Iâ??m interested to know if you keep your workouts under 1 hour to avoid depleting androgen levels, which most coaches swear by, or do you train longer?
I usually train right at 50 minutes with a steady pace between exercises. I have trained longer before but not without fueling myself with some type of fast carb and protein after about 45 minutes. Have never gone longer than 90minutes though. That is by myself taking my time between sets.
Some days it’s an hour, other days it’s more. I’m done when I’m done, and I won’t go at it before I’m ready just to keep it under an hour. I probably could rest a little less some times, but I would rather err on the side of too much rest, giving me a greater chance to lift more weigth every time.
It really depends on the body part I train. When I do back or legs, it will always take longer than an hour - about an hour and 15 minutes. When I train chest or shoulders, I think it is slightly under an hour.
I don’t really think about androgen / test/ GH levels and such when I train. Maybe I should, judging from the pathetic results I have gotten so far with my training (in between long bouts of non-training) 
40mins - 1 hr, varies due to a lot of things
Depends on what I’m doing. Deadlift days tend to take longer than bench days, cause I just need a helluva lot more rest.
1 hour- 1½ hour is the norm.
hour to an hour and a half
I’m doing 5/3/1 so it only lasts about 30-45 mins. Well, the first day at least. LOL. I’m off to Military Press day.
I think I average about an hour, however I try to wait three minutes in between sets on big muscle exercises like chest, pullups and legs…I have been eating a bagel and taking NO explode before hitting the gym so my energy level has been pretty good for over an hour. I try not to do more then 18 sets total.
Usually 1 hr weightlifting, and 30 mins warmup/stretching/cardio.
Including cardio we’re talking about 90 minutes.
[quote]CKMAN wrote:
Iâ??m interested to know if you keep your workouts under 1 hour to avoid depleting androgen levels, which most coaches swear by, or do you train longer?[/quote]
The whole 45-60 minutes thing is complete bogus. Anyone that knows anything about human physiology and research knows this.
If you are working really hard, maybe doing circuits or complexes or 20-rep squat or whatever, hormone levels may start to fall after only 20-30 minutes. And if you are not working very hard, and just doing one set of bench avoiding failure every 5-10 minutes, then you could probably go 2-3 hours without any problems.
These GUIDELINES were created as guidelines, and people try to make them a hard and fast rule. Yes, in generaly my workouts do last about 45 minutes, but there are so many factors that will change this. If im training with a partner, it almost always takes me at least 15 minutes extra. Also, if im doing ME work and building up to maxes, then I take a lot longer rest breaks, and my workouts get longer.
Another thing to thing about, is the individual. If someone is having trouble gaining muscle or weight, they should error on the side of being in the gym 45 minutes or less. And is someone has no problem with muscle mass but is having trouble with fat, then they might get away with 1.5hour+.
i drive 20 miles to my gym-pay 2 dollars to park-drive 20miles home
with that said it costs me about 118$/month for my gym membership so i spend as much time in the gym as possible. at least 90 minutes no matter what body part i am doing. I always sweat a lot, drink gatorade and take some BCAA’s while lifting
Usually 45-75 minutes. I’m interested though, occasionally some of my workouts last 90+mins at peak times in the gym as people are using what I want to use. Does this 5-10 minute waiting for something count towards this supposed hormone decrease too? Like is it as soon as you start lifting it’s like a countdown type thing or it’s total time doing strenous activities?
Lifting takes around ~ 35-55 minutes, depending on the day.
Cardio could tack on an additional 20-30 minutes, depending on how lazy I’m feeling.
40 mins? could be more or less as long as im not in there for 2 hours and im not hungry im happy
Hm it depends… I usually stay below 60-70 minutes, as my performance seems to drop after a time…
About 75-90 minutes, average.
30-35 mins
3-4 exercises
3-5 sets typically
Usually 2 hours. Sometimes only 1 or 1.5.
Now that is when using AAS. I try to cut it to 1 hr to 1.5 when not.
It’s true that there’s been a finding, or findings, that T levels are lower at a timepoint 1 hour into a workout. However myself I don’t see why that is intrinsically important (and it’s certainly not when using androgens.) The most likely thing, IMO, is increased rate of sulfation, which is reversible, causing momentarily lower levels but not necessarily lower area-under-the-curve for the day.
The latter measurement is what I’d want to see before figuring there was any importance to it.
Also, the effects of the androgen receptor are not fast-acting. It takes days actually inbetween activation and the end-product proteins being produced. So momentarily being low is not intrinsically important.
Where I do think there is a real effect is that without the right nutrition, the body runs out of gas in extended workouts, unless they are rather lazy.
As to why my workouts are so long, it’s partly because of fairly high volume, and because while there will usually be some things that involve brief rest periods for hypertrophy reasons, there will also be parts of the workout that have ample rest between sets. And because these days I have to warm up and ramp more than I used to, which takes time.
You’re just not going to do Smolov for a given exercise, and also train a substantial amount of the rest of the body, and get out of the gym in 45 minutes, for example. Not happening.
I’m not saying that there aren’t valid and effective workouts in the 45 minute range. There certainly are. But what I’m doing, for me personally, takes longer. I have also certainly done the faster approach in the past.