how often to u work out?

I was wondering how often (days/week), how long (20 mins? 1 hour? 2 hours?) , and what kind of exercise (aerobic, weights, HIIT, circuit training) you guys find most effective.

i wanna try to do full body ciruit training every other day, but im scared to experiment (i usually work out 5 days in a row/week)

have any of you experienced that by exercising less you get better results?

btw: i'm not really trying to lose weight anymore, just trying to maintain

I usually work out Monday-Sunday for 1-2 hrs.

I run a mile in the morning and a mile at night on the tredmill usually at the speed of 6.4. Then I do the arm machines and leg machines, and then move onto the crunchies. If I feel like it I'll do the eliptical for 20-30 mins or so. I used to do the eliptical for 45 mins but I'm more into running!

I have heard that it's extremely healthy and important to give yourself "off days" from the gym. Every other day sounds like a good plan to me, seeing as you may feel like you have a lot more energy. There are some days where I just don't feel all that motivated to work out but I go anyway, and cut out some of my normal routines. I have given myself a few days off before during the week just because I was very busy and haven't noticed a gain. My weight did not go up, it basically stayed the same. I think it'd be a good decision to go every other day if you're just trying to maintain!

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 1-2 hours bike rides. Saturday/Sunday 3-5 hour bike rides.

Monday/Thursday are my "off days": 30 minute of lower body weight lifting, 30 min of core exercise, 30 minutes of swimming.

Really it is just a matter of how much time you have and what your body is telling you. *shrug

Also what do you mean by "better results"?

by better results i mean weight loss and toned muscles

I try to work out at least a little bit every day. 1.5 hours in the gym 3 days a week, 1 hour at home 3 days and half an hour of yoga/pilates on Sunday. 

And YES, I have definitely noticed that I sometimes tend to lose weight on the days I exercise very little (or not at all). But I know that the cardio is helping me loads.

Yes, but it's not helping you in the way you think. Cardio is good at making you better at cardio, but it has almost nothing to do with fat loss.

 Seriously. Fat loss is diet, diet, strength training, HIIT, IT, and then cardio down at the bottom of the pile.

 You can do cardio if you want - and for heart health you should probably do some, you'll live longer - but it has no real-world significant effect on the outcome of your fat loss efforts.

 Mind you, which exercise is most effective for you depends on your goals - you can't expect to become a better swimmer by doing squats, and you won't become a stronger squatter by running marathons. And pro athletes tend to work out multiple times a day, but they've got no other demands on them and no outside stresses that would interfere with their recovery - in general that's not true of anyone who isn't a pro athlete.

 (Side note - I hate the word toning. It's what the Shape/Self/Cosmo/Gaiam-style of fitness misinformation use to lie to you about training. What those hucksters call "tone" is the state of well-developed musculature and low body fat that is best developed through strength training and diet, not the complete waste of your time workouts and equipment they're out to sell you. There is no difference between the skeletal muscle structure of men and women, and there is no difference in the way men and women should train.)

 Rest days are important. You have limited recuperative capacity and your body has limited adaptive ability - there's a reason why 3xweekly is generally recommended for beginner-to-intermediate trainees. There are marginal improvements in results between 3 and 5 times weekly, but orders of magnitude higher injury frequency due to the lack of adequate rest and recovery between workouts. Over the long term, you may be able to work up to tolerate twice-a-day workouts 5 days a week, but that's nothing a beginner-to-intermediate trainee should even contemplate doing.

I go to the gym 5 or 6 days a week. Lately it's been five because I've been doing the New Rules of Lifting for Women strength training routines 3 times a week. The rest I either do elliptical, HIIT, or running for a half an hour or so.

I used to do 45 to 60 minutes of different cardio exercises (group fitness classes, elliptical, stair climber) 5 times a week. Weight loss came a lot more quickly and was more noticeable when I began running, then even more when I started to do intervals and HIIT, then even more when I did strength training! I now do (at most) 30 minutes of cardio about 3 times a week, and my lifting takes about 45 minutes (including stretching) 3 times a week and have only noticed positive differences in how I look and what I weigh. I also eat more now to fuel those lifting work outs.

SO - long story short, being at the gym for a shorter period of time does help, but it obviously depends on what you are doing with that time. You have to kick up the intensity and add weights for it to work.

