“Abs of Steel in only 5 minutes a day!!!?!!”

If any of you still believe the title of this article, then either you’re eternally optimistic, or you’ve never bothered to try and get in shape. While the vast majority of the fitness industry tries to sell you on the concept that fitness is easy and quick (as long as you buy their gadget, gimmick, or pill), at Fitness Together, we earn our living with an honest, realistic approach to fitness (How silly of me!).

I realized recently that many people have trouble putting their workout time into perspective. I frequently get asked “How much time do I have to spend in the gym to look like you?” or “How much time do you think she spends in the gym?” This article is in hopes of providing some realistic estimates.

How am I coming up with these numbers? Quite frankly, through personal experience alone. I have no studies to back me up, I’m just using my years in the business, and the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with and made a lot of assumptions. Also, remember that genetics play a BIG role in all of this. Some people can make a lot of progress with less effort, but this doesn’t take away from the general validity of my estimates for the average person reading this.

First lets start by looking at how many hours you have in a week: 168. Of that most of you spend 48 of that sleeping (should be closer to 60 for optimum health and mental alertness), 21 eating, and 45 working and commuting. That leaves 54 hours a week for everything else including working out.

**ALERT – The following recommendations ASSUME you are doing QUALITY workouts. Sitting on the exercycle with the pedals barely moving does not qualify as a cardio workout, and doing 5lb dumbbell curls is not a resistance workout!

Lets start with general health. Let’s say you’re not overweight, but have a non-active lifestyle, and you just want to stay reasonably healthy. You’d like to minimize your chances of having a heart attack, and you’d like to age gracefully without ending up in a wheelchair long before your time is up. Believe it or not, you can probably do this in as little as two and a half hours a week. My recommendations are two 45-minute resistance-training sessions with stretching along with three 20-minute sessions of cardio. These workouts should be divided up throughout the week, and you should be breaking a sweat. If you’d like to divide these workouts up into smaller, more frequent workouts that you can do without showering afterwards, you can probably count on upping the total to three hours per week, but at less intensity.

What if you’re trying to lose weight? Well of course you can do what a lot of people do and just starve yourself, but then you’ll end up lighter, not much healthier, and you’ll have lost up to half of that weight in muscle instead of fat. You will still look flabby, and you’ll probably feel terrible. You’ll also probably gain it all back rather quickly.

If you want to lose weight the healthy way, and end up looking thin AND firm, you’ll want to count on adding about four and a half hours per week of vigorous exercise to a healthy (but not starvation) diet. Three 45 minute resistance training sessions every week to prevent muscle loss (do to calorie reduction), and speed up the metabolism all day long, and three 45 minute cardio sessions to keep the heart healthy and burn extra calories. Don’t try to make up for a bad diet with extra cardio. It will take an extra hour on the treadmill to make up for a couple of cookies. Be realistic. With this plan you may look for up to a pound or two fat loss per week - if you’re doing everything right.

Now what if you’ve slimmed down but want a body that looks good in a bathing suit. You don’t want to be a fitness model, but you’d like to be proud of what you’ve got. Maybe you’re getting into your forties, and want to look like you did when you were in your twenties. For this goal, four and a half hours will also usually do the trick. Except in this case you’ll change the split between resistance training and cardio. An hour and a half of cardio each week will be enough to keep your heart healthy. Three twenty minute sessions every week may even be enough (one hour total).

For this goal of really looking firm and toned, you’ll need to up the amount of time with the weights. I’d recommend four 45 minute sessions every week. For both men and women, firm, toned muscle is really what will make you look good in a bathing suit (especially as you age - to combat the muscle you’d normally lose as you age).

Now what if you want a truly phenomenal physique - the kind of body that could almost be on the cover of a fitness magazine. The kind of body that doesn’t just get looks at the beach, it gets envious stares! With the exception of young females with surgical augmentation, everyone I’ve ever met or worked with that got to this point put somewhere on the order of 8 to twelve hours a week into working out!

Usually you’ll need five or six sessions of resistance training per week, and the remainder as high intensity cardio and sports. Frequently, most of the cardio comes from some sort of enjoyable sport, since very few people can keep up this sort of routine day after day in a gym without burning out. I’ve observed that these types of people rarely miss a workout, and when they are in the gym or on the playing field, they hit it with an intensity that will draw stares from others nearby. Their diets are usually meticulous enough that their friends are always making fun of the food they eat.

I’m going to stop there. I won’t even bother with athletes or bodybuilders. Those fields are beyond my scope, and most will frequently dedicate most of their lives to workouts of some sort.

Wow, up to twelve hours a week working out? I guess we can all give up on having that “phenomenal physique”! I’m sure this next statistic doesn’t apply to any of you, but the average American spends 26 hours per week watching TV! So instead of being overweight or even obese, the average American could have a phenomenal physique just by trading half the time they spend watching TV for working out. Makes you think, doesn’t it!