Interesting lifting statistics. Work time vs Workout time.

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GetSoda
GetSoda Posts: 1,267 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Or at least I think so.
An app I'm using for my program tracks:

Total Time
Wasted Time
Workout Time
Rest Time

Wasted time accounts for warmup sets, swapping plates, and procrastinating.
Workout time consists of the average time it takes someone to do the reps in the exercise.

In a 35 minute lifting workout that consisted of bench press, deadlifts, pendlay rows, dips, and hanging leg raises:
(90 second rest on BP, DL, PR, 30 second rest supersets dips/hlr)

Wasted time: 15 minutes
Work Time: 6 minutes
Rest Time: 14 minutes

If we say half the wasted time was for unaccounted for warm up sets, 8 minutes if we round up...

That's 6 minutes of hard work, 8 minutes of easy work. So about 14 minutes total moving weight around.

So, really, shouldn't 14 minutes of strength training be tracked? (81 calories) instead of 35 minutes? (203 calories.)

Perhaps the only thing possibly more inaccurate than calling it 35 minutes of actual work is using a heart rate monitor. For S&G I have used heart rate monitors in strength training, (polar ft6) and seen hilarious results - about 1300 calories per hour. (Squats and Deadlifts spike heart rate like crazy. A set of 5 deadlifts using valsalva will bring me up to about 170bpm, and it takes several minutes of rest to return to a normal HR) So a HRM would have given 650 calories for 14 minutes of actual work.

The further reinforces my decision to ignore the eat-back-the-calories method.

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  • jimmmer
    jimmmer Posts: 3,515 Member
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    On my last upper/lower split I filmed my working sets so that I could form-check. My sessions were 60-65 mins long in total (inc warm-up and rests) but the filmed working sets were only 10-12 mins in total per session.

    It's an eye-opener how little time you actually spend under the bar (unless you're doing something massively volume heavy like a high rep squat routine).
  • GetSoda
    GetSoda Posts: 1,267 Member
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    Definitely. I think it also explains my own personal complaint that an hour of lifting doesn't feel like much work.
  • meshashesha2012
    meshashesha2012 Posts: 8,326 Member
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    if i still used my HRM i would be tempted to pause it during rest breaks and water breaks. i wouldnt be surprised to see that i only burned 50-100 calories over what i burn just sitting on the couch :laugh:
  • jimmmer
    jimmmer Posts: 3,515 Member
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    That's not to say that it's not a lot of work!

    If you're working at sufficient intensities, you need all that fallow time...

    It's very hard to gauge how this kind of high intensity/long rest work affects you metabolically. You are forcing adaptations that presumably your body will be carrying out for days to come. It's not really just what's happening in that hour you're in the gym.

    That's why TDEE is the way forward if you're on this kind of training schedule. Take a week or two to suss it out by logging and weighing and then subtract or add to that figure to get where you want to go.

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