Melkor I am not sure how you can say that. Proper cardio exercise does help with fat loss. It is exercise afterall. Problem is most people way over estimate how much calories they burn doing "cardio". In the gym I constantly see people barely turning pedals on stationary bikes, or walking at slow pace on a treadmill, etc. They do it for 15 minutes and call it a day. That is not cardio! That is waste of time. Of course that kind of "cardio" won't be benefecial. If that is what you call "cardio" exercise, then I guess you are right.

Short answer: Melkor Geeks Out: add your favourite study!

 Long answer:

Fat Loss Depends on Energy Deficit Only, Independently of the Method for Weight Loss
Strasser et.al.Ann Nutr Metab 2007;51:428-432 (DOI: 10.1159/000111162)

 Consider these studies:

D, DE, and DES demonstrated a similar and significant (P <= 0.05) reduction in body mass (-9.64, -8.99, and -9.90 kg, respectively) with fat mass comprising 69, 78, and 97% of the total loss in body mass, respectively. -
Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.

and Hunter et.al. : Resistance Training Conserves Fat-free Mass and Resting Energy Expenditure Following Weight Loss. In the Kramer study, a third of the weight loss in the diet-only group was muscle(2.98 kg, or 6.5lbs) and the diet+cardio exercise group also lost significant muscle(1.98kg or 4.35lbs), while the diet+cardio+strength training group mostly retained theirs, losing 0.297kg or just shy of 0.6lbs of muscle.

In addition to Wayne Westcott. PhD's study of resistance training versus endurance training (Westcott, W., Fitness Management. Nov., 1991.) - in addition to the effect on fat loss, Westcott documents the phenomenon known as 'newbie gains' where beginners to exercise can add muscle even in a calorie deficit. Also check out Resistance Weight Training During Caloric Restriction Enhances Lean Body Weight Maintenance (Ballor, D.L., Katch, V.L., Becque, M.D., Marks, C.R., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 47(1): 19-25, 1988.) - and this weights-only study too that shows the expected result - weight training without dieting won't do jack for you when it comes to fat loss.

 Dietary intervention + no exercise OR dietary intervention + cardio=mediocre results
 No dietary intervention + exercise =embarrasing results
 Dietary intervention + proper strength training = fantastic results

It's not only about exercise. It's also about what that exercise does for you, and how it combines with diet.

 Yes, cardio helps - kinda, in that it makes it easier to have a reasonable calorie deficit, and because it sucks to get out of breath walking upstairs. But there's no real-world significant difference between expending 500cal through cardio and just not eating it in the first place.

Melkor - Your answers make me laugh...because you're so darned informative. Having said that, your last post was way to verbose for my end-of-day comprehension.

In your educated opinion, as someone who is trying to lose fat, gain strength and good looks, and increase overall fitness, what kind of deficit should we be looking for? And what kind of macronutrient ratios do you recommend?

There's no set answer to the deficit question, in general it's best to stick to the nutritionist guideline that says you should aim to lose about 0.5-1% of your current body weight a week and calculate the decifict from there.

 Depending on how close you are to you goal weight that could work out to a lot or a little, neh?

 Most people seem to deal best with about a 50-30-20 C-P-F ratio for the most part, but when dieting it's usually carbs that take the hit. There are essential proteins, there are essential fats, but there aren't any essential carbs, so they're really only where you've got room to cut.

 But it's also individual - some people don't deal well with carbs because they're slow oxidisers, some people do well with a higher amount of carbs in their diet so you really need to treat any recommendations as a starting point and then tweak your diet and track what effects varying the macronutrient ratios have.

 And get more protein - I find that most women who're just starting out with training and diet have a tendency to not consume enough protein. You need about 1.4-1.6g/kg when doing cardio, 1.6-1.8g/kg when doing strength training, and in extreme cases up to 2.5g/kg at the peak of the athletic season.

These studies support your conclusion only partially.

The Strasser study kept deficit the same across the populations, and they lost the same amount of weight.

Kramer and Hunter studies both say that lifting weights keeps you from losing muscle.

So, if one uses cardio to increase deficit, while doing strength training to retain muscle, you get the best of both, yes?

Currently, there's only about 200 cal of daylight between my BMR and sedentary burn.  If I burn 200 cal from a 30 minute weight workout, and replace those calories with a protein shake, there's very little room to play with to keep a deficit.  

Add some cycling, running, or hill walking, and there's more leeway. Plus, it allows for eating more food.

