When time is money, you have to use every bit of it preciously. Heath is supreme and you can’t and shouldn’t ignore it. But this generation lacks in time and seldom consider investing in long duration intense workouts. They are clearly in search of quick, time efficient workouts that give you maximum effect at minimum time investment. Time will therefore never be an excuse for avoiding exercise.
Not just health, the reason for your doing exercise could be anything. It could be to tone down your body or tone it up or simply improve on specific aspect of health such as: increase bone density or improved glucose metabolism, improve gastrointestinal transit increase blood lipid levels, reduce lower back pain or reduce arthritic discomfort. It doesn’t matter what your intension to start a workout are, all you need is a time efficient workout that powers your fitness and increases your body strength.
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The misconception about fitness and strength training sessions
What most people believe about a workout session is that it requires time with long duration of workouts. But what the bodybuilding and gym industry is hiding from you is a glaring truth. “The most effective exercises also require the least amount of time.”
Any average workout training session is filled with a lot of needless things – pointless exercises that don’t bring any improvements, absurdly long rest periods, and unproductive warm-ups. Simply put – you might be spending a lot of time in the gym practically gaining nothing.
The secret hidden from you about workouts
The secret to time efficient workout session is that “Workout intensity and workout volume are inversely proportional, so the greater the intensity, the less time you spend working out, and the less frequently you need to exercise”
In short, a lot of time is spent in the gym doing nothing and your gains are very slow, nearly negligible. The good news is that your gym time can be cut dramatically to about 30 minutes and you still can get the kind of results you want.
Most people who are considering getting initiated into strength training workouts feel they won’t be able to put in the required time to pursue multiple-set workouts.
But what they don’t realize or know is that they can get just as productive with single-set training as they would with time consuming multiple-set strength training. It is funny how muscles respond to strength training. As long as you keep you’re training hard and focused, your muscle strength is surly going to improve in addition to remarkable improvements in your health.
Research Pertaining to Strength Training Program
During a specific research, done to understand the outcome of strength training excellent results were attained by group of 1,132 participants chosen under the research program (Westcott 1996).
The results showed that only 25 minutes of strength exercise, two or three days per week were all they required. In fact, the recommended ideal strength training protocol, based on the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines (1990), is as follows:
Ideal Training Frequency: Two or Three Days Per Week
“The standard strength training recommendation of three non-consecutive days per week is sound, and should be followed whenever possible. However, in a large training study (Westcott 1996); the 416 subjects who did two strength workouts a week achieved almost 90 percent as much strength and muscle gain as the 716 subjects who did three strength workouts a week. For people who have difficulty getting to the gym three times a week, it is good to know that two strength workouts per week produce nearly as much training benefit.”
Here are some quick tips that you will need to remember while doing strength training:
- If you plan smart you can cut the gym time to the bare minimum and increase your gains manifolds.
- Intense workout sessions done for three days a week with dedication, discipline, obedience and focus will yield more results than doing long duration of workouts daily. The hgh supplements for body building will help in improving your durations of workouts.
- To master the time frame and shorten it you need to include a combination of the following – “high-frequency muscle stimulation, explosive rep speed, disciplined rest periods, progressive overload, big movements, and ramp loading.”
Employing the concept of HIIT
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and the high-intensity version of weight training is also known as the super-slow weight training is best if you want to trim your workout session. You can reduce the exercise amount to 15 minutes once a week or even lesser.
The Basic Concepts of HIIT
- As mentioned earlier the “intensity or the amount of time spent working out are inversely proportional. Meaning, the greater the intensity, the less time you spend working out.”
- Besides, as the intensity increases so does the recovery time between the sessions, hence the frequency of your workouts also goes down. Doing HIIT more than thrice a week could turn out to be counterproductive.
- Focus on super-slow weight training that turns strength training into a high-intensity exercise.
- Once you start doing super-slow weight training you can easily indulge in over training, hence you need to make sure that you don’t overdo and recover sufficiently.
- The recovery time depends from person-to-person. Some people might recover quickly and easily in just 48 hours others might take more time.
People who take longer to recover might as well take 14 days or even longer before they can start another session. “The average recovery time is somewhere between four and nine days, with seven days being the mean normal”, says McGuff, HIIT expert.
HIIT also helps battle chronic fatigue
HIIT workout comes with range of health effects, even research reports has proven the point. This can bring remarkable improvements in biomarkers associated with improved metabolic activity and thriving health that includes:-
- Improvement in insulin sensitivity and reversal of type 2 diabetes
- Normalize cholesterol, eliminating the drugs
- Reversal of bone mineral loss and reversal of osteoporosis
- Improved C-reactive protein levels
When most dietary changes such as Paleo and other exercise routine fail HIIT works when done consistently over a period of time. You start to gain the full energy levels doing this strength training routine. HIIT expert McGuff explains,  “[Forcing it] really does not work because first you have to have the capacity, and that capacity has to be brought out through intelligent programming that respects your body’s need for intensity and recovery. Once you have given someone the metabolic capability and the muscular strength to function at a higher level, then their activity levels will spontaneously rise.
