#42: 5 ways to save time in your weight training sessions
[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host. And today we are going to talk about five ways that you can save time in your weight training, because we are all very busy. And sometimes you just don't have an hour, hour and a half to spend at the gym. But before we get into that, I want to just tell you that I was in the weight room this morning.
Which is really surprising. I am not a morning lifter. And today was another example of why I'm maybe not because my body just is not so awake in the morning, but I went with a friend of mine. Now this friend of mine, she's 54. She's a little bit older than I am. I'm 52 and she's very, very active in all kinds of aerobics classes.
So she loves to go to dance classes and to attack classes and these kinds of [00:01:00] things. Three, four times a week. And she also runs on in the summer and does cross country skiing in the winter. So really in quite good cardiovascular shape, but she doesn't weight train. And it was actually really interesting to be with her in the weight room because this pointed out how strong the genetic component is in the end, as far as how you're going to look when you've been weight training.
Now, I'm somebody who does not build muscle really very well at all, even when I was younger in college doing strength training with a coach because I was playing lacrosse and we were doing various exercises to help us with our lacrosse performance. Anyway, even back then, you know, I was not building huge amount of muscle.
I mean, I look. toned like I do now, but [00:02:00] you know, not, not the kind of like big, big muscles that you see on some people. Well, my friend is like the opposite end of the genetic spectrum. I mean, we're sitting there doing, uh, shoulder presses and I'm just looking at her biceps, which of course show when you're doing shoulder presses at the bottom.
And I'm thinking, man, she doesn't even, she doesn't even like do anything. And she already has like bigger biceps than I do. And it is just so unfair. But so just a reminder to you as well, that we all start with a totally different canvas for one, from one another, and you should appreciate the things about your body that are good, uh, you know, and then other people have a totally different canvas.
I mean, think about like hair. I have really straight, very thin hair. And, oh, every time I see [00:03:00] somebody with thick, lush hair, I'm like, oh my God, I wish I had that hair. And then they start telling me that, yeah, but you know what? Every time I wash it, I'm like stuck blow drying it for an. And then I'm thinking, yeah, you know, I kind of like the fact that I don't ever have to blow dry my hair because it dries just air dries all by itself in like 10 minutes.
So, yeah, we are all different. We need to appreciate what we've. Got and learn to work with that. And it's also a reminder that when you see somebody online and you see that, Oh, wow, that person is, you know, doing these kinds of exercises and look at how big their glutes are, for example, or whatever. And they say, Oh, I got my glutes doing this.
Well, you know, it might be that their mom and dad had something to do with it. So their genetics plays really a big role in what your results will be. Genetics plays a role in a lot of different things as well. Uh, so [00:04:00] anyway, just a good reminder. So on to the topic of the day, which is how to save time in your workout, because we are busy.
And even though I, I mean, I love the days when I can go into the gym and I don't have anything after my kids are with my ex. I don't need to cook. I don't need to clean. I don't, I don't need anything like I have no dog to take care of because she moves with the kids and I can just enjoy my workout.
But then there are the times that I know that I have an hour and then I got to go. And if I haven't finished everything, then I still got to go. So then I take into use a lot of these tips and tricks for making the workout faster. But of course you can use these tips and tricks every day if you want to.
So the first thing where you can save a lot of time is to do an efficient warmup. A lot of people and even personal trainers [00:05:00] are kind of stuck in this rhythm of 20 minutes of cardio on a bike or jogging or something before your strength training. But you actually don't need to do that. Now, a lot of people feel good when they do that.
And that's absolutely a very, very valid reason for doing it. If you enjoy doing it that way, then keep doing it that way because cardio, you know, is important. And if that gets your body in the mode that, Hey, now I'm going to do something, then be my guest. But I'm telling you that you don't need to. A very efficient warmup is to do some mobility exercises.
