How much time do you REALLY spend in the gym doing resistance training?

Are you spending more than an hour working out?

Do you take stress into account when figuring out the right amount of gym time?

If you aren’t crystal clear about the answers to these three basic questions, you’re probably spending more time in the gym than your body really needs, the subject of the first half of this two-part video series.

After years of research on athletes and my own routines and keeping very detailed records, you probably shouldn’t be spending more than an hour working out.

For most people, this includes the time you spend warming up, but that depends on how balanced, healthy and ready you are for harder activities.

Skeptical? In my research on Olympic Russian weightlifters years ago, athletes who were training at least 90 minutes or more were encountering problems due to the excessive accumulation of cortisol. After about three weeks of training, those athletes experienced many more injuries too.

There’s a lot of wisdom in the late strength coach Charles Poliquin’s most famous saying, “If you’re in the gym longer than an hour, you’re not training. You’re making friends.”

I cover these factors in greater depth in my books, How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy and The Last 4 Doctors You’ll Ever Need.

Stay tuned for more gym time tips in part 2!

Love and chi,

Paul

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