How Long Do We Have to Spend in the Gym for an Amazing Body?

Not as long as you probably think.

Are you short on time to spend in the gym but still want a fantastic physique?

Not everybody can prioritize the gym like an athlete or Instagram influencer, spending hours in the gym a day… But that doesn’t mean you can’t build a fantastic physique.

How long do we have to spend in the gym to build muscle?

What if I told you that you can change your body in as little as two hours a week in the gym?

Structuring a workout to achieve the best results

Before we get to the time needed for a workout, we must first set some important parameters for a gym session.

Not all people or workouts are made equal.

General workout variables

There is not a one size fits all approach to how long we should spend in the gym. A workout duration will vary based on several factors, such as:

Your goals
Types of exercises
Training frequency
Your experience
Number of sets
Rest periods

Goals

Our goals dictate the most effective way for us to train.

For example, somebody looking to build a bit of muscle and burn some fat will have a different style of training from an Olympic weightlifter, professional bodybuilder, or runner.

Types of exercises

In terms of this article, we want to build lean muscle.

Although it follows a very similar methodology and there is some crossover, the best way to build muscle is slightly different to the best way to increase our strength.

Strength should be compound lifts in the lower rep ranges (1–6 reps), and muscle-building should include isolation exercises in higher rep ranges (6–20 reps).

Training frequency

How often you train is often based on your lifestyle.

The amount of time spent in the gym is down to a person’s free time and motivation.

To maximise results, we should be doing at least four sessions a week. Doing more sessions over more days is better than doing fewer sessions but increasing their length.

But, if you only make it to the gym 2–3 days a week, you will have to increase the length of your workouts to complete enough weekly volume to achieve the results you want.

Experience

People new to the gym will achieve some results, regardless of their routine. This is called newbie gains.

But for people experienced in the gym, say 3+ years, they will have to complete more volume (total number of sets) to achieve better results.

For newbies, if they train too much, they risk fatigue, sabotaging their results, motivation, and worse yet, injury.

Number of sets

A workout should be long enough to complete the minimum effective volume to build muscle.

After around 6–8 sets per muscle group per workout, we experience diminishing returns. You can call any sets above this number ‘junk volume’.

Junk Volume Is Hurting Your Muscle Gains

When it comes to maximising muscle growth, how many sets are too many?

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Assuming you target 2–3 muscle groups per workout (push, pull, legs split), 15–20 sets is enough volume to hit each muscle group with around 6–8 sets each.

For a push, pull, and legs split to be effective, you have to make it to the gym at least three times a week, so you’re hitting each muscle group at least once a week.

Ideally, you can go to the gym 6 days a week, to hit every muscle group twice a week. A 2017 meta-analysis found that roughly 10–20 sets per muscle per week is recommended to maximise muscle building. If we’re only doing 6 sets per muscle group in an individual workout, we need to target that muscle group in another workout to get above 10 total sets for that week.

If you cannot make the gym six times a week, an alternative gym programme is an upper body and lower body split. If four sessions a week is achievable, you can hit the upper body twice and the lower body twice.

Rest periods

Not resting long enough between sets means we can’t recover adequately enough to hit the next set with a high enough intensity level to maximise results. So, we want to allow adequate recovery between sets.

According to Schoenfeld and colleagues (2016), 3 minutes is typically better than 1 minute for building muscle and increasing strength. Grgic (2017) found that muscle-building results are best when we rest for at least one minute between sets.

Across the recent exercise literature, it’s agreed that the most effective rest period for building strength is 3–5 minutes and 1–2 minutes for building muscle (hypertrophy).

“…Rest in between sets of 180–300 seconds is suitable for improvements in maximal strength, 1–2 min for gains in hypertrophy.” — Borde et al., 2015

Another factor we need to consider is managing our time efficiently — if we spend 5 minutes between every set, we’ll be in the gym all day. Therefore, keeping rest periods to one minute for our muscle-building isolation exercises will help reduce the time of our workout, but still, give us great results.

Now we know how many sets we are doing and how long our rest periods are, we can calculate how long it will take.

So, how long should a workout last?

As we’ve discussed, there is no set answer for how long everybody’s workout should be.

There are several variables such as goals and experience.

