The 30 Minute Physique Experiment Days 19 & 20

Hey hey hey! We're officially 20 "workouts" into this, here, "experiment."

I put experiment in quotations, because while I'm formally tracking the workouts as such, I've actually been spending most of the last 6 years doing 30ish minute (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) workouts for the bulk of my training. I'm just using this site/blog as a way to log my workouts so others see exactly what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, and how I'm doing it. I did this in the early days of my first blog (back in January 2021-March 2021) with a series I called, "The Rocket City Experiment," and the daily updates seemed to be highly appreciated and even a form of entertainment and information for strangers on the Internet. So I figured I'd try to do something similar, 4 years later (and also preparing for a cross-country move again). 

Fancy that.

Anyway, here's the last 2 sessions I did. The upper body session was a proper training session while the arm session is part of a new, optional "bonus arm day" that I've been granting myself when I feel like it, in support of my efforts of growing freaky-deaky arms for the first time in my life. My arms have steadily improved the last few years, as I've picked back up training them directly after really under-prioritizing direct arm training for much of 2017-2020. Go figure, you start training arms directly again after a few years of trying to get by with just compound exercises (which was a terribly unsuccessful way of developing my arms, personally) and suddenly, after 4 years or so they start growing better than ever.

These optional bonus arm days, which I do at most once per week, are short and quick – 12-20 minutes, typically – but I think they're helping me quite a lot. Obviously it's best to do this bonus arm day after a leg workout and with at least 48 hours between my last and next upper body day, but that's not how the cookies crumbled this week. I did upper body on Wednesday and a quick, light arm pump on Thursday night.

Even if you don't do a specific arm day, I do think frequency is very beneficial when trying to grow a specific muscle group. I actually am believing training frequency may be more beneficial than more volume – although, I also understand that more training frequency (like 3 days per week instead of 1 day per week) often leads to more weekly volume despite maybe being less volume on a per session basis) – which is why properly designed full body programs can be super beneficial for muscle growth even if only doing 2 sets per muscle group per session. 

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I've been crazy busy doing house work and yard work around my 2 houses these past couple months, plus prioritizing long dog walks, so my non-gym/garage specific exercise is quite high these days. I'm eating lots of food but burning an enormous amount of calories. It'll be a relief to hopefully sell this rental house soon and finish up some of these other projects so I can relax a bit and focus more on my online training and writing aspects of the personal training business. But, I also have another cross country move looming in the not-so-distant-future. 

When life gets busy, I find it's even more important to get my 3-4 lifting sessions in per week, being time efficient and keeping the effort high but the total training time around just 30-40 minutes. I'm so much more productive and positive when I get these 3-4 x 30 minute lifts each week along with a daily 45 minute walk or 2.

The 30 Minute Physique Experiment Day 19

09/03/2025 Training Log. Upper Body

Warm up: rear delt flyes, lying floor leg raises

Ex 1: single arm kettlebell overhead press-2x6/6

Ex 2: single arm kettlebell row-3x10/10

Ex 3: flat dumbbell bench press-8,5

Ex 4: single arm spider curls-2x15/15

Ex 5: single arm cable overhead extensions-15/15, 11/11

Total Time = 30 minutes 

The 30 Minute Physique Experiment Day 20

09/04/2025 Training Log. Bonus Arm Day

Ex 1: incline dumbbell curls-14,12

Ex 2: dumbbell skull crushers-14,10

Ex 3: incline hammer curls-14,14

Ex 4: single arm cable pushdowns-2x12/12

Total Time = 16 minutes 

Get out and lift and get some daily exercise!

Talk soon.