Why 2-Hour Workouts Are Destroying Your Results After 40

00:00How long should your workouts actually be? The research on resistance training and building muscle consistently shows that majority of the stimulus required for meaningful muscle growth can be achieved in a well-structured session. A focused, intentional, progressive work. And I'm going to dive into that intentional and focused part with you guys too as well. What's going on everybody? Hey you guys, welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host Nikkie Stott.

00:37And today we're going to tackle something, I get asked this question all the time and I feel like it's just creating unnecessary guilt and confusion for women in fitness when they're just trying to be consistent, track their nutrition, right, understand this journey. And then I get asked the question of, how long should your workouts actually be? How long do you work out in the gym? And then I'm like, how do we get here? Because I think somewhere along the way,

01:10the industry has convinced women that overtraining more time in the gym is going to equal faster and quicker and better results. That the two-hour training session is, you know, you're more dedicated than you being in the gym 45 minutes from one session. That if you're not spending like a significant chunk of your day working out and you're not doing enough. And I'm just like, holy moly. That's where, first of all, I just want to dismantle that completely today with you guys.

01:42Because it's not true. And it's keeping women either in the gym way longer than they need to be, grinding through junk volume that is not really moving the needle at the end of the day. Or feeling like they failed on the days when they can only give 45 minutes. Look, the length of your workout is not what produces results. The quality of what happens inside of them is.

02:16So today I'm going to show you guys and explain to you guys exactly what that means. What research has said about optimal training volume. And just how to structure a workout that actually like focuses on emphasis of changing your body. And less time than you probably think to as well. Okay? So I just want to just trump this. You guys, I'm going to do three hours, two hours a day. And if you're not, you're not working hard enough. And you've got to be in there six days a week. Like, okay, no.

02:46But let's just start with the science. Okay? Because this is one of those topics that where the data is really, really, really, really, really clear. And the industry has been ignoring it largely. Or it's just because this narrative is just like picked up from women that you got to be in there because somebody said this like 10 years ago. That's how it was. And this narrative just keeps going. So I just want to break it. The research on resistance training and building muscle consistently shows that majority of the stimulus required for meaningful muscle growth can be achieved in a well-structured 45 to 60-minute session.

03:28Not 90 minutes. Not two hours. Not three hours. But you guys hear me loud and clear? 45 to 60 minutes of focused, intentional, progressive work. And I'm going to dive into that intentional and focused part with you guys too as well. But there was this research study on training volume that found 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week is the range that produces optimal muscle growth for most people.

04:00Now break that down to a weekly training split. Say like, I'm saying women only need to be in there like three to four times a week. And you're looking at somewhere between three to six working sets per muscle group per session. At three to five minutes per set including rest. That is upwards of like 30 minutes of actual working time per muscle group. So a properly structured full body session or upper body sweat or lower or whatever you're covering, you can do that in 45 to 60 minutes.

04:38Anything beyond that is either just too long. Like either you're warming up too long, you're resting for too long. And I slowed down saying that because we got some phones in our hands for too long. If you're resting for five minutes, you'll are resting for way too long. Maybe you're doing too many exercises or you're doing volume that there's no research that supports it that's going to give you necessary results by doing so much volume. So the practical takeaway here is if your workouts are consistently running 90 minutes or longer and you're not this like competitive athlete like with a specific performance goal.

05:17Like you're not a marathon runner. You're not doing Ironman. You're not doing a bodybuilding competition. You are almost certainly doing more than you need to be doing. And more than you need to be doing is not producing more results. I just like point blank period. What it is doing is it's producing more fatigue. It's producing recovery demand. More of it. And more time in the gym for the same or lesser outcome. So being focused and having intentionality behind your workouts, that's going to beat being in there for 90 minutes to two hours every single time.

05:53And not to mention with women and our hormones, like the hormonal piece, because I think this is where the part of the women most have that never really heard about. It changes everything about how you think about training duration with our hormones. When you begin to do a strength training session, your body responds by releasing anabolic hormones, right? Specifically testosterone and growth hormone. That supports muscle building, your fat metabolism, performance. Those are the hormones that make training productive.

06:27They are like what creates the environment in which your body can build and repair muscle efficiently. In the first 45 to 60 minutes of a well-executed training session, those hormones are elevated and they are working for you. After that 60-minute mark of intense training, that shifts, right? Cortisol, which, you know, the cortisol police don't come after me, but we do really need to stop talking about cortisol. But it deserves a place and time here right now. Because a little bit of cortisol is okay, but that's your primary stress hormone.

