For many people, a major barrier to maintaining an exercise routine is a lack of time. While for some people this is just an easy excuse to get out of going to the gym, for others it can be a genuine problem that getting in a proper workout is too time-consuming. That’s why it’s crucial that you seek ways to start saving time at the gym.
As the saying goes, if you want to do something, you’ll find a way. This certainly applies to achieving your fitness goals, but at the same time, minimizing how long you need to spend at the gym each day can only help make your routine more sustainable and your goals more achievable. If it feels like your workouts are taking too much out of your day, I’ve compiled some things you can do to speed up your training sessions.
Have a Workout Schedule
Having a workout schedule can save you time at the gym for multiple reasons. Firstly, something beginners might be tempted to do is train every muscle group each time they go to the gym. Not only does this prevent you from adequately training any single muscle group, it also ends up taking a really long time.
Instead, if you have a schedule that breaks your training up into different days, such as the push pull legs routine, you only need to focus on a few muscle groups at a time. You’ll do more exercises per muscle group, yet still reduce the total number of exercises you need to do and thus reduce the time it takes to complete them.
Furthermore, knowing ahead of time what muscles you’ll be training and what specific exercises you’ll be doing will make you more efficient at the gym. It’s like going grocery shopping; if you prepare a shopping list before you go to the store, you can go and quickly grab what you need. Otherwise, if you only start thinking about what to buy once you’re at the store, then it’ll take a lot longer. If you don’t know what exercises you’re going to do before you head to the gym, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time roaming around the gym looking for available machines and thinking about what you want to do next.
Work Out Enough, but not Excessively
As crucial as working out is for building muscle, there’s such a thing as working out too much.
It’s possible that your routine is taking a long time because you’re doing too many exercises or too many sets of an exercise. Generally speaking, to effectively train any given muscle group, an optimal routine consists of approximately 10-25 working sets per week. Assuming you train each muscle twice a week, that means you only need to do about 2-3 exercises with 3-4 sets of each for every muscle group. Those 3-4 sets per exercise refer to actual working sets in which you’re using a heavy weight and pushing to or close to failure, so it doesn’t include any sets you do for warming up or cooling down.
Doing any more than this is often considered “junk volume”, because it’s been shown that in most cases, it results in minimal additional benefit. Therefore, as long as you’re within that prescribed range, there’s no need to waste excessive time and energy. For more guidelines on how to optimize your training, please check out my post How Hard Should You Train to Effectively Build Muscle?.
Limit Rest Between Sets
Another area in which you might be able to start saving time is the rest period between each set of an exercise. For the most part, you only need 2-3 minutes of rest between sets. This is just enough time to let your muscles recover from the previous set while not being so long that your muscles start to get cold.
Although this might not sound like a lot, if you use a timer you’ll find this is plenty of time for you to catch your breath and gather yourself for the next set. However, if you’re someone who spends lots of time scrolling through social media or texting people in between sets, chances are you’re resting for too long. If you have a habit of taking lengthy breaks, start timing yourself to make sure you stay within that window of 2-3 minutes. You might find that doing so can significantly speed up your workout.
Optimize Your Cardio
Cardio is a seemingly indispensable part of many people’s workout routines. Every time they go to the gym, they feel compelled to spend half an hour on a treadmill or elliptical.
It’s fine to use these cardio machines for a quick warm-up, but if your goal is to improve your cardio or lose weight, this is one of the least productive approaches. If you’re only using a moderate pace, which seems to be the case for most people who use these machines, you’re not working out your heart nearly hard enough to achieve cardiovascular benefits and you’re burning calories at an extremely slow rate.
On the other hand, high-intensity cardio like boxing, jump roping, and high-intensity interval training are much better alternatives. These activities are much more demanding on your heart and body, and are very effective for improving cardiovascular health and burning calories.
Because high-intensity cardio is so taxing on the body, you can drastically reduce the amount of time you spend doing cardio at the gym; each session doesn’t need to be very long and you don’t need to do it every day. Compared to 30 minutes on the treadmill every day, 15 minutes of high-intensity cardio 3-4 times a week can do more for your body while requiring much less time.
Work In with Others
A busy gym is everyone’s worst nightmare. Even if you know exactly what exercises you need to do and can do them pretty quickly, you might be stuck in the gym for a while because you’re waiting at each machine for someone else to finish using it.
Whenever you encounter this situation, it’s completely acceptable to try to “work in” with someone. Instead of waiting for someone else to complete all of their sets, working in with someone is when you alternate and share a particular machine or piece of equipment. After one person finishes a set, the other person uses the same equipment while the first person is resting, and vice versa. This means you can spend less time at the gym simply standing around and waiting.
Working in with someone is totally normal, and most of the time, people are willing to let you do so if you ask. Therefore, you shouldn’t be hesitant about trying to work in with others if that means you can get through your routine much more quickly.
Make the Gym Work Out for You
Having a long routine at the gym can really make working out a burden to incorporate into your daily life and just an unpleasant experience overall; that’s why it’s so critical to find ways to start saving time at the gym. If you can do that, then you’ll be able to better commit to your fitness goals without taking time away from other things in your life.