So since I split my workouts into upper body and lower body days, then on upper body days, I don't worry about warming up my legs. You know why I'm
not going to use them. So I worry mostly about my shoulders, my wrists, my spine, and I do some light mobility. Then I head [00:06:00] straight over for my first or to my first exercise, and that is always going to be a compound exercise.
So that means that you're using many joints at the same time, and I will do that compound exercise with low weights. Um, so I use that to actually warm up my body and the kind of double benefit of that is that at the same time as you're warming up, you're getting your body used to doing that exercise again.
You're perfecting that skill, uh, reminding yourself of how you do. That particular motion. So I start my first set with 50 percent of what my working weight will be. Now that is very light. So, and it feels light. And I do, well, kind of depending on the day, do like 10 or 12 reps there. Depends on how much I need to warm up.
So for me, it's a shoulder press. That I am starting with [00:07:00] in my current program and my shoulders are one of the areas that I do want to warm up really properly. So I've already done like shoulder mobility, uh, exercises, and then I start with these light shoulder. And if I feel any kind of oddness in my shoulders, then I will do a little bit longer set of that 50 percent weight to really kind of wake them up, warm them up.
So they feel good. And then. I will increase the weight. So it's about 80 percent of my working weight and do just a few at that weight because you don't want to be tiring yourself out at this point, right? This is a warmup. So I might just do four reps there. Now, this is something you have to kind of get to know your body.
So usually with my shoulders, that's good enough for me. So I do the 50%, the 80%, and then I go to my working weight. If I'm working lower [00:08:00] body, however, Like let's say I'm doing Romanian deadlifts, then I might do three warmup sets where the last one is very close to my working weight, but I might do just two or three reps just to make sure that I can maintain my form and you know, my technique when I'm getting like getting to the point where I'm pushing.
And that would be a very, very short set. So, and this is something you can play with. One little indicator, uh, by the way of whether that warmup is sufficient is if when you get into your working sets, and I generally do three working sets of each exercise. If I noticed, That set two, I can actually do more reps than I was able to do in set one, then that is a clue to me that maybe I didn't warm my body up enough.
Okay. So that's just something you can think about too. So that was a lot about the warmup, [00:09:00] but the point is that you can have a very efficient warmup if you do a little bit of mobility and then get right into exercise number one and use that as your warmup. Okay. Now, the second way that you are going to save time , when you go to the weight room or do your strength training at home is you come in with a program, you know, so, and by the way, to get better results, you need to come in with a program.
The best way to build muscle is going to be by doing the same program for many weeks in a row. Okay. And progressively overloading as you go. I've talked about this on a lot of the past episodes. If you're new to the podcast, then please, I really recommend that you start at that way beginning because there I go through the fundamentals kind of really going down to the very, very, very basic level.
And that is something that I [00:10:00] think everybody should have. So you know what you're doing, so you don't need to like hunt around and think, Hmm, maybe I feel like doing chest today. Maybe I feel like doing shoulders or, you know, well, which one should I do first? Oh, which machine, you know, all this kind of thing, or figuring out your weights.
Cause that always takes a while if you're like, Oh, okay, no, this is too light. Oh, nope. This is too heavy. And you know, all that. So come in with your program. And once you've done the program, once you know what your weight. Is because the first time that you do a new program, you will go in and figure out your weights.
And the second time you go in, you already know what your weights are. So you just. Pick up the correct weight or put the pin in the right place on the stack or you know, whatever So you're able to get right to it. So number three is Very much related to number two, which is track your lifts Because even if you have the program, even if you know, like what exercises you're going to [00:11:00] do, you, if you know what weights you've done last time, and then how many reps you've done of those weights, you know what you're aiming for this time.
So for example, today on bicep curls, I could see that, okay, I am going to be curling 10 kilos and I'm aiming to do eight reps. So then I get started and I think mentally also the fact that if you know what you did last time and you're trying to do a little bit more. So last time I did seven, seven, seven.
