Short and Sweet Strength Training

by Angela Yorke | September 3rd, 2012 | 15 Minutes or Less, Strength Training

Despite the prevalence of time-saving devices and approaches to life in general, most people have come to find it increasingly difficult to carve out time for fitness. It might also be likely that adopting time-efficient measures resulted in people taking on more tasks in a day, thus reducing the time spent building strength.

Other than prioritizing only the essential work and domestic tasks to increase the time perceived as available for exercising, you could also divide strength training into shorter sessions of for example, 15-minutes. This way, you fulfill your “quota” without feeling as if you’re pressed for time.

On the face of it, a strength training routine that lasts 15 minutes or less doesn’t sound like much; however, it has been determined that a strength training session that lasts a shorter time is capable of increasing the body’s excess exercise post-oxygen consumption. What this means is that the body’s metabolic demands are increased after such a workout, leading to significant energy use in the next 3 days or so that follow.

Of course, the approach to a shorter strength-training workout differs somewhat from a “full-length” version. One key difference is that in contrast to a routine that targets one muscle group at a time and that tends to be time-consuming, short workouts are usually of greater intensity.

Thus, rather than a specific number of repetitions and sets per targeted muscle group(s), you would aim to complete as many repetitions as possible in sets that last 25-30 seconds. As the session is heavily focused on time, rest periods between sets are usually of the same duration; therefore, you would wind up expending maximum effort in a shorter time.

The upshot of short strength training sessions is that you would have worked out as required but in a shorter time than traditionally expected. In the end, this would prove to be a time-saving step in itself as well!

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