All the information I’ve found about weight training says the same thing: Don’t do it every day, and keep your workouts relatively short. Some say 45 minutes, some 60, some 75, some 90, but everyone agrees that there is a point before the two-hour mark where you cease to gain any benefit and possibly harm yourself.
Why, then, is it that whenever you read about someone putting in some serious weight training for a specific goal, like an actor training for a movie, it’s always several hours a day? For example, Ron Perlman is said to have worked out three hours a day, five to seven days a week while preparing for Hellboy. Is this a) just PR, b) true and pointless; he didn’t gain any benefit from the extra hours or c) true and meaningful; all the weight training experts are full of it?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of hype in this sort of thing. Is there an official announcement, or do they just say the actor trained a lot and let people imagine what that might mean?
I think they either include cardio, or playing basketball or sitting in the sauna as part of their workout, exxagerate the workout, or take steroids. Even some of the heavy steroid abusers don’t work out that long though.
There really is a point at which you do more damage to your muscles than can reasonable be expected to heal. I suppose it varies from individual to individual, but I doubt anything more than 90 mins would be benificial when talking about weightlifting.
Some people, however, train for endurance, and 3-4 hour sessions wouldn’t be out of the picture. (running and the like)
In this particular case, I got it from the IMDb Trivia page, but I’ve heard similar statements in interviews, magazine articles and so on and so forth.
I bet that “work out” should be taken in the broad sense meaning “exercise” rather than “lift weights continuously”. For a while in college I was in the gym working out four hours a day, every day. Weights (alternating upper/lower each day), biking, rowing, etc. One of my friends was a football lineman and during the off-season they had “two-a-day” workouts - heavy exercise twice a day.
It’s doable but having an expensive professional trainer, dietician and so on (paid for by the movie studio of course!) would probably make it a lot easier to keep up with. I got into pretty good shape but it was very hard to stick to.
“Men’s Health” in particularly seems to have bit the celebrity bug and has (for my liking) too many interviews with celebs about their workouts. I’d agree they often claim several hours a day, but this seems to include stretching, cardio, meditation, etc. in addition to a weight workout.
The trend in weightlifting, as you say, is that shorter workouts are allegedly more beneficial. If you are a power lifter, the idea is that you if you are lifting very intensely, it taxes your nervous system to such a degree that long workouts cause more harm than benefit. Russian studies supposedly show testerone levels etc. drop off sharply after 60-90 minutes, yada yada. Though probably true for powerlifters seeking to maximize strength, this may not apply to every powerlifter (especially Arnold or the juicers), or athletes who desire more endurance than strength.
I’d take any celebrity advice with a grain of salt, if not aspirin.
Steroids? Intriguing idea. I think we’ve all seen these Hollywood stars post very fast, very impressive muscle gain. Makes one wonder if some of these celebs have received a steroidal boost.
I do a timed workout every other day (1 minute between sets, 2 minutes between excercsies) and a complete workout takes about 50 minutes (10 minutes each for chest, back, shoulders, bis, tris).
I suppose this could be stretched longer with 40 minutes of cardio, legs, abs, etc. but I do that on the non upper body days.
I do see guys that seem to be in the gym for long periods of time but when I observe them they appear to spend quite a bit of time resting between excercises, wandering around, talking with other people, getting drinks of water, and basically wasting a lot of time. I think they enjoy the social aspect of being there and like to be able to brag about how much time they spend there.
Can you weightlift every day as long as you work different muscle groups? (I.e., so each muscle group has a couple days to rest before you work it again?) Or is it still better to only lift every other day?
Although these longer workouts people boast of will help build endurance, if you’re trying to gain strength and/or size, brief, intense workouts (on the order of 45 minutes) will be more productive.
Aerobic activity can interfere with growing – keep it to a minimum when you’re trying to get big.
You can indeed weight-train every day when trying to grow: divide the body into as many as 4 or 5 areas, and work each out on separate days. Avoid overtraining by taking off one day a week.
It’s hard (but not impossible) to balance these goals – if you get sufficient rest and eat right, you may be able to trade off between gaining size and getting lean/building endurance.
my understanding on Daily workouts is that while you can do it you do need to split up the muscle groups so you dont hit the same group day after day. the only area that seems to be imune to this is your abs…but dont over do it on the abs, I pulled that area once and never will I forget it.
keep in mind that weight lifting literally tears muscle tissue which then heals and grows new tissue to help deal with the extra work.
My personal take is that the movie star stories are just so much hype. In particular, the tales of how an actor or actress put on 30 or 40 pounds for a role just ring false. Given the difficulty most of the population has trying to lose even 10 pounds, the idea that someone can easily puff up by 40 pounds and then just as easily take it all back off in time to plug the movie on Jay Leno strikes me as malarkey.
When I was training to compete in Olympic weightlifting I lifted every day, 5-6 days a week, several hours a day, the same exercises every day.
Even though I was spending 2-3 hours a day “exercising,” most of the time was spent sitting down and resting between sets.
I saw a few people above say that you shouldn’t exercise the same body part two days in a row, but I made the best strength gains of my life exercising the same body parts every day.