Mmm, yes - kinda sorta. You need a calorie deficit to lose weight, and while there's no reason to think there's any qualitative difference in results from creating that deficit through diet alone or through diet+cardio, it's easier to do it with a sane intake if you include cardio in your plan. And if you - like me - like to eat, doing cardio gives you more room in your calorie budget which is a net plus in my book.

 But there's no question that when you look at the Kramer study for example, at the end of it the diet+cardio group had worked out a total of 1620 minutes of cardio (12 weeks, 3xweekly, starting at 30 minutes and ending with 60 minutes for a mean value of 45 minutes) and lost only one more pound of fat than the diet-only group(14.6lbs vs. 15.4lbs) while the group who did strength training lost more fat (21.13lbs) than both groups . (45% and 37% more, to be specific.)

 You tell me - is the difference between the diet and diet+cardio group significant when compared to the result of doing strength training? When you know that there is no qualitative difference in a calorie deficit created through cardio or diet, I mean?

 Of course, doing cardio is fun for some values of fun, there's a lot of health benefits from it that aren't specifically fat-loss related, and there's no reason to stop doing it from that persepctive. There's more to health and quality of life than a low body fat percentage ;)

 It's just that from the narrow fat loss perspective, with no other considerations in the picture, strength training leaves the other modes of exercise in the dust as far as results go. Doesn't mean that you can strength train and improve your VoMax or pedal cadence climbing hills - resistance training isn't the answer to everything.

For the OP -- melkor's advice is good for your goals.

Sorry for hijacking your thread to take issue with an unwarranted generalization...

Agreed that strength training alone results in better fat loss than cardio alone. But I would submit that logically, strength+cardio would have better results than strength alone, especially for BMI < 25, because strength+cardio can yield a larger healthy deficit. Since it's counterproductive to do more than 3 hours per week of strength training, and not substantially beneficial to do more than 90 minutes per week of strength training, then doing 90 minutes of strength, plus cardio would seem to be best.

There's a point (marathon-level? ironman level) where cardio seems counterproductive for pure fat loss. But there's plenty of room above 1-2 sessions of HIIT to do more cardio before hitting the point of ironman diminished fat loss returns.

None of the studies compare the following two protocols
* strength training alone (lower deficit)
* strenght training + cardio (higher safe deficit)

I'll believe your conclusion that strength training alone is best, if that study was done and the strength training group had better fat loss even at a lower deficit.

Uh, did you miss this  weights-only study? The strength-training group lost 20% more fat than the diet-only group with the same calorie deficit. Which is a little less than the 45% more in the longer, 12-week study, but consistent with the metabolism studies that showed that untrained muscle burns 5.7kcal/lbs/day, while trained muscle burns 7.2kcal/lbs/day after 12 weeks of consistent strength training. This metabolic increase is gradual and would only be significant towards the end of a shorter 8-week program such as in that study.

 Of course, it's cheating a bit in a way because you're increasing the baseline metabolism of the strength-training group, leading to a greater actual calorie deficit than the theoretical one. In theory you could compensate by adding an extra 30 minutes of cardio a day on top of the hour you're already doing but then you hit the same recovery limitations that stops you from doing additional strength training so in practice it's not possible. Well, you could add a lot of low-intensity calories like walking for a couple hours at a reasonably slow pace, so if you're willing to spend inordinate amounts of time you can have the equivalent results without strength training. But why would you?

 I think you're also misunderstanding my conclusion - I'm not saying that you shouldn't do cardio, I'm just saying that cardio has a lower priority than diet and strength training when you're looking at time management. If you've got the time to spend, by all means go walk a marathon every day - I would be astounded if you hadn't lost a lot of fat at the end of a month of walking 6 hours a day every day, but that's not very practical for most people, is it? But sure, if you've got more than the normal 2-3 hours a week that people tend to devote to training, you're probably better off doing cardio until you hit that Iron Man/Marathon limit again - probably the same 4500-6000kcal/week expenditure that predicts a higher incidence of heart disease than someone with a more modest calorie expenditure.

The strength-training group lost 20% more fat than the diet-only group with the same calorie deficit -- exactly.  Strength training is superior to diet or cardio alone, at the same deficit.  Cardio lets you increase the deficit.

