How long is a good time to exercise every day?

There is no unified standard answer for how long to practice fitness exercises every day. If you are an ordinary adult who aims to maintain health, if you refer to the WHO standards and divide it evenly, 20-60 minutes a day will fully meet the standard. The specific time depends entirely on your training goals, physical condition and available free time. There is no need to stick to a certain number.

When I first started working out, I always felt that "the longer you practice, the better the results will be." After get off work, I went to the gym for 2 hours every day, and my aerobic strength continued to improve. After half a month, my knees hurt, and it was difficult to fall asleep at night. After the coach saw it, he scolded me, saying that it was ineffective training and excessive fatigue, and that I was simply looking for trouble for myself.

Don't tell me, there are really a lot of debates about the length of training on the Internet. Some people say that if you train for more than an hour, you will lose muscle. Some people post pictures of themselves practicing for 2 hours a day, and they are making faster progress than anyone else. In fact, there is nothing wrong with what they say, but they are applicable to different groups of people.

If you have been training for more than half a year, and the goal is to build muscle or prepare for competitions, it is normal to arrange 40-90 minutes of targeted training every day. After all, after splitting the training, if you are just training your buttocks, you can combine deadlifts, hip thrusts, and lunges. If you don't dawdle, it will take 40 to 50 minutes, plus 10 minutes of core finishing, which is exactly about an hour. This length of time is based on the premise that your movements are standard and the training intensity is sufficient. Moreover, you will not train the same part every day, and your muscles need to leave time to rest and grow.

There was an older guy at the gym I used to go to. He would come to the gym for two hours every day. He would practice a set of bench presses and then sit and chat with someone about stocks for half an hour. He would watch short videos for ten minutes. After two hours, the effective training time was less than 20 minutes. After practicing for more than half a year, my arm circumference has not increased at all. There is a little brother next to me who is a programmer. He comes in after get off work every day, locks his mobile phone in the locker, rests for up to 40 seconds between sets, and walks exactly after 40 minutes of training. In three months, the bench press directly increased from 40 kilograms to 60 kilograms. Do you think this time can be compared?

If you are an ordinary office worker who picks up your kids and cooks after get off work every day and cannot spare the whole time, there is really no need to force the 1-hour threshold. The WHO's requirements are very loose, and a total of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobics per week is enough. If you set aside 20 minutes a day to dance to the video, or get off the bus two stops before commuting and go for a brisk walk, and do half an hour of dumbbell training on two days on the weekend, you will have already passed the mark. Even if you move in fragments, it is better than slumping on the sofa and checking your phone when you get home.

If you have bad knees, or you are an elderly person, you don’t need to limit your time. You can walk slowly for 30 minutes every day, or do Tai Chi for 20 minutes. You can sweat a little and not feel tired. Walking ten thousand or twenty thousand steps will wear out your knees, which is not worth the gain.

By the way, there is another point that many people tend to overlook. The training time we are talking about does not include warm-up and stretching. Don’t just come up and practice for 20 minutes and then leave. You need to spend 5 minutes to activate the joints and then spend 5 minutes to stretch after practicing. If you save these two steps, you will suffer a big loss if you get injured.

After all, fitness is meant to serve life, not to add KPIs to you. Don’t worry about whether you have practiced for an hour today. If you are in good condition, practice more, and if you are in poor condition, practice less or even take a break. Exercise habits that can be maintained for a long time are far more useful than sprinting for two hours on one day.