Workout Length - too short?

Lothaar

I get 45 mins altogether each time I hit the gym, including a 10-min warmup. This means 35 mins of lifting, with 60 second breaks between sets.

It's a three-day split: back and tris, chest and bis, legs and shoulders.

I do this three times a week, along with HIT, abs and cardio stuff on the other days.

MY question is: Is 35 mins lifting per session enough to grow?

Thorbar

I'm absolutely no expert but from my personal experience I'd say that's good. I only do 25 minutes per workout but I do 5/6 sessions a week and I've found I can get plenty of work done in that time. I don't do any warm up or stetching either.

amazingemmet

Post goals and other stats if you can

But finishing in the 45min mark is an alright goal due to rising cortisol levels and lowered nutrient levels etc

iregk

Well there is nothign wrong with your time. You may be thinking this as some people say they spend 2hr a day. This is usually a waste of time as your body has burned up its fuel long before the 2hr mark and your just not working to your peak. Cut it shorter and you are working on your boost more.

Also, little advice here and i find that this does me good. Your shoulders are a large muscle group where you will lift heavy weight, like your chest and legs. Try not to mix these into the same day.

Doing squats for example on your leg day is using up the largest muscle group in your body. After this your going onto shoulders to work another large muscle group. Try to split your workout large/small. I know after my shoulder or leg workout I do be wrecked and couldn't face mixing them. You shoudl get better results by breaking them up.

Lothaar

iregk wrote:

Also, little advice here and i find that this does me good. Your shoulders are a large muscle group where you will lift heavy weight, like your chest and legs. Try not to mix these into the same day.

I only have three days and I do chest, back and legs on three separate days. They are larger muscle groups than shoulders, so I figure it's more important to split them.

Stats: 6'2", 86kg (after shedding a fair bit of weight over the last 6 months). Don't know bf% or anything.

Goals: I want to get bigger and lose flab. I don't have any goals in terms of what weight I want to lift.

Dragan

Hey dude,

If your training for size then don't worry about the length of your workouts, I have added nice mass in under 30 mins in the past, and I will do so again in the future.

Personally I tend to pair a weak bodypart with legs. You get a nice little hormone boost on leg days if your doing the right thing and I have used this added element to my recovery to help me no end in the past!

If your short on time then supersets, giant sets, drop sets are all things you can look at doing to really hit the muscle! The main problem with most of these techniques is people use them too often or at the end of a 2 hour chest session!

Now then, you could also give TBT a try, which is total body training but the time limitation might cost you on that. However, doing a full body circuit nice and quickly should incinerate bodyfat in time, and you mass should stay as you can still move decent weight during it!

Finally, keep that diet in check and clean as you can, you know yourself that where most victories are won.

Sorry to hear about the Kent game aswell, as i know you were looking forward to it.

justsomebloke

Truthfully I would drop the 3 day a week split and go with a 3 day full body workout programme as you would probably see better results from this.

also I personally would drop the HIT if I was trying to bulk instead keeping to HIIT and LIT workouts

Lothaar

JSB - Sorry, I meant HIIT. I'll do a 20-min HIIT session (that includes warmup and a 5 min break in the middle) or I'll cycle for 2 hours at low intensity, depending.

I would do a full-body workout, but is it possible to get a decent workout in 35 mins? I get to do about 16 sets in total. Could that be split between the whole body and still be effective? And should I do different exercises on each day, so I'm still getting a TBT but hitting muscles differently?

Dragan - the other reason I paired shoulders with legs is to take advantage of the GH produced on legs day.

I was sickened that we didn't get to play Kent. Actually, three games have now been cancelled in the last few weeks because of unplayable pitches! Crazy. Our season kicks off this Sunday, with a game at 1pm in Sportslink, Santry. If you're in the area, you're welcome to come along and watch it from our sideline.

p-nut

Lothaar wrote:

I would do a full-body workout, but is it possible to get a decent workout in 35 mins? I get to do about 16 sets in total. Could that be split between the whole body and still be effective? And should I do different exercises on each day, so I'm still getting a TBT but hitting muscles differently?