Explaining further, he says, “People that have chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia; I really do believe that is a metabolic illness that involves mitochondrial down regulation, the ability to generate citrate through the mitochondria is just down regulated over time because of dietary and activity issues. And that can be cured with an intelligent application of exercise, but it cannot be fixed by saying ‘okay, I am just going to man up and bring a sledgehammer to this process because that will backfire on you.”
Here are 6 keys strength gaining exercises that are truly time efficient and amazingly health generous
While most people believe that muscle gain can be a very tedious and time consuming, it isn’t so. It just requires focus, dedication and consistency over a period of time. Short but intense workout sessions yield more results than long duration crazy workouts.
1) High Frequency Muscle Stimulation
A study was conducted in 2010 that analyzed the relationship between frequency of training and the anabolic response. The findings were a little surprising and reiterated the fact that when repeated bouts of resistance exercise are practised along with protein ingestion, it triggers growth and anabolic response. Muscle growth is stimulated as they try to adapt to stress when high frequency training is done. When body’s biggest muscle is strength trained 2-3 time per week it increases protein synthesis and muscle building.
2) Bring fastness to lift lighter weights
While strength training you can’t lift heavy weight all the time or create a heavy hammer effect on every rep. The answer lies in generating maximum tension during each rep. You have to move weight as fast and as hard as you can so that more and more muscle fibres are put to use while also maximizing the ability of nervous system to performance better without causing any pressure on your joints. Along with consistent lighter lifts, consider taking xtreme no muscle builder supplement that will help in stimulating muscle growth.
3) Disciplining and using the Rest Periods Adequately
In strength training, it is important to understand and define the rest period. Distraction during workouts diverts brain and destroys the intensity of the workout. Instead of going for a common rest period that is conventional, you should go for heavy and explosive exercises with “heavy/explosive exercises with mobility and stability work.” By doing this you’ll utilize the rest period fully while also maximizing the efficacy of the strength training.
4) Progressive and consistent Overload
To increase anabolic response need o initiate growth you need to need to make your training highly focused and progressively add the weights to the bar. Record your timings and add weight to the bar over a specific period of time.
5) Mastering the big movements
It is very important…and to repeat it very important to master big, multi-joint movement patterns as it is the crux of powered fitness and body strength training. You are best judge of your training routine because only you know what works and what doesn’t work for you. Keep the training session goals ideally placed with right amount of squat, deadlift, press, and pull variations. You need to stay consistent for at least 4 weeks to gain any traction switching between squats and front squats or trap bar deadlifts and conventional pulls.
6) Concentrate on Ramp Loading
To super charge your strength training you need to slowly increasing resistance. You can add sufficient volume to your training bouts by shortening the time and even the rest period before doing the heavier boost strengths.
Maximizing Mass by Minimizing Workout time
The exercise mentioned above has been designed in such a way that they give maximum gains at minimum time spent. They are more efficiency centric and include a good set of early big lifts in the training session and then gradual sway to slower low intensity workout. You are free to choose any of 2-3 day routine but what you must take care about is to take at least 36 to 48 hours of rest between workouts.
Something about the Cardio as well
If you intention are to gain muscles then solely relaying cardio won’t help. In fact when you do a lot of cardio you gain negligible muscle and it also hinders recovery sufficiently. You don’t want to lose on the training and strength gain, do you? So this is what you should consider doing:-
- Only low intensity cardio that includes a walk for 20-30 minutes only twice per week.
- Include lot of high intensity methods like sprints, complexes, or sled work for about 10-15 minutes a day, twice per week after training.
- Take care of not over doing it because you don’t want to hurt your goal to gain fitness and body strength. Just keep in mind that you can – Maximize Mass by Minimizing Workout time
It is important to iterate that the rest period between different workout sessions needs to be utilized optimally. The more active you stay on hour-to-hour basis the better your workout session becomes. Repeated researches have proven that sitting ideal for six hours uninterrupted reduces the positive health benefits of one hour of exercise.
Therefore in order to keep the foundation of health strong you need to stay active constantly with regular movement produces beneficial biological effects. Also ensure that you do a minimum of 7,000 steps a day and strive to exceed it beyond 10,000.
Author Bio
Tressie Dawson
Tressie Dawson is a rabid health and fitness aficionado. She is sports lover and a fitness enthusiast who believes in healthy living. Her inspiration lies in all those things that are healthy and natural. She loves to share her knowledge about health, fitness, and muscle-building too.
