How Long Should Your Workout Take?
One of the most popular pieces I’ve posted to date was the minimalist program for the crazy times in life when you don’t have much time for the gym, but want to maintain your fitness until things normalize again. That program is a guide to doing so in about 35-45 minutes per session, two sessions a week.
But what about the normal times? How long should your workouts take then? This is a highly individualized question: A nationally competitive lifter or bodybuilder might train for 2-3 hours, 5-6 days a week, or more. Not all do that, but many do. However, most people asking this question are in the normal category of people who prioritize training more than your average casual gym goer, but not the top 0.01% of competitive lifters. They understand and appreciate the benefits of training rather than merely exercising, but have a busy personal and professional life and no serious competitive aspirations.
It is primarily to these people, who currently make up the bulk of my own coaching practice, that I address this article. Most people in this category realistically have 60-90 minutes, 3-4 days a week to train. So how do we do that?
I’ll give a couple detailed examples to walk you through how this works in practice, but first some background info.
After the initial Linear Progression and then somewhere between 3 and 9 months of intermediate training are completed, I rarely give my lifters all 3 big primary lifts on the same day anymore. For one, they’re now strong enough that doing so is exhausting, and for two, even if it’s not too exhausting, the necessary rest periods and changing of equipment can easily take too long for the regular person who only has 60-90 minutes - especially for the lower end of that range.
Instead, we typically do 2 main lifts and 1-2 accessories per workout, and this can be done in 60-90 mins with appropriate time diligence. In these workouts, the main lifts are often the primary competitive version, but one (or less often, both) might be a supplemental slight variant such as a paused squat or close grip bench - but still close enough to be slotted into the main lift category of the day. I’ll use a day like this in a 3 day per week total body program, and then an example each of upper and lower body workouts done in the style of a typical 4 day upper/lower split routine.
Example 1: The 3 Day Per Week Total Body
The example workout here is for a hypothetical man a year or two into training, early middle aged, roughly average size and genetics, and it goes as follows:
Squat - 3 sets of 5 at 275 lbs
Press - 3 sets of 2 at 150 lbs, 1 backoff set of 10 at 115
Dumbbell Rows - 3 sets of 10 at RPE 9
We can get this done in about an hour if absolutely necessary and quite comfortably in 75-80 minutes. Time details will look like this:
Squat warmup: 45x5x2, 135x5, 195x4, 245x2 - Empty bar sets done with just a short rest between, and the 135 and 195 sets done with about 30 seconds rest after loading/changing plates. That all only takes 5-6 minutes. Rest slightly more before and after 245x2 plus the plate changes to get to 275 for the first work set, and your warmup is finished about 9-10 minutes in. Assuming these are hard but not maximal sets, each set of 5 reps will take about 25-30 seconds to unrack, squat, and re-rack. 4 mins between sets is enough “on a time budget,” so you’re about 24-25 minutes in, and done with squat. Say 27 minutes to unload and be ready enough to start your empty bar work on the press. You don’t need quite as much rest to start empty bar work on the press as you would if you were doing another set of 275x5 squats.
Press Warmup: 45x5, 75x5, 100x4, 120x2, 135x1 - Just one empty bar set here since you’re already warm from squatting, that takes just 10 seconds. 75 and 100 can be done with minimal rest after loading the new weight, so that all takes only 4 minutes. Rest slightly more for 120 and 135, but still not that much since it’s only for 2 and 1 rep, then rest a bit more before your first work set. Along with loading the weights, that’s about 8-9 minutes to warm up. Press typically doesn’t need as much rest as squats do, all else equal, but 3 heavy doubles here might be closer to max than the squat volume work, so we’ll say 4 mins between sets here too, and then another 4 before the backoff set. Press sets are very quick, so each set will only be about 8-10 seconds to perform, and say 20-25 for the backoff. That’s about 22 more minutes to be done with pressing, and you’re at 49 minutes total so far. Say 51 to unload and get to the DB rack.
Shameless plug here for my Dumbbell Row video I made a few years back:
DB Rows: Won’t need much warmup since a) they’re an accessory lift, and b) you’re already warm from squatting and pressing. But we need a little warmup, because you haven’t done this specific movement with the associated muscles yet. Assuming our guy will do 3x10 at 85lbs, he just needs to do one set of 10 at 65 or so, or he can do 5 reps at 50 and 5 more at 70 back-to-back with no break for one set of 10 at 2 different loads. Then he’ll be ready, and that only takes a minute. Then 3 sets of 10 with each set taking 15 seconds per side, and 2.5 minutes rest in between. That’s just about an hour total.
