How to Train Faster, According to Science
If you’re struggling to find enough time to exercise, you’re not alone. While an effective workout can be long, short, or in between, we often let the time commitment of exercise become a barrier and assume it’s not worth even starting. Luckily, a review article by sports scientists has put together a set of recommendations for time-efficient strength training that will help you get the most work done in the shortest amount of time.
How much time is enough for strength training?
Anything is better than nothing, so in this sense no workout can be too short. The authors of this study note that even 15-minute workouts are likely to be effective if you do enough sets over the course of a week.
So think about your workouts for a full week and count how many sets you’ll do. Four to 12 sets per muscle group per week seems sufficient for a basic level of strength gains. (In general terms, two or three sessions of 20-30 minutes each are often sufficient for this.)
So how can you produce good enough work during these short sessions? Here are science-based recommendations.
Skip the stretching and shorten your warm-up.
When you first go to the gym, do you spend 20 minutes doing cardio, stretching, and a series of warm-up exercises? If so, you can save a lot of time by eliminating anything from your routine that doesn’t have a specific cause. (Coincidentally, this is exactly what I would recommend anyway .)
The ideal time-limited warm-up, the review authors write, is one that gets straight to the point: “[W]e advise limiting warm-ups to exercise-specific warm-ups and only prioritizing stretching if the goal of the workout is to improve flexibility.”
So skip the stretches unless you need them to prepare for the specific exercise you’re about to do , and proceed with an “exercise-specific warm-up,” which means doing easier sets of the exercise you’re about to do. For example, if you plan to squat with a barbell, you should warm up by squatting with an empty bar and then squatting with light weights before loading the bar for your first working set.
If this doesn’t seem like enough, remember that these are just guidelines and you can include anything you enjoy doing or that makes your workout more comfortable. To learn more about how to customize your warm-up to suit your needs, read our warm-up guide , where we explain the purpose of each part of the warm-up. But just because you can include something in your warm-up doesn’t mean you need it.
Choose multi-joint, bilateral exercises.
The exercises that work the most muscles in the shortest amount of time are those that are bilateral (using both arms or both legs at the same time) and in which you bend multiple joints rather than just one. Ideally, they should also include both a lifting and lowering motion.
For example, the single dumbbell biceps curl is unilateral (one arm) and single-joint (you simply ask the biceps to curl the elbow). A pull-up, on the other hand, uses both arms as well as the elbows and shoulders. If you’ve ever done a pull-up, you know they work on just about everything, starting from the waist down. This makes them ideal for training when time is limited.
The authors write that if you can only choose three exercises, do them:
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Upper body rowing (such as pull-ups or deadlifts)
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Upper body push (such as bench press, push-ups, or overhead press)
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Leg exercise (such as squats)
They write that both machines and free weights work, so you can use the leg press instead of the barbell squat or use a chest press machine instead of the bench press. If you have the option, they prefer barbells to dumbbells because the barbell lift can usually lift more weight than its dumbbell equivalent. Resistance bands and bodyweight movements can also work if they are challenging enough to complete the required number of reps.
Lift a weight heavy enough that you can do 6-15 reps.
How many repetitions should you do in each approach? This is a long-debated question, to which the authors of this article have two answers.
The ideal scenario is when you are in the gym and can choose any weight you like. Perform sets that are heavy enough that the last few reps feel challenging . These sets can range from six to 15 repetitions, and the last one doesn’t have to be to failure; you can stop when you feel you can only squeeze out a few more. (Notice how your movement slows down in the last few reps. This is a sign that you are getting closer to the result.)
Another option, if you don’t have enough heavy weights, is to perform the exercises to failure – the point where you simply cannot perform another repetition. In this case, repetitions can be from 15 to 40.
Don’t rest long between sets
Typically , you’ll rest between sets for two to five minutes, depending on the exercise . But to save even more time, you can simply rest less between sets. If you’re new to weight lifting, one to two minutes is probably all you need, the authors write. (You may not be able to lift as much weight on the bar as you could with a longer rest, but your muscles are still getting a lot of work.) To make things even easier, you can add a few time-tested bodybuilding techniques: supersets, drop sets, and Rest-pause sets give your muscles more work in less time.
How often should I strength train?
Two or three times a week is good for a full body workout. But the authors note that what matters is the total amount of exercise you do, not the number of days you exercise. So, if you can only do one workout per week, but can spend a little more time on it, you can effectively squeeze an entire week’s worth of strength training into one day.
On the other hand, if you can only spend 15 minutes a day doing it, but you can do it every day, you can still get the same amount of work done as someone who does two or three regular classes a week.
What counts as a week’s training? The authors recommend performing four to 12 sets per muscle group per week. Four is too little compared to what many gym goers do, but we’re trying to find the minimum that will keep you in shape, so if you can only handle four, then that’s four. They note that research has shown that people who are new to strength training can build muscle with very little exercise (three sets per week, according to some studies), so even a small amount of strength training is worth your time.
Returning to our three-exercise pattern, if you can complete four sets of pushes, four sets of pulls, and four sets of legs, that’s your weekly minimum. Do it in one day if that’s all you can do, or spread it out over the week. The more the merrier, but this is your minimum goal.