So now this time I'm trying to do at least one more rep than I did last time, which means I could do seven, seven, eight or eight, seven, seven, you know, but to get one more rep that like psychologically also. Tells you that, Hey, I've
already done seven, seven, seven. So now, you know, I'm ready to like push [00:12:00] myself to do a little bit more so track.
And by the way, I have a free tracker that you are welcome to download and start using. Link is in the show notes. All right. So that was number three. Number four is using supersets. Supersets is when you pair two exercises together. So instead of going through and doing like, uh, bicep curls, taking a break, doing again, bicep curls, taking a break, and then your third set of bicep curls, and then taking a break and moving on to your triceps.
You would Pair your bicep curls with your tricep extensions and do one set of biceps, one set of triceps, then take a break, then your second set of biceps, second set of triceps, take a break, then your third set of biceps. [00:13:00] Third set of triceps and take a break. And this gives you a little bit of a faster pace of getting through your sets.
Because if you are going, you know, bicep, bicep, bicep, you know, as far as the sets, you need to take about a minute, minute and a half break between each of those bicep sets. Now, if you go bicep tricep, then. Your biceps are in a way getting to rest while you're doing your triceps. So you can go bicep, tricep, and then take a little bit of a break, bicep, tricep, and then the break.
You see how that works? And so what are the exercises that you pair together? The exercises need to be ones where you're not using the same muscles and. If you're being efficient in your programming, you're going to usually have like exercises that hit different muscle groups, right? You're not going to have two [00:14:00] different bicep exercises.
Um, of course, if you're like crazy on arms and you know, you're really trying to grow your biceps and you're going in and only do your biceps, you might do that. But for most of my clients who are really just concerned with. Keeping their whole body fit, you're, you're not going to do that. So you could pair something like your chest and your back.
So if you just think about your body, what are opposite things? Your chest is on one side of your body. Your back is on the other side of your body. So you could pair like a chest press with a row motion. They're opposite the bicep and the tricep, the front of your arm, the back of your arm, uh, the front of your leg and the back of your leg.
So you've got your quads and you've got your hamstrings. So go on the leg extension machine, do a set, and then do the seated leg curl and, , train your hamstrings and take a break. Then do your quads again, your hamstrings again,
so that [00:15:00] will really save you a lot of time. Now, a little bit of a challenge with that is that if you are in a weight room and there are other people there, you can't really be reserving two machines, right?
So be conscious of the other people around there. Today we had a woman, she was like, she was reserving a bench. But then she wasn't using it right then because she had to use it like two exercises of, you know, forward. And it was literally the only bench. Available because they were having some kind of group class there and they'd taken all the benches, which I think was crazy.
But in any case, so then I went up to the woman and I said, you know, are you actually using that bench right now? Could could be use it now while you're doing these things where you're not using the bench. Anyway, so yeah, if you're doing the supersets, just keep in mind that there are other people in the gym and be polite about not [00:16:00] hogging all the equipment or all the machines.
All right. So that was like one, two, three, four. Okay. So the fifth one is the fifth and last one is the order of your exercises. So your program, , comes in a certain order. And at least when I program, I actually think about what order I put the exercises in there. It does to some degree make a difference.
What order? Uh, for example, the first thing that you do, you would want to start with your compound movements because those require more coordination and are often more tiring for your body. You often want to start with those. , and then another reason why you might want to push something up first, like earlier in your workout is if it's a muscle that's lagging, in other words, it's weaker than some of the other muscles that you have, or it's not responding as well, or it's [00:17:00] something that you really want to emphasize, then you would train that a little bit earlier in your training session.
So for me, um, I do arms. As, uh, exercise three and four right now in my own personal training, because I noticed that my biceps and triceps are kind of slow to develop and I want to have them a bit earlier in my session, but okay, so that was maybe a little more information at order. But, you know, you can be flexible about the order.
Um, I would still maybe start with your compound exercise that you have listed first in your program. You know, if you're working with me, I would still use that because I generally choose that to be something that is actually very good for warming up with. But then the other ones. you can, you know, start to switch out the order.
