Stop Wasting Your Time in the Gym! Follow this Approach for Better Results

Too many people go to the gym and spend a lot of time doing a lot of sets of a lot of exercises...

But doing them poorly.

Dial it back. Do less, but focus on quality and effort. 

We cannot focus on so many things and expect to also perform each set and each exercise well. Going into a workout where you know you've got to do a bunch of different exercises and sets inevitably leads to junk volume. You're mentally not dialed in nor willing to give high quality efforts to each set. At any rate, you'll be mentally and physically too fatigued to continue giving high quality efforts for exercises later in the session.

It sounds counterintuitive, but trust me. Less is often more in strength and hypertrophy training! Strip back your exercise selection and volume. Focus on performing less exercises with much higher quality. 

You will make gains! Serious gains...way more than you're currently making now. 

I've made the best progress of my life (with the least amount of pains and injuries, by the way) when I cut my session length from 60+ minutes to 30-45 minutes and limited my hypertrophy-focused workouts to a general warm-up plus 3-6 total training exercises (I usually do a quick warm up circuit of abs, some sort of glute activation/warm up exercise, and a third exercise for either calves, jump rope, rear delts, or club swinging before my workouts. I don't count these exercises toward my "training" exercises. They're just general warm ups. I've got an entire article on my quick 5 minute warm up method for anyone interested: https://www.30minutephysique.com/post/morning-coffee-ponderings-warm-up-circuits-and-daily-exercise).

How do I manage to train, productively, in just 30-45 minutes?

It's easy, and it's really ashame that people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea. It just proves how lost and confused our culture has become by consuming notoriously awful fitness advice on social media.

Here's my general method for maximizing returns on my investments while training just 30-45 minutes per session (usually closer to 30 minutes, for what it's worth):

1. Select high quality exercises that give me good bang for my buck. This means I don't do every exercise for every muscle group when I train a given muscle group. I focus on compound exercises that I enjoy and that are productive for me, along with basic isolation exercises for muscle groups that don't get trained effectively from the compound exercises (for me, these isolation exercises are used for biceps, triceps, calves, and side delts).

2. I do 2-3 working sets per exercise. Simple. I find doing more than this leads to worse performance, lower efforts during earlier sets, boredom, and does nothing but create a bigger recovery window for me, limiting my ability to train more frequently (I like training frequently).

3. I use equipment that doesn't take a lot of time to set up (I don't use barbells anymore. Barbell exercises are super, but they're not very time efficient).

4. I limit myself to 3-6 exercises per session.

5. I spread my work for each movement pattern and muscle group across multiple sessions throughout the week. Today's upper body day I'll do single arm rows for my back exercise. 2-3 days from now I'll do weighted pullups as my back exercise. Today I'll do dumbbell lateral raises for shoulders. In 2-3 days I'll do kettlebell clean and presses for shoulders. Get the picture? Spread the work out across multiple sessions. This allows you to train more muscle groups per session and takes less time. You also benefit by getting more practice training the muscle group more frequently with higher quality efforts. The quality is higher because you're focused and fresh for the single exercise for the particular muscle group. Higher quality reps, better stimulus, less time, more frequent stimulus...these are all positives!

That's it.

Find a split that works for you. I usually do either Upper/Lower, Full Body, or even PPL. The older I get and more experience I accumulate, the more I enjoy the efficiency and frequency benefits of Upper/Lower and Full Body routines. But if I'm really strapped for time, I find PPL can be extremely time efficient.

The exercises I focus on?

I'll do you one better and share 2 of my most popular programs, instead!

Below are 2 of my favorite personal programs to use. You'll notice I have several exercise variation options and I'll often rotate through these different exercises throughout the duration of a program. The general idea, though, is I focus on 1 or 2 exercises per muscle group/movement pattern and I usually do just 1 exercise per muscle group within a session. Check the programs below for a better understanding.

