Fitness Expert Reveals Shockingly Low Weekly Workout Hours Needed for Strength & Health

When the topic of going to the gym or exercising weekly to increase strength and reap health benefits arises, a common thought that crosses many minds is likely the same: the high number of hours required. However, just because you may know people who spend 2-3 hours in the gym daily, four or five times per week, doesn’t mean that’s what’s needed to improve strength and health. If anything, it’s far closer to the opposite, as fitness expert and doctor Mike Israetel explained while speaking to popular physician and longevity expert Peter Attia.

Israetel joined Attia’s The Drive podcast and gave some very welcome advice to those who aren’t overloaded with free time. In short, you don’t need hours and hours weekly to benefit from exercising; in many cases, you can see benefits with two short workouts each week.

How Impactful Working out for 1-3 Hours per Week Can Be

During the conversation, Israetel explained two different measures that can be incredibly beneficial to those working out and aiming to improve their strength, health, and quality of life. The first approach was simply spending one to three hours per week training, and he considers three hours to be “full sending” it while working out.

“For almost all of the health benefits and longevity benefits and quality of life benefits, the amount of time you need to be training per week is measured in the one-to-three-hour range. With three [hours] being like, you’re really full sending it,” Israetel said.

As he goes on to explain, carving out between one and three hours weekly is probably far easier than you may even think. The breakdown of activities people engage in for one to three hours per week that could be easily cut out is probably quite lengthy.

“People will jog for 40 minutes every morning and think nothing of it,” he explains. “And then when you present to them the idea of resistance training, they’re like, ‘Well, no, that’s going to take some time.’ Actually, it does not take nearly as much time...”

Mike Israetel's ‘Biggest Return on Investment’ for Amount of Time Spent Working Out

If Israetel’s one-to-three-hour workout range per week wasn’t surprising enough, his target for the best “return on investment” from an exercise standpoint will probably leave you floored (that was my reaction).

He spoke to Attia about the benefits of even just two gym sessions per week, each lasting 30 minutes. That seems somewhat staggering, but when viewed from a health perspective, it’s not a complete shock that it would provide a great ROI.

“As a matter of fact, people get incredible benefits—probably the biggest return on investment the average person can make is to train for roughly half an hour, two times per week,” Israetel states. “Monday and Thursday. If you do it properly, it can [provide] an unbelievable amount of benefits, just across the board.”

To break down the recommendations on how to see impactful returns on health, longevity, and quality of life:

• Spending 1-3 hours training per week (best for returns across the board).
• Three hours isn’t necessary and would constitute someone “full sending it,” as Israetel explains.
• The best ROI on training is two 30-minute workouts per week.

To be clear, while this seems almost too good to be true, he’s not stating that you’ll walk away completely satisfied with every fitness/strength goal you’ve had by working out for 30 minutes, twice per week. Instead, he’s highlighting that there are significant benefits even just for putting in this specific amount of time exercising or doing resistance training. Those benefits expand to overall health and quality of life, and it’s safe to assume that virtually anyone can carve out 30 minutes two days per week for a workout.

Related: Fitness Researcher Reveals the Forgotten Fat-Burning Exercise We Were ‘Born to Do’