Now for those who aren’t on such a tight time constraint, I’d recommend resting slightly more than this for ideal performance. Taking the same workout with an extra ~30 seconds rest between the latter warmups and an extra ~minute between work sets would be more ideal, and take you to 75-80. But you CAN do it in about an hour if need be.
Example 2: The 4 Day Split Routine
Upper
Program for the day:
Press 3x3 at 175
Close Grip Bench 3x5 at 205, 225, 205
Chins 3 sets til 1-2 reps shy of failure
Dumbbell Curls 3 of 8-10
Time details look like this:
Press empty bar 2x8, 95x5, 125x4, 155x2, then 3x3 at 175. Empty bar sets done with just a short rest, and the 95 and 125 sets done with just 15-30 seconds rest after loading/changing plates. That all only takes 5 minutes. Rest slightly more before and after 155x2 plus the plate changes and loading, and your warmup is finished about 9 minutes in. Each set of 3 reps only takes about 15 seconds to unrack, press, and re-rack. Assuming these are quite challenging but not maximal sets, 4 mins between sets is enough, so you’re 21 minutes in and done with press. Say 23 minutes to unload and either get to a bench or re-configure the rack to bench.
Bench empty bar for 1x10 - only need 1 set since you’re warm from pressing. 95x5, 145x4, 185x2, then three successive work sets at 205, 225, and 205 respectively. I usually program it in this order for submaximal work, because warming up for 225 as the first work set takes longer than warming up for 205, and since all the sets are submaximal volume work, the 205 set won’t get you too fatigued to do the 225 set (see article from earlier this week about this concept for warmups). In cases where the 225 set is a PR and will be a true max or close to one, do it first and warm up appropriately for it. But that’s not the common case for a regular session.
So here we have another quick warmup: You need only cursory rest after loading and changing the plates til you get to 185, then rest slightly more before that one. You should be ready to do the first work set at 205 in about 7 minutes from starting the empty bar set, which takes us to about 30 minutes from the start of the workout. Each work set only takes about 15-20 seconds from unracking to re-racking and 3-4 minutes rest will suffice again for submaximal work, so add 11 more minutes for the work sets here and you’re at 41 minutes from the start of the workout. As above, if you have more time, you can slow this down a bit and rest more, but if you only have 60-70 mins, you’re now 41 minutes in and still have time for two accessories. Unloading the bench and getting to a chinup bar could take a couple minutes so you’re at 43.
3 sets of 10 chins take ~15-20 seconds per set, and you rest 3 mins between, you’re now at about 53-54 mins. Again, rest 4-5 mins in between if you’re not in a hurry, but 3 is enough to get the job done if needed.
3 sets of 8-10 alternating DB curls takes about 30 seconds per set and you rest 2.5 minutes here. That’s about 9 minutes and you’re done with the workout in just over 60 minutes.
If you add some additional rest to each example here, you’re slightly better off performance-wise, and with all those sets, that’ll take you to more like 75-80 minutes. That’s how I prefer to do it myself, but if you’re time crunched, you can get it all in, in about an hour.
Lower
Our lower body workout for the day:
Squat 3 sets of 4 at 300 lbs
Snatch grip deadlift 2 sets of 5 at 325 lbs
Hamstring curls for 2 sets of 10 reps at RPE 8.5-9
Squat warmup something like 45x5x2, 135x5, 225x4, 275x2, then 300 for 3 sets of 4 work sets. Like the press, you can quickly move from loading the next set to doing it here, until you’ve finished 225, like 30 seconds Rest a little more before 275, say a minute or 90s, then 2-3 mins before the first work set at 300, and 4 mins between sets at 300. Including the performance of the reps themselves, this takes about 25 minutes. Those with more time can rest longer, but you can get it done in 25 minutes without rushing at all.
Unload the squat, and load the first deadlift warmup at 135 and rest a bit, takes you to 28-29 minutes. 135x5, 225x3, 295x2 warmups with 3 mins between each to load the next weight and rest a bit takes you to 38 mins. 2 sets of 5 with 4 minutes in between, takes you to about 48, unload the bar and rest a little more and you’re around 51 mins.
A warmup set of hamstring curls to get ready, then 2 sets of 10 at RPE 8.5-9 with 2-3 mins rest in between and you’re done again in about an hour.
Ideally you could rest more, just like the upper body, and done with a little more rest, you’re looking once again at closer to 75-80 mins. But the main idea here is that if you need to, you CAN get it done in about an hour.
And there you have it. A detailed walk-through of how, if you need to and are diligent about not wasting time in the gym, you can complete your strength workouts in about an hour if absolutely need be, and quite comfortably in 75-80 minutes, certainly 90.