FBLV (Full Body Low Volume)

warm up circuit for 2-3 rounds before all workouts (see this article for specific warm up circuit templates https://www.30minutephysique.com/post/morning-coffee-ponderings-warm-up-circuits-and-daily-exercise):

1. glute bridges OR clam shells OR kettlebell swings/cleans/snatches/clean & jerks

2. band pull aparts OR bent over rear delt flyes OR face pulls (cable, rings, or TRX) OR TRX T drill KB haloes OR Indian clubs x 10-20 reps

3. core (sample options: leg raise, frog situp, loaded carries, side planks, Copenhagen planks, leg raises, double crunch, dead bugs, ab wheel rollouts, inch worms, KB windmills) 

4. Jump Rope OR calf raises x 25-100 reps

FBLV Session A

Ex 1: incline DB bench press or pushups-2-3x6-12 or 2-3 x max

Ex 2: Single arm rows-2-3x6-12

Ex 3: single leg RDL, kettlebell swings, or glute bridge variation-2-3x10-15

Ex 4: bicep curl variation-2-3x6-12

Ex 5: lateral raises or upright rows OR kettlebell swings, cleans, snatches, or leg curls (pick one based on preference that day)-2-3x10-15

FBLV Session B

Ex 1: overhead press or clean & press-2-3x5-10

Ex 2: pullups-2-3x5-8

Ex 3: Bulgarian split squats, step ups, offset alternating reverse lunges, step up to reverse lunge, standard split squat, goblet squats, or box squats-2-3x8-15

Ex 4: tricep extension variation-2-3x10-15

Ex 5: calf raises or box step ups or alternating reverse lunges or single leg box squats-2-3x10-15

Upper/Lower (UL) 54X

WARM UP CIRCUIT for 2-3 rounds before all workouts (see this article for specific warm up circuit templates https://www.30minutephysique.com/post/morning-coffee-ponderings-warm-up-circuits-and-daily-exercise):

1. glute bridges OR clam shells OR kettlebell swings/cleans/snatches/clean & jerks

2. band pull aparts OR bent over rear delt flyes OR face pulls (cable, rings, or TRX) OR TRX T drill KB haloes OR Indian clubs x 10-20 reps

3. core (sample options: leg raise, frog situp, loaded carries, side planks, Copenhagen planks, leg raises, double crunch, dead bugs, ab wheel rollouts, inch worms, KB windmills) 

4. Jump Rope OR calf raises x 25-100 reps

My preferred program variation below. Train 3-5 days per week. 4 days works great, alternating between upper and lower, in succession. 

If doing 3 days per week, alternate between upper, lower, upper one week, then lower, upper, lower the next week. 

4 days per week or continuous, every other day schedule, are ideal.

Upper A

Ex 1: incline DB bench press-2-3x6-12 OR pushups-3-4x10-30

Ex 2: single arm rows OR dead stop alternating rows-3-4x6-12

Ex 3: lateral raise variation or upright row variation-2-3x10-15

Ex 4: incline dumbbell curls-2-3x6-12

Ex 5: (single arm or 2 arm) cable/band pushdowns OR skull crusher variation-2-3x10-15

Lower A

Ex 1: Bulgarian split squats OR offset alternating reverse lunges OR standard split squats OR step ups to reverse lunges-2-3x8-12

Ex 2: single leg RDL, glute bridges, or kettlebell swings-2-3x10-15

Ex 3: box step ups or offset alternating reverse lunges or box step ups to reverse lunges or standard split squats-2-3x8-15 per leg

Ex 4: kettlebell swings or leg curls or glute bridges or calf raises-2-3x10-15

Upper B

Ex 1: clean & press/overhead press variation-2-3x5-10

Ex 2: pullups-3-4x5-8

Ex 3: flat/incline DB bench press-2-3x6-12 OR pushups-3-4x10-30

Ex 4: concentration curls or spider curls-2-3x6-12

Ex 5: overhead tricep extension variation-2-3x10-15

Lower B

Ex 1: Bulgarian split squats OR alternating reverse lunges OR standard split squats OR step ups to reverse lunges-2-3x8-12

Ex 2: single leg RDL, glute bridges, or kettlebell swings-2-3x10-15

Ex 3: box step ups or offset alternating reverse lunges or box step ups to reverse lunges or standard split squats-2-3x8-15 per leg 

Ex 5: kettlebell swings or leg curls or glute bridges or calf raises-2-3x10-15

Both of these programs work great on a 3-5 day per week schedule. 

Simplify. Use logic when selecting your preferred exercises. Do less (less exercises and less volume) to make more progress and focus on quality, consistency, and effort!