I Will Save Time At The Gym. Your Time.
So there you are promising your boyfriend or girlfriend you’ll be home from the gym in an hour. You go in and do your exercises and cardio and the next thing you know it’s two and half hours later and you’ve missed your favorite TV program and your significant other is wondering “wtf?” Or lying in a chocolate food coma.
I may or may not have had a similar experience
Your end game is to get a good workout in and do it in a short amount of time right? Well, it might be easier than you think.
1. Have a general idea of what you want to do before you set foot inside the gym.
Pick three or four big gym movements to do. Perhaps you can pick a Squat, Lunge, Pull-up and a military press. Big movements to move a lot of you around or a lot of weight. you have the added value of these compound movements working out a lot of muscles so you don’t spend more time doing isolated movements and wasting your valuable time.
2. Do each exercise consecutively.
Also called “circuits.” In our above example, we have a few options on how to do this. You can take two exercises–let’s say a squat and lunge–do one and then the other, then rest. Repeat. Finish those exercises, Move onto your pull-up and military press. Follow the same process.
You can also perform each chosen exercise consecutively then rest. Squat, Lunge, Pull-up, Military Press followed by a rest. Repeat. Start with the most demanding exercises first (squats for sure) and move down the list.
3. If you have followed the first two steps, this one might be an intuitive way to save time at the gym: Cut your cardio machine time down.
If you put in a good sweat on compound, multi-joint movements, you will likely not need to spend an hour on the elliptical device. However, if you like that sort of thing, go for it.
4. Stay off your phone.
I love gym selfies and facebooking as much as the next person, but keep it to a minimum. Perhaps a BW (before workout) selfie and maybe a short Instagram video of you doing something bad ass.
5. Take a day off.
If you don’t feel like going, take some “me” time. If you go more than three days a week, you’ll be ok. I promise. You might feel better when you return and hit some good PRs.
There you have it. Follow all five tips, and you’ll have a golden ticket to enjoying your life and recapturing lost time. Anything less, you’ll have a silver ticket. Which isn’t bad. But ultimately, listen to your body and do what you think is right.