If it helps, you could forget about doing the smaller muscle groups that are worked indirectly when doing the compound movements. Take arms for example, triceps worked during chest press and biceps are worked doing lat pull downs or other back exercises. I used to be able to get a heavy total body workout before school 2 days a week last yr.
It looked a lot like this as far as i remember:
Squats, flat bench press, lat pull down, shoulder press and some ab work. if you were to do 3 sets of each that means 15 sets in total, but ideally you could throw in a few other exercises.
also doing different exercises each day is the best way to do it as you will shock the muscles into growth.
hope that helped and good luck

Dragan

Man, the weather is playing havoc with your season alright! Sadly I will be down in Galway this Sunday ( that’s the second time I've gotten an invite to your game and had to turn it down but I WILL make one soon, I swear! ) nursing a hangover!

For a good TBT session , you could try something like this?

Day 1
Bench - 2 warm up, 4 working sets, 1 back off set
Barbell Bent Over Row Superset 3 sets - 8 to 12 reps
Standing Military Press ( barbell ) 3 sets 8 to 12 reps
Tate Press - 1 warm up, 2 work sets
Dumbell Hammer Curls - 1 warm up, 2 work sets.
Leg Press

Day 2
Squats!!! - 2 warm up, 4 working sets, 1 back off set!
Chins/Push Ups Superset ( if you find push ups easy, then preexhausting the lats with chins will make them harder for you! )
Seated Pitcher Raise ( high pinky finger seated lat raises basically )
Glute Ham Raises

Day 3
Deadlifts! - 2 warm up, 4 working sets, 1 back off set
Incline Dumbell Presses - 3 sets
Seated Shoulder Dumbell Press - 3 sets
Barbell Curls
Dips
Lunges/Bulgarian Split Squats

I'm giving you the credit of having a nice fast recovery given your sport, and if you don't now you will after trying to get all the above into a 30 minute session. I regular do workouts like the above in 30 mins. You just need to walk in with a no faffing about attitude and realise that fatigue will make you lifts harder, and might make you weaker, but this is no bad thing. Not for guys like you! Not many people get to try and perform at 100% all the time, you need to be able to churn it out when tired as well.

You'll notice I have dedicated the first exercise to the one of the Big Three each day, hit them hard and watch youself grow, then give the rest of the body a bit of a hiding as well!

I would do the above for 8 weeks, then chance it up again, working in an "explosive" 6 to 8 weeks to help work on overall power while retaining muscle mass and leaness.

Lothaar

Thanks for that - I think I'll start on it next week and see how I get on. You're welcome at any of our games, dude.

Lothaar

Dragan - I started on the above routine this week and I have a question:

On Day 1, is it a good idea to superset bent-over row and military press, and then superset tate press and hammer curls? This saves a good bit of time. I would like to superset more exercises on the other days too.

I don't know the pros and cons of supersetting, but the biggest pro for me is it allows me to get more reps into the time I have.

Dragan

Sure thing dude, work in those supersets as they will up intensity and workload in a shorter space of time!

Hanley

I'm a big fan of supersetting smaller muscles groups like my arms, and also supersets where I combine different parts of my back (pulldowns, face pulls and bent over laterals 3 in a row are my favourite).

I'm not really able to superset bigger muscle groups but that's more of a personal thing than anything.

Money Shot

I normally workout in 20-30 minute spurts, and very rarely go over 40 minutes these days. Supersets will obviously be a big part of this, and they work great - although sometimes I don't superset compound exercises. There are so many variations you can do to change your routine with supersets.

This works really well for me, and I can't see myself ever going back to one hour plus sessions. Quality not quantity now.
I can concentrate on all body parts better - in longer split routines, the temptation was always there to leave legs, tris, bis at the end of the workout as your so tired. Add it in next work out, but Invariably something got left out.
Shorter workouts are much easier to fit into a busy life, and you never have to compromise family, work etc
Recovery is much easier fro me from shorter workouts.
When you only have a short time you will work hard and fast and not be standing around, talking etc.
You are much more likely to stick to your routine too - sometimes the thoughts of such a long workout can wear you down and you end up missing a lot of sessions.

I'm sure some people would laugh at a 20/30 minute workout, but I think it is possible to achieve more in 6*30 min sessions than 3*60 min. Same gym time, just more productive.