06:58That begins to rise significantly after doing a workout for 90 minutes to two hours. And it's not, this isn't like a small fluctuation. Like after an hour of hard training, those levels can increase substantially. And again, some cortisol while your training is good, but going for too long, that's going to suppress your testosterone. That's going to impair your growth hormone. And it's basically begins to promote muscle breakdown, which is catabolism, which is the opposite of anabolic hormones.

07:31Rather than you, so then your body is now in this state and it's not helping you to build muscle. It's not helping to break down more muscle fibers and then you can build them after the gym, right? So this hormonal environment that I'm speaking of that was supporting your progress in the first hour of your session activity actually starts undermining in the second hour. You are not getting more out of extra time. You are potentially getting less, especially if you're doing strength training workouts. Because the hormone environment has shifted from building to breaking down.

08:05And I'm saying hormones because you break down muscle fibers in the gym. But those building hormones, the testosterone and the growth hormone, are there with you active in the first hour. But will start declining and start breaking down afterwards. Hey, while you're listening, if you're getting value from this episode, take a moment to tap that review button or share this podcast with a friend. It's a small gesture that goes a long way in helping more women find their way to feeling stronger and more confident in their skin. I appreciate you so much for taking the time to support this show.

08:39Now, let me just pinpoint this here because it's not, this isn't true for every single person in every single circumstance. Well-trained athletes, right? People that do this all the time, have higher training volumes and they can tolerate these longer sessions. But for the vast majority of people who are trained, like us, women, who are training for just like body composition, longer sessions, like you building muscle. These longer sessions are not producing a proportionally better hormonal environment. They're producing more catabolic hormones to take place.

09:14And that's going to work against you when you're trying to build muscle and lose fat. Okay, so takeaway for what I'm talking about here is like get in, do the work, get out. Protect that anabolic window. Don't grind through a 90-minute session thinking that unless you're like a performance athlete again. But thinking that longer is going to help you create more results because the opposite is, it's less is more in this stage of life. Okay? So let me just kind of lean in here with you guys.

09:45If research is saying that 45 minutes to 60 minutes is enough for your workouts, that you're doing 90 minutes or you're doing two-hour minutes or two hours, then something is eating your time. That does not need to be. So I want to walk through that with you and kind of lean in here with you. Let's just start front to end. Go front to end with a workout. You could be warming up for too long. A warm-up should take 5 to 10 minutes, not 30 minutes. Like a few minutes of either doing like cardio or elevating your heart rate or doing the specific movement like workout of what your actual program is.

10:22Like the first exercise of your program. Like doing that with no weight or body weight and warming up and just loosening the joints and loosening and warming up the muscles. But spending 20 or 30 minutes on like stretching or foam rolling or like general mobility before every session is not producing you to have a better workout. It's just eating time that could be spent on actual training. So that's one thing. The second thing you guys need to hear me on is too much rest in between your sets. Rest periods matter. They matter big time.

10:54But you need to be intentional with them. Like if you're doing squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, like more compound movements, two minutes of rest between sets is appropriate. That's fine. For isolation exercises, maybe 60 seconds to maybe 90 seconds depending. But I would probably lean on that 60 second mark. That's enough. But what most of them are actually doing is scrolling on their phone. They're chatting. They're wandering to get their water.

11:24They're just sitting there waiting. What happens here is you're resting for four to six minutes between every set. That alone, that alone, guys, hear me loud and clear, can add 30 to 40 minutes to a session. So what I'm saying here is time your rest periods and take it seriously. If you are chatting, say, hey, I got to get back to my workout. Like that's a boundary for yourself to sit inside of the gym. It's not a social hour.

11:56Call each other after the gym. Exchange phone numbers. Say, hey, I would love to keep this conversation going, but I'm going to finish my workout. Right? Like make sure you are taking that rest period intentionally. Because that's going to help you to increase your training intensity. Because you're not, you don't want to be fully recovered. Right? If you're fully recovered, you're not doing yourself a service in those workouts. So be more intentional with those rest periods. And then you could just be doing way too many exercises. More exercises do not mean that you're going to get more muscle.

12:29What produces muscle growth is you having adequate volume on movements that actually matter. Like the compound lifts that are going to recruit those larger muscle groups. Isolation ones are going to get those tinier muscle groups. If your session is like 12 different exercises or 15 different exercises, half of them are probably redundant. Or they're not meaningfully contributing to your goals. So you having just a focus session built around four to maybe max seven, depending on what your training goals are, key movements done with full intention, done with progressive overload, will outperform a wandering session with 12 exercises every single time.

13:10So cut the junk, add intention. Your sessions will get shorter and your results will get better. I promise you. Okay, so let me give you guys a clear practical picture here because I don't want this to just be abstract. Like I'm telling you guys this is what your time should look like. Or this is how long your session should be and this is what your training volume should look like in X, Y, and Z in your rest periods. But here's what a focused, efficient, 45-minute training session actually looks like if you are trying to build muscle, lose body fat, and change your body composition.

