Time is a limiting factor for many people who workout and want to workout. Even the most good intentioned dedicated gym goers and workout enthusiasts sometimes find themselves in a bind with other commitments and cannot “find the time” to get to the gym. The ever increasing pace of life requires us to be very good at time management to fit everything we want into a day, especially our workouts. When it comes to working out I’ll bet you have a set amount of time you can dedicate to it each week and that’s it, there is no room for increasing that time. This is probably the case for almost everyone that works out on a regular basis. So if we can’t ever increase the time we spend working out, how to do we increase the results we are getting? There are a few things you can do.
In general there are only 2 basic things you can change in each workout to progress and continue to get the benefits you want.
1) Increase the amount of time working out (but as we are discussing here this is not an option for most people)
2) Increase the intensity of each workout. This can be accomplished multiple ways:
a. Increasing the amount of weight you are using
b. Use more muscles with each exercise
c. Do more reps in the same amount of time
d. Decrease the amount of rest you take between exercises
Increasing Weight used:
Even if you aren’t doing traditional weight training, you can increase the amount of work you are doing by adding some weight to any exercise you are doing. For example of you do some interval running and want to increase the amount of work you are doing you can add a weighted vest for some of your run. A vest that adds 5 or 10lbs to your weight will make you work much harder during your run. You will end up burning more calories and improve your conditioning beyond just running with your regular body weight. You wouldn’t have to do your whole run with the vest; maybe just add in 20% of the run with the vest to start.
If you are doing weights in your workout (which I would highly recommend as a regular part of your weekly workout routine) then the easiest way to increase the amount of work you are doing is to increase the weight. This means increasing the weight and doing the same number of reps. This technique works if you are working with weights well below the maximum weight you can handle. If you are already working at or near your maximum weights then you will obviously not be able to increase the weight as by definition of max you would not be able to lift anything heavier. This however is not the case for most people, and there is usually some room to move up. Even if you only go up 5lbs, that is still more work done.
Use More Muscles with Each Exercise
This is a simple and very effective way to get more work done without extending the time. For example if you are doing a bodyweight squat, you can add in a shoulder press at the same time. Now you are working your legs and hips as well as your shoulders and arms. This is substantially more work than squats by themselves. This technique of using more muscles can be applied to almost any exercise you can think of.
More Reps in the same amount of Time
This simply means doing your reps faster. So if you can do 10 bicep curls in 10 seconds. Try to do 15 in 10 seconds (with the same weight). This will be 50% more work done. You can apply this technique to almost any exercise. In the case of running or other cardio type exercises, this would just be taking more steps, or in other words, running faster. I would suggest adding in short bursts of faster running, and more reps. For example if you go for a 30 minute run. Now you could add in 30 second bursts of running faster every 5 minutes. This would increase the work done without increasing your time spent.
Decrease the Rest between Exercises
If you do an intermittent style of workout as many people do, there will be periods of rest between exercise sets. Shorten your rest periods and the amount of work you are doing will increase. This also allows you to fit a few more sets in the same amount of time.
You can apply any of these techniques to increase the amount of work you are doing and the amount of calories you are burning without every working out for any longer. I have designed workouts that incorporate most of these techniques and they produce great results. This is the new are of working out with incredible time constraints so the workout you are doing must be adaptable if you want to continue to progress.
John Barban is a Varsity Strength and Conditioning Coach and has his Masters degree in Nutrition. He is the author of a womens specific workout called the 6 Minute Circuits Workout you can find at http://www.6minutecircuits.com He is also the performance Training Advisor to a womens exercise and nutrtion resource http://www.grrlathlete.com and http://www.womensworkout.blogspot.com
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