Optimal Training Time: You’ve got about an hour…Music and cardio

Written on 16 July 2007 by Marty Gallagher

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Youve got about an hour: I have a lot of folks ask how long an exercise session should last. Experience and science both converge on this one: for someone in reasonably good condition, after 45 to 60 minutes energy starts to nosedive and the point of diminishing returns set in. There are two types of resistance training; intense and effective and not so intense and not so effective. 99% of people who take up weight training fall into the later category. Not necessarily out of laziness or because theyre bad people but because they dont know any better. No one has ever taken them aside and said, Look unless you really press the limit in various exercises nothing of any real consequence is going to occur. Unfortunately going through the motions, i.e., using the same poundage in the same exercise for the same number of sets and repetitions is going to result in little if any change. Only by pushing the body to do that which is has not done before do we trigger the adaptive response. That makes sense. Just look around when you go to the gym: if simply doing what you are capable of, if simply performing the same number of reps using the same poundage in the same exercise triggered the adaptive response, the gym would be crawling with muscle monsters. The human body does not reconfigure itself in response to sameness. The body only grows muscle and becomes stronger as a result of being pushed into new territory. Those who go through the motions, staying within their respective comfort zone can train for a long time. Those who train intensely enough to trigger hypertrophy have about an hour before the sheer intensity of the effort causes them to run completely out of energy: physical energy and psychic energy. If they dont run out of gas after a solid hour of bust-ass weight training then theyre either a Lance Armstrong aerobic anomaly (doubtful since genetically gifted endurance athletes are one in 100,000) or a person thinks theyre giving 105%.

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Welcome to the NEW MartyGallagher.com!

Written on 12 July 2007 by paperboy

For the first time in over two years, MartyGallagher.com has gone through a major site re-design! I think we were due, don’t you think?

Among the changes:

More changes are coming, including reverting the header to the one we use in the Forum, as well as enhanced content features.

You might have also noticed that we have some things missing, most notably the Main sections of the old site (Pure Strength, Cardio, Riverhorse, etc.). We are holding on to this content and have plans to re-release them in another form. Stay tuned!

Here’s the best part…

All of this was designed to bring more traffic to our site and get the Purposefully Primitive Fitness word out to the masses!

“How can I help?”

Underneath every blog post, you’ll find a whole bunch of tiny icons. Each icon corresponds to a social bookmarking site, such as Digg. If you like a particular blog post, I highly highly encourage you to click on these buttons! The more people that click on them, the more popular that blog entry becomes, and the more people will see it. You’ll need to create an account at the particular site you’re bookmarking to, but a lot of us already have that. Please help us spread the word!

As always, your feedback is appreciated.

Also, if you have any problems with the site, please use our new Support Ticket system!

Marty and I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of this site from the beginning. Your continued support and generosity is greatly appreciated, and Marty will be back soon with all-new stuff. We have lots of things lined up, so make yourself at home and enjoy the ride!

Lee

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