5 Tips For A Quick Lift

How often do we find ourselves wishing we had longer to train? Maybe some of us more than others, but when it comes down to it a little something is always better than nothing. For those quick in and out workouts or the ones we squeeze in at home, here are 5 guidelines you can try to follow when planning what you’re going to do:

Isolate Area’s Of The Body

Instead of doing full body, we can isolate certain areas of the body or movements to maximize our time. Whether you do a push or pull day, or even just a chest workout, isolation will break down your options a bit more and still be effective. This is especially if you have the chance to do short quick ones multiple times a week. Depending on your goals you may need large rest times in between but we can always superset our lifts with core, isolation exercises and stretching.

Do Supersets or Circuits

Pick 4 big things, get in and get out. Superset them if you need to or do them all in a row. Now if you’re going for pure strength gains this is probably not ideal, and you can still do 2 supersets to get 4 things done, but you will want to superset your big heavy lifts with something light like core. Either way if we pick 3-4 exercise’s that are fairly easy to do back to back or one after the other we can save a bit of time.

Do Functional Movements

Nothing solid was built overnight, again, but you can pick certain movements that are a better bang for your buck. When doing compound movements a lot of muscles are involved at once, and these are usually movements that we have to perform on a daily basis. To prevent injury having a strong core is important - it means we will also have stronger balance. Doing movements like deadlifts, squats, overhead presses and pushups work the entire body as a whole and combination exercises like squat to overhead press incorporate this even more. There are many benefits to doing a squat to overhead press vs the two movements separately and vice versa, but if we are just talking about the time, you will get the 2 movements done quicker if you combine the two. If it works with your goals and the workout you’re doing that day, why not?

Time Your Breaks

Keeping track of how long we take between our sets is beneficial to our fitness but also to getting more done in a pinch. Set the timer for 30-60 seconds (again depending on your goals) between each set to make sure you’re not taking longer than necessary. Doing this can also help you prepare a workout ahead of time and plan effectively. If we pick 5 exercises to do in 30 minutes, but they’re all similar to each other and we end up needing 2-3 minute breaks in between instead of 30-60 seconds this will add up over the workout as a whole.

Stretch Between Sets Instead Of Skipping It

Unless you are doing heavy strength training (5 reps or less) this could be a good way to still get your stretching in and use your rest breaks effectively. You can stretch the muscles you are working if the area is tight or you can stretch an area you have worked previously in the workout thats not currently being used as much.

Hope these can help!

Happy exercising :)

Robyn