So the best workout plan by this logic, for someone with 3 hours per week, would be:
* 3x30 minutes weight training
* 1x15 minute HIIT
* 1x30 minute cardio (including longer intervals and/or hills for intensity)
* 1x45 minute cardio

or
1x15 minute HIIT
1x15 minute hills/stairs
1x60 minute cardio

More or less - I'm all in favour of variety in your workouts, and a productive strength workout for a beginner/intermediate trainee is somewhere in the "starting strength"/"Stripped 5x5" neighborhood anyway. Just the 5 basic lifts - which would be about 30-40 minutes at most, 3xweekly. Or something like NROLW which is a good general plan for health and fitness.

 Any time you've got left on your schedule, you'd do something "not strength training" - though I'd drop the HIIT down to IT for a beginner; you need a bit of a conditioning base to be able to benefit from the high-intensity exercises. And it wouldn't go amiss to do some flexibility or mobility work in there as well, whether you schedule it as yoga or straight stretching/prehabilitation/tissue quality work.

Hi Specca,

I used to do a ton of cardio and tried to eat 1200 - 1400 calories a day. I was tired, hungry, and often failed, making me feel like a failure. And I didn't change the way my body looked by much.

Now I weight train 3 times a week and I've just added a cardio day (mostly for anxiety / stress relief), and I eat 1800 - 2200 calories a day. My body has changed in measurable ways  over the past three months. I am happier, stronger, and feel successful about my efforts.

I work out three times a week with 10-20 minutes of warm-up, about an hour of weight lifting (New Rules of Lifting for Women).

Two of my weight lifting days I tag HIIT to the end for 15 minutes.

One or two days a week (usually just one) I do 40 - 60 minutes steady-rate cardio on the elliptical.

On my weight lifting days I'm burning between 600 and 700 calories according to my HRM, while building muscle and earning a higher calorie burn for the next 36-48 hours.

On my cardio day I burn 300 - 450 calories.

My scale weight has dropped a few pounds in the past few months. More importantly I've lost several inches and the weight now represents a lot more muscle (pretty!) and less fat (not-so-pretty!).

A little anecdotal evidence to go with the science provided above :)

Hi kmk33,

I'm intrigued by your story. Would you mind sharing your stats?

Here's my deal:

Female, 5'5", 30 years old, 160 pounds, caloric intake of 1,700.

I work out 5 or 6 days a week: 20-25 minutes of treadmill running, 30 minutes of weight training with moments of cardio to raise my heart rate. I wear a HRM and burn a minimum of 500 calories per work out.

On top of the workouts, I wear a pedometer and am sure to get a minimum of 10,000 steps a day.

NOTE TO MELCOR: Could you critique this? In terms of nutrition, I aim for a 50-30-20 or so ratio...although I'm trying to up my good fats.

Thanks!

Kerri

 Hmm, it depends on what you're doing with the resistance training - 5 days a week seems a bit much unless you're doing one of those bodybuilder-style 'split' workouts.

 Not that that's bad, mind you, but it's not neccesarily in line with your goals either - are you after general health and fitness, winning your next boxing match or taking first place in your company's 5K?  You could use the same basic workout setup for each of those goals but the details are juust different enough that you'd miss out on getting the best possible results if you used a boxing plan for a 5K or vice versa ;)

 For general health and fitness, 3 whole-body strength training sessions a week with a focus on the 5 basic compount lifts is about what you need to start with, combined with some cardio (alevin has a couple suggestions for variations from the basic 3x30min scheme that'll work if you have a conditioning base to work from) and some flexibility work.

 Oh, and it's strength training first, then cardio - unless you're a male college-age endurance athlete, in which case the order of your workout doesn't matter. Otherwise, localised fatigue from the cardio hampers performance in most of the basic lifts and compromises your results.

 Your nutrition ratio seems fine to me - I don't think there's anything magic about hitting a specific ratio (despite the Zone diet, there's little evidence to show that there's any one golden ratio that works for everyone) but when you tally up your protein needs, your EFA needs and how much carb you need for energy to support your activity level you tend to wind up there anyway ;)

Melkor: Okay. My goal is to lose about 20 pounds, gain strength, definition (lose a lot of fat), but still be able to enjoy life. I suppose all of this would be classified as a general health/fitness goal.

If you were my personal trainer, what would my work-out week look like? I have a treadmill and Hoist gym at home, and will sometimes supplement my cardio with step aerobics as well as adding in Pilates for the toning aspect. And what kind of calorie target should I shoot for each day. I'm torn, because I really, really love to have one or two free meals per week-end. Is there a way to incorporate that?

Thanks again!

Kerri