Let’s assume that you work crazy hours. Let’s assume that your job is sedentary. Let’s assume that you spend most of your day hunched over your desk, and you rarely get up from your seat. Let’s assume that, as much as you’d love to spend hours in the gym everyday, you simply can’t afford the time. You want to be in shape, but you need a more efficient way of doing things. If I’m guessing correctly, most of you reading this should fall into the above categories. The good news is that getting and staying fit with a crazy schedule is not only possible, but it’s also the norm. The trick is to utilize your time wisely and make the most of every minute you have in the gym. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend adding the following to your toolbox:
Compound movements are good; compound movements supersetted together are even better. A superset is simply a training scheme in which you alternate one set of an exercise with a set of another exercise. Generally, it’s recommended that you implement non-competing movements with supersets so that one exercise is not negatively affected by the other. Deadlifts, for example, would pair well with something like pushups – a hip-dominant movement and a horizontal pushing movement. Another pairing I particularly like is incline bench press coupled with inverted rows. As you can see, you can superset a lower body movement with an upper body movement, or you can superset push/pull movements. The very nature of supersets allows you to save precious minutes in the gym. Let’s use the following to demonstrate: A. Deadlifts - 3 x 5, 180s rest B. Pushups - 3 x 8, 60s rest For the sake of making a point, we’ll assume that the deadlifts take 15 seconds to complete, as do the pushups, and we’ll omit the transition time from A to B. If we were to perform them as straight sets, the time it would take to complete the above would be: 3(15s) + 3(180s) + 3(15s) + 3(60) = 45s + 540s + 45s + 180s = 810s = 13 minutes and 30 seconds Not bad, right? Well, what about if we were to superset the above movements? A1. Deadlifts - 3 x 5, 60s rest A2. Pushups - 3 x 8, 120s rest I’ve decreased the rest time for deadlifts because technically you’d still be resting your posterior chain even while you’re doing the pushups, thus giving you the full three minutes’ rest. 3(15s) + 3(60s) + 3(15s) + 3(120s) = 45s + 180s + 45s + 360s = 630s = 10 minutes 30 seconds With supersets, you’ve just saved yourself three minutes. That in itself may not seem like much, but if you superset your whole workout, the time can add up pretty quickly, and you can get yourself out the gym doors up to 20 minutes earlier.
All this information is fine and well, but where should you start? To help you get moving, I’ve taken the above elements and combined them to create a number of sample workouts for you to take on the run. I encourage you to modify exercises as you see fit and, of course, a proper warm-up and cool-down is always recommended.
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