In workouts muscles have 30 minutes of glycogen, does that mean all muscles or just the muscles being worked?

Question

Most bodybuilders say that after 30 minutes of intense weightlifting that all glycogen as been used up and it is counterproductive to continue. But are they talking about all muscles or just the muscles being trained. In other words is there 30 minutes of glycogen in the chest muscles, 30 minutes in the back muscles, 30 minutes in the leg muscles, etc?

Answer 1

no, after about 30-45 minutes, you are done. Period. Your body has only a limited about of energy (glucose) available, and after 30-45 minutes, your body starts to use fat and protien as energy instead of carbs (glucose), which means that your body begins to break down muscle tissue as energy! That is why working over 45 minutes is conterproductive because you loose muscle mass. The catabolic stress hormone cortisol, is also raised rapidly after 45 minutes, this hormone blocks muscle-building hormones and breaks down muscle for energy.

Answer 2

I'm not sure about 30 minutes. I've always read that it's more like 60 minutes or so. It also depends on what you're doing for your workout and how intense it is. Different theories abound. Also, there are different kinds of glycogen, blood and muscle, etc. It's true that you don't want to exceed these reserves during a workout as your body will start to feed on itself.

Professional bodybuilders can work out for hours, and even go to the gym more than once a day, but most of them are using steriods and other andro type products that allow their bodies to sustain and grow on that level of activity. For most of us, around an hour is the best.

One thing some bodybuilders do to extend workout time is to drink some sort of fast-uptake carb during their workout, though I'm not sure about this either since it takes a bit for that to be converted to muscle glycogens.

Answer 3

each muscle i think