13:44Zero to five minutes or zero to eight minutes warming up. Like cardio, get that heart rate up, get the blood moving. A couple minutes of doing a movement-specific warm-up, right? Like lighter sets of your first exercise. Get those joints prime. Get that movement pattern going. Done. You're ready to train. Then minutes like eight to 40, those are your working sets. You're doing five, six, seven exercises. Each exercise is three to four working sets.

14:15Rest 60 to two minutes depending on compound or isolation between sets. Every set performed with intention. Your weights are generally challenging. You're targeting to target that rep range whether it be, you know, eight to 12 rep range. And that is going and you should always be pushing yourself to failure on those last two to three reps. Where it's a struggle to move the weight. That's where you're creating that metabolic stress and demand on the muscle. Okay? So like a sample structure.

14:47Compound lower body movement. You're doing like a squat. You're doing four sets. Then you're doing push upper body. You're doing like something for your chest. Maybe something for your shoulders. You move into a back. You're doing three sets for these. You're moving into biceps, triceps, right? These are like six to seven exercises. Three to four working sets. That is like 13, 14 working sets together. And that is like the research support range for weekly volume.

15:20If you are training this like, you know, you're doing full body or you're doing muscle specific workouts. Like that is enough of a stimulus that your body needs to adapt. And delivered in 45 minutes of actual training time. And then if you have time at the end, you do like a five minute cool down. You do light walk, light stretching. Maybe you just, you know, you're stretching while at the same time you're writing down what weights you did so that you know for your next session.

15:52Right? Like you just five minutes. That's it. But overall, 45 minutes. Every muscle has been stimulated. You've done progressive overload. The hormonal environment. You've protected at this point. And you trained efficiently. And you did everything that your body needed in 45 minutes. Not a 90 minute, two minute session. A focused 45 minute session. And let me just start to close down this episode with just saying something a little bit directly. You are allowed to have a 45 minute workout and feel good about it.

16:24You're allowed to leave the gym before the two hour mark and know that you did enough. You are allowed to feel like you just had a real effective results producing training session at a lunch break or after the school drop off. Right? Or, you know, you stole 45 minutes in the day. Once a day got away from you, you found 45 minutes. You don't need two hours. Because the belief that only long sessions count.

16:57That anything under an hour is not really training. That you have to earn your results by grinding through two hour sessions. Is not. That is what keeps women from training inconsistently. Like that. The women don't want to have to do that. So that's what. Sorry. That's what keeps women from training consistently. If they are doing. I think that they have to do these 90 minutes to two hour training sessions. Then that's going to keep somebody from wanting to go to the gym consistently.

17:27It creates an all or nothing relationship with the gym. Where if you have enough time for a full session. Or you have to skip entirely because you don't have enough time for a full session. And skipping entirely is what actually is killing your progress. You just need a focused. Put your head down. Put your hat on. 45 minute to 60 minute session. Four. Three. Four. If you want to. Five days a week. That will always outperform a 90 minute session. Three days a week. Not because of the frequency alone. But because of the consistent sustainable.

18:00It fits into your life. Real life. Version of training. Is the one that you're actually going to be able to do for months and years. And months and years of showing up. Is what produces the transformation. Not just in one single like epic. Two hour session. Right? So 45 minutes. Bottom line. 60 minutes. Bottom line. That's going to give you enough time to produce real meaningful body composition change. More time does not equate to more results.

18:30Remember it gets you outside that hormonal environment. It causes more fatigue. You have this more now recovery demand on you. So just get in. Do the work. With real intensity. Real intention. Put the phone down. Stop chit chatting. Get out. And repeat that consistently. That is your formula. That's it. 45 minutes. 60 minutes. Please stop thinking. Or just like rewire that narrative in your mind. Of you thinking you have to be in there for two hours. Because you don't. And if you guys want to learn exactly how.

19:01Right? To focus on the type of training. That's reducing the outcome. That you need to change your body composition. Free webinars. Every week. Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every week live. And I'll even pull. I pull three people from the room. That I get to talk to live. And help. And that could be you. I could have a conversation with you. Where I'm hearing your current situation. And I'm just helping you know. Hey. This is what you got to do. That's it. Okay. That link is in the show notes. But until next time. That I get to chat with you guys.

19:31On this podcast episode. Just know. 45 minutes to 60 minutes is enough time. And that's it. All right guys. I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out. Hey. Really quick. Before you go. I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value. Or sparked something in you. Take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review. Make all of the difference. Helping more women discover the tools. They need to transform the fitness. And their confidence. It takes less than a minute. But it can change the path of someone else's journey.

20:02Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.