Maximizing Workouts When Short On Time

If you’re looking to maximize your lean muscle mass but don’t have hours to workout, this is the training program for you.

Introduction
We all have times in our life where training isn’t the number one priority. Whether that’s because you’ve got practices for multiple sports, an onslaught of exams, or are simply busy attending to your social life (lame excuse) there are times when you can’t always train as much as you’d like.

But that doesn’t mean training has to stop! You can reduce the amount of training you do, while still maintaining your current standard or even see someprogress. This article aims to discuss how you can set up a training plan which takes less than two hours of gym time per week, including warm ups that will keep you working towards your goals. We’ll conclude with a sample training plan, so if getting better while spending less time in the gym is something you’re interested in... Read on!

Choosing Exercises
Training efficiently means being ruthless with your decisions. Start by analyzing your goals and your weaknesses. Then pick exercises thataddress these two points. You should focus on compound exercises, as these will provide you with the most total value. For a well-rounded training program, it’s important to cover the basic human movements.These include the squat, hip hinge, push, pull and carry. Furthermore, in order to maximize training time, exercises should be chosen that require little set up.

Training efficiently means you have to solely focus on training when in the gym. No filling your water bottle up mid-workout, or stopping to chat to your training partner. Either you’re lifting, carrying, or performing the mobility exercises between sets. You have the other 166 hours in the week to rest.

Time Limits
I would recommend you split the 2-hour weekly training time into two 45-minute sessions and a 30-minute session. Each session begins with a 5-minute dynamic warm up.

The two 45 minute sessions should be full body sessions, and focused on the compound exercises you have chosen. Rather than specify sets, I prefer using time to control how much I do. To maximize time I’d recommend pairing two exercises together (i.e. using supersets). For example I’d pair an upper and a lower body exercise, or a push and pull exercise. Now allot a number of reps for each exercise, and the time limit for the pairing. During the session, once this time period has been completed, move onto the next set of exercises.

Quality
Despite being short on training time, I believe the 30-minute session should be devoted to performing quality reps in a large compound movement. My go-to exercise for this is the snatch grip deadlift. It provides a whole body workout, and targets the often underdeveloped posterior chain.

After the dynamic warm up use the remaining 25 minutes to get some quality reps in at a nice weight. I like rep schemes such as 8x3, 6x4 or 5x5. In between sets, perform some dynamic mobility exercises.

A Sample Training Program

The Bottom Line
Being short on time isn’t reason enough to miss training. By assessing your goals and weaknesses you can create a plan to minimize your training time, while maximizing your lean muscle and strength gains. Print this plan, set your goals, and go get after it!

To build muscle and maximize you strength gains from this type of workout, 1R would recommend the following supplements:

1. BSN Amino X - This preworkout supplement will increase muscle endurance and protein synthesis, while giving you with the needed push to take your workouts, and results, to the next level
2. Cytosport Creatine - By increasing your body's ATP production creatine will help you become more explosive, more powerful, and more athletic when taken before or after workouts
3. BSN True Mass – A post workout recovery product with 6 different protein sources will ensure that you’re maximizing your workouts