too much. I think you run the risk of just flat out burning out. It's not likely you are going to be able to keep up that pace for the long haul.

    I do weights + cardio 3 days a week...usually takes me about an hour to get through the weight...and then I do about 20-30 mins of cardio. I do 2 just cardio days, and that;s usually less than an hour those days.

    I think it would be better to split up your workouts and spread it over 6 days vs 3-4.
  • ucabucca
    ucabucca Posts: 606 Member
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    Bump
  • rosebette
    rosebette Posts: 1,659 Member
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    Well it sure is disappointing that I don't burn more calories walking in the cold. 60 to 90 is hardly worth it. I might as well just spend another 20 minutes doing cardio in the gym. I thought there was some kind of extra benefit. Also, I am wearing 2 pairs of gloves -- one knit and one pair suede lined with sheepskin. Of course, we've hand windchills so the actual temp is in the teens or single digits. I think I might have Raynaud's syndrome. My sister has it, too.
  • lj5109
    lj5109 Posts: 81 Member
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    Is exercising for long periods of time a negative thing? I workout for 3 hours, sometimes up to 4 days a week.
    Lately I've been feeling symptoms of overreaching and I did slow down last week.
    Let me know your thoughts and experiences.
    Thank you!

    It's pretty excessive if you're not actually training for something. To boot, you also need to understand the relationship between all of that activity and your calorie requirements.

    Even when I'm training for an event like I am now, I will generally only have one session per week that goes beyond 60 minutes...that would be my long ride which will eventually get into the neighborhood of 4-5 hours on a Sunday morning. But I also eat around 4000 calories on those days and still lose weight. As it is, I'm eating around 3,000 calories on a given Sunday to accommodate those rides and I'm losing.

    If you're training hard you have to provide your body appropriate energy (calories) and nutrients for recovery and repair...otherwise your body is just ultimately going to go to waste.

    You've said some of the same things others on this thread have said, but I really appreciate the way you put it. For some reason, the way you explained it makes more sense to me.
    I've heard a lot about eating the calories from workouts back and still losing, any idea why?
    As someone who's trying to lose a lot of weight, it just feels like taking a step back, mentally anyway.
  • No_Finish_Line
    No_Finish_Line Posts: 3,661 Member
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    if you feel like your doing too much, and your actually working out a lot (hr + or even less 6 days a week) then you probably are.

    you can back off for a month and then attack again
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    I've heard a lot about eating the calories from workouts back and still losing, any idea why?
    As someone who's trying to lose a lot of weight, it just feels like taking a step back, mentally anyway.

    MFP uses your BMR and your self-selected non-exercise daily life activity level (sedentary?) to calculate a maintenance figure.

    Maintenance - what you could eat and not lose or gain - obviously an estimate. No exercise included in it. Say 2000.

    Your weight loss goal is then subtracted from that, 1 lb weekly is 500 calories. So 2000 - 500 = 1500 eating goal non-exercise days.

    You workout and burn 600 calories and log it.
    Your maintenance is now 2000 + 600 = 2600.
    2600 - 500 same deficit = 2100 eating goal now.

    Same deficit in place. Exercise or not. In essence, you are eating back your exercise calories. In reality, your daily maintenance went up, and the same deficit leaves more to eat.

    Contrary to some popular beliefs, bigger deficit is not better, or else why not just stop eating until you have lost the weight?

    Besides, that 600 cal burn was merely for mechanical movement during the exercise. If it was a good workout, and why waste time and energy if it isn't, your body needs to make some repairs and recover from it - that takes extra energy.

    So keeping reasonable deficit, and for some, 1 lb weekly may not be reasonable, 2 lb is not for vast majority that select it because they want fast weight loss, is better for sustainable hopefully fat-only weight loss.
  • shq86
    shq86 Posts: 7
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    I was thinking of doing a 2 hour long (continuous cardio) workout but after reading comments by all the sifu here; I changed my mind. The longest be a 90min workout. I'm gonna stick to my formula of cardio day and strength training day. Perhaps gonna up with the weight training to break the plateau. Do not want to overtrain and eventually quit.

    Maybe you could break it up into different times in a day so that you won't workout 3 hours straight. I'm planning to do that.
    My weight loss prog:
    6 days a week
    Morning = 10-20min Low intensity/impact
    Alternate days:
    Evening; Cardio day = 20min HIIT+30min Full body workout
    Evening; Strength day = 60min Full Body Free weights+10-20min low/moderate cardio

    So total is approximately 1 and half hour of workout. At the end I do 20-30min stretching which I love most. Cured my back pain.
    *Note: I don't go to the gym cos I hate people looking at me especially when I try jogging on the treadmill)

    I tried Insanity thinking I can break plateau and in the second week I lost a huge amount-4.5kgs. I was ecstatic. I thought if I can lose like this every week I can lose weight faster. Problem arises on the third week. I fell sick. Had a fever and serious coughing. The cough so bad (it lasted for more than a month before I fully recovered) that I can't do Insanity because I could not breathe. And due to cough I felt twice fatigued at the end of the day. I realised my body is telling me to quit it. So now I decided to go back to my usual workout regime.

    You should listen to your body. It is telling you to stop. Try HIIT and do some weight supersets. Build some muscles. Use a measurement tape to measure your weight loss success. You can do it!
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
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    I was thinking of doing a 2 hour long workout but after reading comments from all the sifu here; I changed my mind. The longest be a 90min workout. I'm gonna stick to my formula of cardio day and strength training day. Perhaps gonna up with the weight training to break the plateau. Do not want to overtrain and eventually quit.

    The value really depends on what outcomes you're looking for. For me, long run days are reaching 3 hours with another session in the week now approaching 2 hours with the other sessions around an hour. If a long session doesn't suit your training goals, then thre seems litle point.
  • JoRocka
    JoRocka Posts: 17,525 Member
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    I was thinking of doing a 2 hour long workout but after reading comments from all the sifu here; I changed my mind. The longest be a 90min workout. I'm gonna stick to my formula of cardio day and strength training day. Perhaps gonna up with the weight training to break the plateau. Do not want to overtrain and eventually quit.

    The value really depends on what outcomes you're looking for. For me, long run days are reaching 3 hours with another session in the week now approaching 2 hours with the other sessions around an hour. If a long session doesn't suit your training goals, then thre seems litle point.

    QFT.

    2 continuous "cardio" hours is normal and fine if you are training for an endurance event. It is non-sensical for those just trying to get their cardio in for the sake of cardio.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    It can be a negative thing, particularly if you do not understand the relationship between your fitness and your nutritional requirements which a lot of people around MFP land definitely don't.

    If you are having long bouts of training you should have some purpose for that other than burning calories...if you're just doing it for the burn then it is highly likely that you do not understand the relationship between your fitness and nutritional requirements.

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