We’ve all been there. You’re running late and haven’t gotten a workout in. You’re really trying to reach your fitness goals and so you decided to do a shorter workout instead of your usual workout. Good for you! Exercise is tough, let’s make some aspect easier for you.
Now that you have committed to exercising, a myriad of questions will start to bombard you.
Time-crunched exercise questions
- Now what do you do?
- Do you just do part of your exercise routine?
- Do you just resort to doing your favorite exercises (the one’s you’re the best at)?
- Do you just “stretch” while checking your phone and all your various social media accounts?
Today I’m going to show you the ‘secret sauce’, the ‘behind-the-curtain’ that the best fitness professionals use when designing workouts for themselves as well as their clients. Structuring your workouts like this will lead to the best balanced strength in your body, reduce the risk of injury, and ensure that you’re burning the most calories and getting the biggest bang for your exercise buck!
Top 5 Time-Crunched Tips:
- Pick an exercise you like that fits into each main movement category. The main movement categories are: pushing/pressing, pulling, squatting, hip hinging, and carrying.
- Since you are time-crunched, make it challenging. Either go heavy for several sets, or go lighter on the weight and do reps until you’re near fatigue.
- Pair your exercises. This is often called super-sets. I recommend pairing your exercises so that while your pushing muscles are resting you are using your pulling muscles. This will help you have less down time, and get more work done, which is more effective.
- Don’t over think it. You can split hairs on exercise selection order, but when you’re in a bind, it really doesn’t matter the order, especially since you’ll be getting all the big movements in anyways.
- Add or remove exercises depending on how you’re feeling and the time left you’ve got.