Am I working out too much?

This is the time of year when everyone spends their hard-earned money at the gym. There are some that are the unfortunate few that will end up in my office in February. There are many ways to avoid overdoing it. First of all…stop overdoing it.

Some people will join the gym and spend up to 2 hours a day in there. How anyone can spend that much time in there blows my mind. After finding out that 40 minutes was spent in the sauna and another 20 minutes was spent cooling down, it’s still an hour. If you’ve spent 20 minutes warming up, then you are getting 40 minutes of exercise. When you factor in that you might be waiting for a machine, it’s no wonder that it takes so long.

When you begin to spend a good portion of your life in the gym, it’s easy to lose weight. Almost anything you do will burn some calories. Even the sauna will make you lose some water weight. After about a month most people start to plateau on the weight loss. The secret is to not spend more time in the gym, but rather make the time spent there more efficient.

There’s really no reason why a person should spend more than one hour at a time in the gym. The typical workout that most people do is 20 minutes of “cardio” which can mean a treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike. Then they hit the machines for about 20 minutes, then do a different machine to cool down. This is universally accepted as to what is supposed to happen in the gym. All the fitness centers are organized in this manner.

But what do you do once you’ve stopped losing weight? Do you add more time to each section? Do you double it? Do you eat less?

One option is to divide the workouts. Sports training research has found it beneficial to do strength training separately from endurance training. In other words, you could do weights/machines on Monday, then Tuesday do all endurance/cardio. Wednesday could be a day off and then Thursday and Friday are similar to what you’ve already done. The different exercise routines demand different forms of energy in the muscles and stimulate different hormonal responses in the body. That’s why it’s better to separate the two styles of workouts.

If you are totally addicted and want to go to the gym 6 days a week, then on Wednesday and Saturday you would do another cardio workout that is not stressful to the joints like the stationary bike. Do these days for only ½ hour because you need to be ready to exercise hard the following day.

I would recommend that you not workout 6 days a week. Four times for most people is enough, especially in the beginning. Lots of people get injured from doing too much too soon.

Seven hours a week is more than enough to reach most peoples’ goals. It’s not necessary to spend 14 hours in the gym per week. That’s how people end up with injuries, burnout, and missed workouts.