I still meet people all the time that think that working out for 2-3 hours is productive and beneficial. My philosophy as well as the philosophy of people around me has been for years that an efficient workout is one where you workout for 45 minutes, 50 tops and maybe save 30-40 for cardio and stretching if you're into that.

If you can't do what you need to do within 45 minutes, you are not efficiently working out. I mean, lets take it b ack to the very basics of what building muscle is all about.. It's about causing damage to muscle fibers and filling the muscle with as much blood as possible.. These 2 things is what causes hyperplasia and hypertrophy.

Now yes, there are different muscle fibers, fast twitch, slow twitch.. That does not mean you need to workout double as much time. Simply means you need to know what excercises are effective for both type of muscle fibers.. (Lets be real, most of what you do will target both anyways) Once you got a good workout regiment/routine down, If you need more than 45 minutes to cause enough damage to the muscles for them to effectively grow, you are doing something wrong brother!

Now, to be fair, I wouldn't count a warmup in this.. and I am a big proponent of warmup before working out.. I believe this helps in many ways, for joints, but also for circulating the blood and getting the vessels primed for blood to enter during the workouts/greater pump. So do spend 10-20 minnutes warming up.

Now, if you're in the gym for 2-3 hours going hard.. What are you doing? Sure, working out is a lot of fun.. But if you are working out 4-5 times a week, you don't need to do all that. I know a lot of us love that.. But if you train the way I train, doing 2-3 hours is overstimulation /overtraining.. which will only cause more damage than good. In fact, its where cramps, muscle tears and joint issues occur.