I sent an email out the other day asking this very question.
If I’m being precise it was “How long do you feel a workout has to be to be worthwhile?”
And I was pleasantly surprised by the answers.
Mostly shorter than I’d been expecting.
But, having said that, the vast majority of replies were from members.
Members who do our sessions at RISE and, presumably, find them effective.
Most of the answers ranged between 25 and 45 minutes.
The duration of the main workout part of a session and the duration of the Session as a whole (also including explanation, warm up, finisher, cool down and stretch).
I’d expected more longer answers.
Because the standard narrative that most people are led to believe is their worker has to be more like an hour or two.
Which, from my experience, is a massive part of the reason that most people don’t do regular workouts.
Understandably.
I’m not sure how many I would do if they all had to be that duration.
It’s quite off-putting thinking that we have to exercise for that long.
But, thankfully, it’s not true.
If anything, I’d say the minimum that’s worth doing is even shorter.
If you were to take two identical twins and one was to never exercise……..
Whilst the other ran up and down his stairs as fast as he could for 5 minutes everyday for the rest of his life………
I think we’d all agree that there’d be a reasonable difference in fitness and health, wouldn’t we?
So you could argue that the answer is 5 minutes.
The key lies in the trade-off between intensity and duration.
Doing 5 minutes of something that we could do for 2 hours probably wouldn’t do all that much.
5 minutes of all-out, as hard as we can physically go, would.
Now, I’m not saying that that’s the answer either.
But if we recognise that the amount of time needed for exercise to be worthwhile is probably lower than we thought………
It becomes a different conversation in our heads.
If we accept that, when we’re honest with ourselves, we have the time to do worthwhile exercise every single week………
And that not having time to exercise isn’t actually a thing……..
The conversation becomes more around what we will choose to do than whether or not we can do anything.
Of course, a 45-minute session at RISE will be more beneficial and far more enjoyable, of course (it’s www.myrise.co.uk/apply to arrange your four week trial if coach led, surprisingly enjoyable and effective exercise with like minded people in an intimidation free atmosphere sounds interesting)
But for the times when we genuinely don’t feel that we can fit that in, the next question is what to do instead?
Much love,
Jon ‘Matravers’ Hall
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
