A Time Efficient Lift

Image courtesy of vcplworld.com

As my schedule has gotten busier and busier the need for me to efficiently execute tasks throughout my day has increased, and this includes my training.  Gone are the days when I could lift for two and a half hours or have a 90 minute lift and two hours of basketball practice and still have the time to get done what I wanted to outside of the gym.

Add in my sleep schedule on top of this and long, hard workouts became both less appealing and less beneficial.  I still needed to figure out a way to create the adaptations I wanted to create while working more hours than I had ever worked and sleeping less than I had ever slept.

Three major things happened in order for me to get my workouts where they are today.  First, I cut down on my warm-up time.  Instead of going through ten to fifteen minutes of ground based warm-up followed by five to ten minutes of a more specific warm-up for that day, as can be found in the first year (+) of SMS, I get through my warm-up in five to eight minutes tops and then use the first four sets of my core lift for that day as well as my first pair of accessories as an extension of my warm-up.

Second, I switched to total-body lifts.  Blasting one body part every day each week was getting more and more difficult to recover from on 3 hours of sleep.  With total-body lifts, I can spread the volume over many tissues and joints each day, never annihilating anything but rather stimulating enough for growth.

Third, I started getting my smaller accessory lifts in while I was resting between sets of my core lift.  Instead of setting ten to twenty minutes aside to, for example, hit arms and abs at the end of my training day, I now get those in between sets of squats.  That way, by the time I finish my squats, all I have left is about twenty minutes for a push and a pull accessory and conditioning.

So, this is a skeleton layout of what my lifts now look like:

A1) Warm-up (5-8 minutes)

B1) Heavier Core Lift (4 warm-up sets, 6 working sets)
**One of the following (B2-B5) between each set of Core LIft**
B2) Small Accessory #1 (arms, upper back, grip, etc) x 3 sets
B3) Small Accessory #2 (arms, upper back, grip, etc) x 3 sets
B4) Abs #1 x 2 sets
B5) Abs #2 x 2 sets

C1) Upper Body Push, Pull, or Lower Body Accessory #1
C2) Upper Body Push, Pull, or Lower Body Accessory #2
C3) Conditioning (~60 seconds/set)

**Group C is performed for ~20 minutes, typically getting three to four rounds in**

I can get through this in 60 minutes and still hit everything I want to hit while, over the course of the week, getting in the volume I want to get in in a manner that still allows me to recover each day and put on muscle, increase strength, and drop fat on three hours of sleep.

As long as I make sure my nutrition is on point and I'm not trying to do too much in my workout, I typically feel really good and have been able to see very steady progress since switching over to this format.

This is by no means a 60-minute miracle lift, but if you feel pressed for time or feel like you aren't getting enough done when you are at the gym, consider reformatting your workout to maybe something closer along these lines.  This could easily be done in 30-45 minutes by simply cutting the volume of the core lift as well as knocking off a set of everything else.

How much time do you usually have to train each day?  Do you feel you get everything done during that time that you would like to?

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form?  You can, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yel­low box below!