What is the minimum amount of exercise necessary to stay in good shape after you get there

In My Humble Opinion
1

This question was brought on by 2 things.

  1. I remember reading a book about people in prison, and it mentioned how important working out was in prison. It was mentioned that after an inmate got into good shape, it only took a few hours a week of exercise to stay extremely muscular.

  2. When I was able to do interval training, I know doing intervals 2x a week did a decent amount for my resting heart rate and stamina. I’d do 25 minute workouts (5 minute warmup, then eight cycles of 30 second high intensity with the goal of 90-95% max heart rate followed by 60 second slower intervals, then 8 minute cooldown). I’d do that 2x a week and I had better benefits vs when I would do several hours a week of lower intensity cardio. And technically I was only doing 8 minutes of week of high intensity exercise, the rest of the time was warm ups, cool downs and rest intervals. Depending on how you define working out, I was only doing cardio 8-50 minutes a week and saw major benefits compared to doing it at a lower intensity (70-80% max heart rate) several hours a week.

I’m more wondering about muscle than cardio health for the purpose of this question, but am wondering if there is some scientific evidence one way or another.

Is one set per bodypart, once per week of high intensity resistance training all it takes to keep your muscle after you build it?

I know people like Arnold Schwarzenegger would work out 4 hour a day (2 hours in the morning, 2 hours at night), 6 days a week. People like Mike mentzer promoted the opposite. You didn’t need to work out often, just so long as you worked out hard. I remember it was a big debate a few decades ago about quantity vs intensity. I think some proponents of Mentzer’s philosophy said working out a muscle group for one set, once per week was enough. Compare that to people like Schwarzenegger who probably did 20-40 sets per bodypart per week.

So if you get in shape, is 20-30 minutes a week all it takes to stay there?

2

I’ve read stories that Mentzer didn’t actually practice what he preached, which is that you can generate muscle growth with just one set. The “one set to failure is all you need” training philosophy - in practice - usually includes several warm up sets before the person did their “one set to failure.” Dorian Yates put out some videos which demonstrated how this type of “heavy duty” training works in practice.

I don’t have a specific answer to the question of 20-30 minutes a week, but I will note that muscle development is an adaptive response to the stress of exercise, similar to how your skin tans as an adaptive response to the sun. What I mean by that is you have to force your muscles to develop - from a calorie perspective, it’s “expensive”; that is, muscle burns calories, which your body doesn’t presume to be plentiful. So if you are not working to overload your muscles regularly, and feeding them sufficiently, they will tend to atrophy (the good news is that muscles can regain their lost size pretty quickly once it’s been initially established - this is called muscle memory).

I also find, being somebody who can still get in really good shape but also drifts away from it regularly (I’m currently on a steady streak of workouts since January, after 2 years away!), that being muscular is a habit. It would take incredible discipline to only workout for 20-30 minutes a week when the most successful fitness people do it as part of a regular routine.

Ultimately, my opinion? If you are looking for a minimum, shoot for 3 weight lifting workouts a week, but you should eat clean, healthy meals every day to give those muscles the fuel to stay strong (give yourself a cheat meal or two on the weekends). Even better if you can add in some cardio on another 2 days, but that is probably more than you can commit.

However, each of those workouts should NOT BE more than 40 minutes or so. Your testosterone levels stop to drop if you workout too long. 20 minutes is enough time. The key is to not dawdle - time your rest periods, and limit them to no more than a minute or 90 seconds (I, personally, don’t do this, but I do watch the clock on the wall). Expect to be out of breath by the end of your workout. Cardio, if done with high intensity, may only need 15 minutes.

In sum, I think the best idea of minimizing your exercise is to do it regularly, but not give much time for each workout. And you have to eat well.

3

I’ve been lifting on and off for some 15 years. After a long layoff the past few years, I resumed lifting, but due to several reasons, would do a full body workout only every six days.

To my pleasant surprise, I’m now at my highest ever strength level at age 42, working out for about 40 minutes every six days. I’ll most definitely stick with this plan, until I plateau.

Looking back, I never was comfortable with three training sessions per week. I would do it, to meet the “guidelines”, but my progress woud be slow, with little bang for the buck. At the same time I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t lifted in my life and would start with this leisurely once in six days-scheme, progress would be slow, too. I lift rarely, but I do lift hard, being unable to stand at the end of a session.

Arnie-style trainining, with hours upon hours of lifting, and countless heavy sets and reps, is for the few genetically gifted individuals who also use PED, like Arnie, and every otherpro did.

Clarence Bass has been promoting sparsely spaced full body workouts for decades now, and he tells he’s stronger almost every time he trains, just like me.