Has something ever been so important to you that it’s all you can think about? When you’re awake, it’s the only thing you want to do. You don’t get bored of it no matter how long you spend doing it and you dream about it when you fall asleep.
This is how I feel about training. If I didn’t get tired, I would train even more than I already do. There are so many interesting ways to move the human body and there are endless progressions, especially when learning new genres of movement as an adult.
However, I realize that this is a unique perspective. Even for the 1% of us who like training as much as I do, we have obligations that often take precedence over our wants – family, work, and other obligations.
So, putting myself in my clients’ shoes, and imagining I had limited time and capacity to train, this is what I would do:
Option 1 – Dedicate 3 days to training 1.5 hours per session
I understand that 1.5 hours of training can be tough to carve out of many schedules, but this is why I’m providing multiple options. All 3 days would have a similar structure in this scenario, but the 3 workouts would be different in order to expose my body to various stimuli while maintaining enough consistency week to week to drive some level of progress. Exactly how I would go through every workout would make this blog post way too long, so we will keep it at the 1000 foot level for practical purposes.
Each day I would warm up with exercises that target my weakness areas – the back side of my shoulders, glute engagement, tight chest, etc. These choices would be determined by how much I currently need support in a particular area and which exercises I’ll be doing later.
From here, I would move into some form of unilateral strength training for the upper or lower body and then follow that up with a bilateral exercise – for example, single arm rows into pull-ups, or lunges into deadlifts.
After this, I would transition to weighted range-based training (AKA mobility work) on 2 of the days, and on 1 of the days I’d do some type of dynamic movement, whether that be jumping, throwing, or even something simple as arm and leg swings.
Option 2 – Dedicate 30-45 minutes to training 5-6 days per week
In this scenario, I would still warm up with supportive pre-hab exercises, then I would move into a single exercise or single superset and really hit it with focus – not necessarily intensity, but with high quality and appropriate rest between sets.
Example: a good glute warm up and some challenging rear foot elevated split squats one day, or good upper body prep and then weighted pull-ups. The next day completely focused on mobility. A more athletic day focused on dynamic movement like jumping, running, throwing, etc. And one day with a superset of some type of upper body push and lower body pull.
In both scenarios, I would keep the workouts very similar for 3-4 weeks and add sets or increase reps by the 4th week as the progression before moving on to a new sequence of exercises.
Both options are imperfect for various reasons, but would 100% allow you to build a reasonable degree of fitness as someone who has not dedicated their entire life to training. 30 minutes a day or only 3 days a week is enough to be healthy as long as you also integrate good sleep, hydration, and nutritious food into the mix.
So, the next time you’re feeling time crunched, rather than trying to force excessive training that leaves you stressed and exhausted, imagine the most doable scenario based upon your schedule. Consistency will win in the end, so even if you aren’t doing the most elaborate or intense workouts, you will make progress if you get the work done in a structured way week after week.
It’s so easy to think a program requires an otherworldly time commitment or unwavering discipline, but a program can be as tightly structured as necessary, and its power will come from getting you to train the same drills repeatedly over time instead of just doing random workouts with poor focus.
My training may not look like yours and I may enjoy training more than the average person, but I think we are all just trying to fit in what we can and make the most of it. Whether you’re training for 30 minutes or 2 hours, create some form of structure or “program” and follow it. Put your focus into every minute of your workout. This is how you make progress happen.
