It’s frustrating when you do everything you can to get to the gym but there still just isn’t enough time to complete every aspect of your brand-new gym programme. In these moments it’s important that you don’t give up, and it can be useful to have a back-up plan for when you only have 20-30 minutes to train. Social media sites are drowning in HIIT workouts designed to exhaust you in 30 minutes or less, so let’s focus on how to perform a quick strength workout instead.
Just Do One (or Two) Strength Lifts
Strength training programmes usually revolve around one or two main focus exercises per session. These are usually big movements that target multiple muscle groups, meaning if you only get to do one or two of them you’ll still get plenty of bang for your buck.
Strength is a skill, and strength training is practice. A quick strength workout of 20-30 minutes, performed several times a week, is still a good amount of practice.
Let’s assume you spend 5 minutes warming up and 5 minutes cooling down (although let’s be honest, that could be a generous assumption for some of us!). That leaves 20 minutes.
Let’s also assume you spend approximately 1 minute performing a strength set, and 2-3 minutes resting and changing weights. That’s approximately 4 minutes per set. At 4 minutes per set and 20 minutes to train, that’s 5 sets, which is pretty decent number of sets to focus on one lift. Would you want to train this way all the time? Probably not, but I’ve definitely done this if I need to leave the gym at a certain time and don’t want to miss my squats for that week.
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Staggered Supersets
Traditional superset training goes from one exercise to the next with as little break as possible. This saves time by increasing the amount of work done between each period of rest, but isn’t always ideal for strength training because strength performance is blunted by a build-up of fatigue. This fatigue can be local (in the muscle being worked) or central (getting out of breath, or not being ready for another high-effort set).
The staggered superset adds a brief break between paired exercises, spreading your recovery time. You’re still performing a superset, which is quicker than straight sets, but you’re not tanking your performance with it. This, coupled with sensible exercise selection, can ensure you get an effective and quick strength workout.
For example, a superset of front squats and pullups with a rest time of 3 minutes could look something like this:
- Squat
- 90 seconds’ rest
- Pullup
- 90 seconds’ rest
- Repeat
EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) Work
EMOM workouts are becoming very popular for more cardio-based training styles, and is regularly used as a finisher at the end of a workout. It requires you to complete a set amount of work in under a minute, with any remaining time being used as rest before the next minute starts. For example, you may complete 8 squats in 40 seconds, which would leave you 20 seconds of recovery before starting again.
On paper, this doesn’t sound very good for strength training. 20 seconds’ rest is less than some HIIT sessions! However, no one said you have to start the next minute on the same exercise.
Here is an example of an EMOM session I currently use with a client:
- Minute 1: 6x Back Squats (the weight is approximately 75-80% of 1-rep max).
- Minute 2: 8x lateral raises.
- Minute 3: 8x bicep curls.
- Minute 4: 8x tricep extensions.
In this example, you get slightly more than 3 minutes of rest between each set of squats, and while you are not resting completely, the interim exercises are not directly impacting the squats. These isolated exercises are also much quicker to perform, netting around 30 seconds of rest per set. This means that around half the time between squats is complete rest.
You probably shouldn’t use this method if you’re focussing on hitting a new PB, but you can fit in plenty of working sets during periods where you’re slightly further away from your peak. Remember that these exercise formats are aimed at getting work done during periods where time is more restricted, and won’t necessarily be the norm.
Upper/Lower splits will work well for this format, as they keep interference to a minimum. For example:
- Minute 1: 6x Bench Press or pushups.
- Minute 2: 8x Romanian Deadlifts.
- Minute 3: 12x Band Bridges.
- Minute 4: Rest 1 minute, or go back to bench press.
Cluster Sets
Cluster sets are an incredibly underrated strength training method. Simply put, you stop your set a few reps before you reach your limit. After resting for a short amount of time, you perform a few more reps before taking a longer rest. For example:
- Perform 5 reps of squats with a weight you can squat for 8 reps.
- Re-rack the weight and rest for 10-45 seconds.
- Perform another 3-5 reps with the same weight.
- Rest for your allotted time between sets.
The exact sets, reps and times can vary, but this method will most likely net you more reps (and more practice) at a given weight than simply performing straight sets for the same amount of time. Not only that, but it’s less likely that your lifts will move into grind territory, where reps slow down and your difficulty rating increases. This might be a good indicator that you are staying fresh. Regardless of the specifics, you’re exposing yourself to more high-intensity reps with potentially less fatigue.
Note: I’m slow to use this method with clients and in my own training mostly out of a desire to “hold back” advanced training methods until progress has plateaued. However, this is pretty rare considering how long most people can continue to progress with simple training methods. There is also the potential downside that performing more high-intensity reps at a given weight may produce more long-term fatigue even if you’re less fatigued in the session itself.
Considering these points, using cluster training on the infrequent occasions where time is limited might be a way of having your cake and eating it. You’re getting to use a more advanced strength training method, but not at the kind of frequencies that might wear you down in the long-term.
EDT (Escalating Density Training)
This style of training might stray into the realm of endurance or hypertrophy training rather than pure strength training, but it still has a place on this list. Like some of the other methods, it involves filling your rest time with exercises that don’t interfere with each other, allowing you to fill your time with work.
This means going continuously from exercise A to exercise B with no rest in between, for an allotted time. Similar to cluster sets, you stop each exercise before you reach failure, meaning that when you perform the other exercise you are recovering slightly, prolonging your performance. For example:
- Perform exercise A.
- Go straight to exercise B.
- Repeat for 10 minutes.
This can build a large amount of fatigue over a given time; you definitely shouldn’t use it with top-level strength sets. Nonetheless I’ve included it on this list because, if used strategically, it can allow you to fit in a lot of repetitions in a limited time.
One day during lockdown I decided to follow an EDT format of 5 Pushups and 6 Inverted Rows for 12 minutes. I’m not great at pushups, but this ended in me performing 60 pushups and 72 inverted rows whilst preserving my technique and getting a little sweat on at the same time. Talk about a quick strength workout!
Remember What You’re Training For
Of course, if you pair cleans with sled pushes or something else crazy, this training format will absolutely wipe you out. That’s true of any training format I’ve listed here; they can all be taken to ridiculous, intense extremes. That’s why it’s important to remember what you’re training for. If you stay focussed, 20-30 minutes is still enough time to take some steps towards building strength. If you give up completely, or try to fit a one-hour workout into half the time, then your strength will be a while coming.
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