Oct
12
If you’re like me, you know the biggest obstacle to overcome when it comes to working out is finding the time to do so. Sure, you can do an quick 10 minute workout in the morning, but anything more than that takes quite a bit of time. A good weights routine followed by a decent cardio workout, can easily last two hours when you toss in some time changing clothes and showering. So I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out little tips and tricks for maximizing my time at the gym, and here’s one of the best things I’ve come up with.
Rest Periods, A Necessary Evil
If you really look at where your workout times goes, you’ll notice that a lot of it is devoted to standing around and not working out. These times are rest periods and they are necessary if you’re doing a challenging workout with a good amount of weight, or are they? If you’re using a challenging weight and a good number of reps, you should be barely able to finish your set. For example, if you’re doing 15 bicep curls, then ideally, you should barely be able to do the 15th curl and you should definitely be unable to do a 16th. Now if you’re doing multiple sets, that means you need to rest between them. This rest period is only 1 or 2 minutes at the most, but it adds up.
My basic workout is 6 exercises in a day, 4 sets of 10 reps for each one. That’s 24 sets total. If I rest for just 1 minute between each one, I’m actually spending 24 minutes resting. The sets themselves take me around 45 seconds to a minute, but the rest periods are doubling the amount of time I need for a complete workout. In other words, I’m getting a good workout but I’m spending more time resting than I am working out.
But You Have To Rest, No?
Well, yes and no. You have to rest the muscles you just used, you do not have to rest your entire body. Let’s go back to that bicep curls example. A bicep curl gets its name from the fact that you’re curling your arm up using your bicep muscle. That’s relatively obvious. If you stretch out your arm in front of you, palm up, the biceps are the muscles on the top part of your upper arm. These are the muscles used to pull things towards you and to bend your elbow in. On the other side of your upper are is a muscle groups called the triceps. These are responsible for pushing things away from you and for straightening your elbow out.
The great thing about good exercises is that they focus on specific muscle groups. So guess what, those bicep curls focus on your biceps. They do virtually nothing for your triceps. So when you’re done with that 15th bicep curl, your biceps are worn out and need some rest, but your triceps are rested and ready to go. They haven’t done anything yet. So why are you standing around resting your entire body when it’s only your biceps that need rest?
How Do We Use This?
It’s simple. Alternate exercises so that different muscles are used in consecutive sets. In our previous example, I can do a set of bicep curls followed by a set of tricep extenstions. The triceps set takes 1 minute and that gives my biceps the 1 minute of rest they’re looking for. That means that, at the end of my triceps extension set, I can jump right back into biceps curls. Rather than 1 set of exercises every two minutes, I am now doing 2 sets every two minutes. The muscles being worked are still getting 1 minute of rest between each set because I use a different set of muscles every set. My workout time just went down to 24 minutes…
Different Muscle Groups On the Same Day
If you look at previous workouts I’ve discussed, like the 4 day workout, you’ll see that most days have two muscle groups in them. That means you can alternate muscle groups as you do your exercises. Even legs day can follow the same pattern since your legs have very different muscle groups in them. Do a exercise like the lunge, followed by a set of calve or thigh exercises.
Warning
I said before that you don’t need to rest your entire body, but that’s not completely true. Your body as a whole does get tired but at a much slower rate than individual muscles. So you may want to take some breaks. For example, I do 8 sets of alternating exercises and then a 1 minute break. Total workout time is still under 30 minutes but I don’t get completely worn out that way.
Summary
This is just one little trick to save time at the gym. If you have any others, please share them with us.
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Comments
4 Responses to “How To Maximize the Efficiency of Your Workout Time”
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very informative blog ya have here. added to my RSS. i tend to need more rest when i do supersets. i usually take about a minute or less between other sets.
That’s indeed a good tip! It’s what I do as well (and also the reason why I tend to avoid crammed weight-lifting classes where you have to wait and wait and wait until a machine or a bench finally is free). Usually, I’ll work muscles in my arms/upepr body, then switch to sets with the lower body, and so on. I found out it gives me enough rest, so why loitering around doing nothing and wasting precious time when you can avoid it!
Exactly! I’m not at the gym to waste time, I can do that just fine at work
What times do you usually go Kery? I find that early morning works well if you want an uncrowded gym. Mid afternoon works as well if your work schedule allows it.
Gal
I tend to go in the mornings as well–Saturday mornings, or on days when I have a class from 8 to 9 then nothing for several hours. I used to go to an afternoon scheduled class at 4 pm, but it was definitely overcrowded, and I grew very tired of waiting in line for five minutes just to do a few sets on one machine. In the mornings, at least, there are less people, and you don’t bump into someone else every step or so.