However, if your goal is to build muscle and burn fat, I can provide some recommendations for the minimum amount of time that will help most people to achieve great results in the gym.

I will provide an example workout of 15 total sets, to illustrate how long a gym session might last at the lower end of effective volume. The 15 sets will be made up of five exercises, for three sets each. Three sets per exercise are pretty standard practice in the gym.

Our workout will include two exercises focused on building strength and three exercises focused on building muscle (hypertrophy).

The rest period between sets will be the recommended 3–5 minutes rest for low-rep strength-focused lifts and 1–2 minutes rest for high-rep hypertrophy-focused lifts.

The rest period between the different exercises will be two minutes. For 5 exercises, this is 8 minutes total.

We’ll assume a set lasts 30 seconds — but of course, this will vary, depending on how many reps are completed and how slow the reps are.

An example workout might look something like this (for a push day):

Bench press 3x6 reps (4 minutes rest)
Overhead press 3x6 reps (3 minutes rest)
Triceps extension 3x10 reps (1-minute rest)
Cable chest fly 3x12 reps (1-minute rest)
Dumbbell lateral raises 3x15 reps (1-minute rest)

Calculating the time for the sets and the rest periods between sets and exercises, the workout clocks in at 35 and a half minutes.

Therefore, to build muscle effectively, all you need is just over half an hour per session.

Some people reading this are probably arguing in their heads that 30–40 minutes of lifting weights isn’t enough… I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend longer; I’m just saying that you don’t have to. It comes down to personal preference — I spend closer to 1.5 hours for most of my workouts.

But if you’re short on time, 30–40 minutes in the gym at least 3 times a week will be enough for most to get impressive results.

You could also add 20–30 minutes of low-to-medium intensity cardio at the end of your workout for general health and wellbeing, and to burn a few extra calories/body fat.

As well as the workout itself, there are other distractions in the gym such as your phone and having conversations with people you know.

Once you’re a gym regular, it’s hard to regulate who you’ll see in the gym. You can’t ignore people you know completely (you can’t always pretend you didn’t see somebody), but if you’re short on time, don’t make a habit of having regular conversations with everybody you know.

More isn’t better in the case of building muscle and strength

Can you spend too much time in the gym?

Yes. In fact, many people are spending far more time in the gym than they need to.

I’d think that the majority of gym regulars have the general understanding that to get results, they need to put in the work.

So, it’s not uncommon for some to spend 2+ hours at the gym each session. Many assume that more is better when it comes to building muscle.

But, when it comes to the gym, sometimes less is more.

Spending too much time training means we fatigue and our ability to recover is lessened. If we can’t recover to our best ability, then we can’t train to our full potential on every rep and maximise our results.

There’s something called maximum recoverable volume — which is the total number of sets we do in the gym that’s beneficial to our goals. After this point, any extra volume has no benefit and can even be detrimental to our results.

Our next workout and the one after that may be compromised because we cannot train at the maximal effort required to build muscle.

For our bodies to adapt to a training stimulus, we need to recover. Equally, we need to be able to train at a high enough intensity level to force our bodies to adapt by becoming stronger/more efficient/building muscle.

If the quality of our workouts is reduced because we’re doing too much, we’re better off reducing the time of our training and adding more sessions.

Great training is the goal — not as many sets as possible

Conclusion

This article is for anybody that doesn’t want to sacrifice results in the gym but doesn’t have enough time to make exercise the highest priority in life.

In sum, the ideal workout will vary from person to person. There are several variables such as goals, experience and training frequency.

For many, time can be a limiting factor in how long they can spend in the gym.

Therefore, this article has provided the minimum amount of time that the average person can spend in the gym and still get fantastic results. If your goal is to improve your physique, then 30–40 minutes at least 3–4 days a week will be enough to achieve this goal.

That’s only 2–3 hours a week. Anybody can spare 2 hours a week!

You can build muscle consistently and if you add another 20–30 minutes of cardio during your day, this will help you to stay healthy and burn a few extra calories.

Obviously, your diet is also important — you should be consuming 10–30 grams of protein per meal and controlling your calorie intake to burn fat or not gain any more.

If you’re consistent, you can gain a fantastic physique with these recommendations.

Thank you for reading.

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