I have wasted too much time in the gym. Don’t repeat my mistake. You can progress and reach your goals quickly by training just three times a week for a little over an hour. The key here is to train smart. If you accomplish your goals every week, there is no reason or need for you to train more.
There’s simply too much fun stuff to do outside of the gym. Life is full of beautiful places to visit, interesting things to do, great people to meet, awesome books to read, etc. It is just too big a sacrifice to only focus on fitness. That being said, you should aim high with your fitness goals. Yes, you can actually train relatively little and get great results.
Full Body Routines To Build Muscle
If you train your body three times a week, you will be training all your muscles in one workout. In order to progress, you will have to do a little bit better (more repetitions) every time you train. You have to focus on Progressive Overload in order to give your body a change.
Immediately after lifting weights (for about 40 minutes), I either Jump Rope or go swim, or both (as I did during the summer). Other great ideas – a pickup basketball game or a session of punching the heavy bag.
Control Your Weight With How You Eat
You can lose weight and stay in shape by working out like a madman every day for 3-4 hours. Or you can train smart three times a week and follow an eating plan that will allow you to eat less. If you eat less, you are going to lose fat. Simple as that. This is what I did.
I read Eat Stop Eat, an ebook written by Brad Pilon. He describes himself as a nutrition professional with over seven years experience in the nutritional supplement industry. Simple and easily achievable results are what I care for. His idea delivers.
Here is the scoop: twice per week, eat nothing between 6pm and 6 pm the following day. You can drink water, green tea and coffee. What this accomplishes is that you have somewhere around a 25% reduction in weekly calories. I got leaner without counting calories and without going hard core low-carb. In essence, this is a form of fasting. The cool thing is I get a sense of heightened perception on days that I fast.
The Action Plan
To sum it up – train three times per week with a full body routine and make sure you progress add a quick jump rope session after that, and also make sure fast 1-2 times per week or (reduce the amount of food you eat in another way) and you should be getting impressive results without spending all your valuable time in the gym.
Photo by Vincent
Great article, Yavor!
Half an year ago I found my perfect training routine – and it’s not going to the gym at all.
I bought free weights from the local supermarket and started training my arm muscles after dinner every workday. Every weekend morning, I go jogging with a friend of mine in a near park.
When I have the energy and will, I also do push-ups at home.
It doesn’t require a lot of time and really helps staying fit and building muscles.
Hey wassup buddy! Your routine is good for maintaining an active body – you will not progress much from it, but it is simple and easy.
Btw, you should stop by the spidersport.com forum and say hi!
Yavor
Yavor
I’m interested in the two days a week fast mentioned above. Is it better to fast on training or non training days? I can think of reasons for either.
Regards
Colin
Colin,
it depends on your goals – if your main goal is fat loss, not eating for a few hours before your workout will greatly aid in your goal. But first you need to get used to the fasting regimen. So I’d suggest to start with fasting on non-training days and once you get used to it, start fasting on training days. If your main goal is more muscle – definitely fast on non-training days.
Hope this helps,
Yavor