How do people get out of the gym so fast?

Question

I heard your body is in a catabolic state if you train for around two hours which my workouts do go two hours or longer. I do a workout 3 days a week so its chest/back then legs then arms/shoulders. I would prefer bodybuilders and not novices answer this as it takes me a while and then I do cardio at the end which makes it longer then I take my shake. How do I shorten my workouts I already superset to make it shorter should I just do a workout 5 out of 7 days of the week? I also train smaller body parts too like forearms and abs on a few of those days. I read somewhere on bodybuilding.com that 1 hour is good and you should go no longer then that or your body becomes catabolic so thats why I'm asking this question.

Answer 1

You've read the advice, you have to find a way to make it happen.  It's helpful if you can remember when you are in the gym that the last hour is making your muscles smaller not bigger - that's normally a huge bit of motivation.  You'd actually get bigger by walking out of the gym after an hour and leaving your routine unfinished.

But that doesn't really help.  If you are doing a three day routine then I'd suggest that you go back to basics and concentrate on just doing the core compound lifts.  This is always good to do sometimes.  Drop all of the isolation exercises out of your routine.  Then really concentrate on smacking the h**l out of your body on those compound lifts.  Cut down the rest between sets even though this might mean having to drop the weight at first, it will push your body more and the more you push it, the more it will trigger the muscle growth.

Once you've got that down to pat you'll find that you'll have enough time to put some isolation work back in there.

Now, you might have noticed that I didn't suggest cardio in there.  If you are cutting then add some cardio immediately after the workout.  But if you are cutting then your workout should be shorter because you are aiming for maintenance only - and no, I don't believe in high reps for definition as it happens.  If you are bulking then do your cardio on your rest days, but make it sprint/ interval training so that you work very hard for a short period.  This sort of cardio training will ensure a fresh release of growth hormones which is exactly what you need to boost the rebuild on your rest day.  Clearly because it's a rest day you don't want to push your body too much which is why a short interval training is effective.

Answer 2

When  I built seriously (long time ago) I never got out of the gym under 2 hours and I did everything that  I could to reduce that. I ended up splitting my cardio (other than a 10-15 minute warm up) to between days. So 2 days chest/back/abs/legs and 2 days bi/tri/abs/different legs..and 2 days of intense 60 min cardio. I won't even tell you what I do now, cause it's not remotely applicable to what you do. If you're building seriously, 2 hours is minimum. It's the only reason I don't at least lift...no time.

You probably know..you can do abs everyday if you want. I did...