One more comment just about switching the order, uh, is that recognize that if you switch the [00:18:00] order, it may also affect how many reps you're able to do. Okay. Um, because let's say, for example, you're doing pull ups and that uses your bicep muscle. Right. If you have just done pull ups and you've been doing them really hard, your biceps are somewhat tired from doing that.
So then if you were to rearrange and instead of doing your arms last, you're doing them next, they might not perform quite as well because they've just. So just something to be aware of and don't panic, you know, if all of a sudden you're not able to do as many reps as you were able to do last time, that is perfectly normal.
That it is not a linear progression always it's, you know, that would be lovely if always, Oh, I can do [00:19:00] one more and, and increasing the weights and increasing the reps every time. But sometimes you're going to do. Less than you did last time. And certainly when you switch the order, that may very well happen that you'll be doing a little bit less than you did last time.
Yeah. So I'm always explaining these things a lot, but hopefully that is helpful to you. And then, so that was the five, but one thing I do want to mention, which I wouldn't skip as far as saving time is the cool down and. I actually recommend a three to five minute cool down. I mean, You know, I'm busy and I just want to get the heck out of there when I'm done, you know, I'm off to do my next thing.
So my cool down is generally just gentle mobility. And the, the idea behind the cool down is really to, first of all, like, [00:20:00] You know, get a little bit of blood flow and, and, uh, you know, oil your joints again, but also to mentally tell your body that, okay, now we're done with the hard stuff. And now we want to get back out of that stressed state because exercise is a stressor for the body.
Even if it is a good thing, it is still a stressor. And we want to get out of that stress state where your body is breaking down muscle. into the rest and recovery state where your body starts to build muscle, repair muscle, your muscle actually happens after your weight training session, like the muscle growth happens.
So that gentle mobility exercises, and while I'm doing them, I lower my stress levels by doing breathing exercises. And that sounds very woo woo. It's actually, it's super simple. I just breathe in for a count of [00:21:00] two and I breathe out for a count of four and I'm doing it while I'm doing the general mobility.
So. What that looks like on an upper body day, for example, is I'm rolling my shoulders gently, you know, in one direction, and I'm just breathing in one, two, and then breathing out one, two, three, four. And then I switched the direction of rolling my shoulders and I breathe in two and I exhale four. I mean, really, it's not like very difficult, but it does get your body back.
And then the other thing that I do in order to get your body back into this rest and recovery is that big shot of protein after your weight training session. So that's when I have my whey protein powder waiting for me in the locker room. As soon as I get there, I add in the water, shake it up and drink it.
Down. Okay. [00:22:00] So just to recap, the five ways that you can save some time in the weight room are have a more efficient warmup. You do not need to do a 20 minute cardio on the bike or anything like that. There is a more efficient way to do it. And I explain it earlier in the podcast. Come in with a program.
So, you know, the list of exercises that you are going to do, track your lifts. And if you have your exercises in that tracker, you'll also have what weight you've been doing those exercises in. So you'll be able to like. Walk over to the equipment, be it the machine or the weights, pick up the right weight, set it up the right way and get to work.
You don't have to like fool around with what's the weight that I need to be using. You can use supersets to help you out. So pairing opposite [00:23:00] motions, or you can also pair upper body and lower body exercises together. In supersets, and then the fifth is to be flexible about what order you do your exercises in.
So that was it for today. And just a quick reminder that if you don't yet have a program that you can follow, I do have very easy to follow programs and trackers that you can use and instructions on how to do each of the exercises.
So you can go from being clueless to confident, , you know, in, in just a few hours. So I have my self study courses, and actually I have my group program opening up again, I think I'll open it up in the beginning of January. It's going to, you know, start in January. I've already got some people on the wait list.
If you're interested, get on the wait list too. And I'll be sending out more information on that. [00:24:00] And that's it for this week. Hit the subscribe. So you don't miss next week's episode and I'll talk to you then. And the meanwhile, happy training.