How to Cut Your Workout Time

Hey, I’m coming to you live from Germany where by the time you read this, I’ll be off to Oktoberfest. Should be a blast.

However, all of this traveling around Germany (earlier this wee we were driving Porsche 911’s on the test track at their factory in Leipzig) has cut into my workout time. But I still managed a short session in the 7th floor gym (with a beautiful view) at my hotel today.

Our theme of today’s training lesson is how you can cut back on the time you spend in the gym while still getting results.

1 – Do an old-man, not an old-woman warm-up

Old ladies, like my mom, spend 10 minutes walking on a treadmill (or worse, elliptical) to warm-up.

You shouldn’t.

You need to be efficient with your warm-up. That’s why we use bodyweight circuits instead of the treadmill. Old men, like me, know the value of general calisthenics, and that’s why all of the workouts I create – and endorse – use bodyweight warm-ups.

2 – Superset & Circuit-ize your workouts to cut rest time

I’m speaking to the choir on this one, right? But when pressed for time, we can cut even more rest time in our workouts. By choosing the right non-competing exercises, as we do in TT workouts, we can almost go back-to-back-to-back-to-back with tough exercises and pretty much no rest.

For example, if your workout calls for 1A and 1B in a superset followed by 2A and 2B, you could circuit-ize these to form:

1A-no rest-1B-no rest-2A-no rest-2B-short rest, and repeat.

You’ll sacrifice a little bit of strength and muscle building, but that’s okay if you’re just doing this once and a while to cut time in your already quick workouts.

Photo of the cool view from the Munich hotel gym ==>

3 – Just do “The Best”

There are two ways to just do “The Best” of a workout.

First, because the workouts I use and endorse are ‘front-loaded’ with the best exercises early, you could just do the first superset or first few exercises of a circuit.

For example, if your workout calls for superset 1 of DB chest presses and DB rows, you could just do all 3 rounds of that
and then skip the rest of the workout – because those are the best exercises of the day.

You’ll still get 75% of the results of the workout, while cutting 67% of the workout time.

Second, you could just do 1 set of each exercise instead of 3 rounds of each superset. So if your workout calls for 3 rounds of these supersets, just do 1 round instead:

1A) DB Chest Press x 8 reps
1B) DB Row x 8 rep per side

2A) Goblet Bulgarian Split Squat – 10 reps per side
2B) Chin-up – As Many Reps As Possible

3A) Renegade Row – 10 reps per side ===>
3B) KB Swing – 20 reps

By doing just one set with minimal rest between each exercise, again you’ll get about 75% of the benefits while cutting workout time by over 67%.

We’ve been talking a lot about shorter, more infrequent workouts and I’m working on a massive article that covers every aspect of “how long to workout”.

Stay tuned for that soon.

In the meantime, here’s a proven fat-blasting program that you can use right now to cut your workout time and get massive results in less time that it takes to watch “How I Met Your Mother”, “Modern Family”, or even an old episode of “Seinfeld” (for the 17th time).

Get these workouts that burn mega-calories in 30 minutes (or less)

And spend the rest of your life doing stuff outside the gym,

Craig Ballantyne, CTT
Certified Turbulence Trainer

==> Check out 30-minute fat loss here <==