7 Tips to Save 200 Hours in the Gym (Without Losing Muscle) | Ep 390
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Can you cut your gym time by 40 to 50% while still training effectively to build strength and muscle?
Learn 7 research-backed strategies to help you save tons of time with your workouts to reclaim up to 200 hours a year without sacrificing results.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Too much time in the gym?
4:52 - Tip 1: Cut exercise bloat
7:54 - Tip 2: Prioritize compound lifts
10:03 - Tip 3: Antagonist supersets
12:50 - Tip 4: Fewer sets, harder effort
17:42 - Tip 5: Increase training density
21:42 - Tip 6: Rest pause and drop sets
25:16 - Tip 7: Smarter warm-ups
28:10 - The math behind saving up to 200 hours a year
30:14 - Consistency, adherence, and enjoyment
7 Tips to Save 200 Hours in the Gym (Without Losing Muscle)
If you’re spending five to seven hours a week in the gym and still not seeing the results you want, you’re not alone. Most lifters waste a huge amount of time on redundant exercises, excessive volume, and recovery practices that don’t actually improve performance. In this episode, Philip shows you how to engineer your training for maximum stimulus per minute—saving up to 200 hours per year without losing a single ounce of muscle.
These seven strategies are backed by research and designed for lifters who want efficient, evidence-based programming that fits real life.
1. Cut the Exercise Bloat
Most programs online are overloaded—ten or more exercises per session, often targeting the same muscles. You don’t need that.
Focus on movement patterns, not body parts: squat, hinge, push, pull, lunge, carry.
Choose 4–6 lifts per session that hit multiple muscles at once.
Replace leg press + leg extension + leg curl with just a squat and RDL for full lower-body coverage.
Research shows hypertrophy is identical when total volume is equated, even if you use half the number of movements. Simplifying your routine can easily reclaim 30–40 minutes per session.
2. Prioritize Compound Lifts
Build your program around big, multi-joint movements—squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, rows, and pull-ups.
They recruit more muscle per rep.
They improve systemic work capacity and movement efficiency.
They make isolation work optional, not mandatory.
Do compounds first when you’re fresh, then add isolation only if you have time or specific weak points to target.
3. Use Antagonist or Non-Competing Supersets
Supersets save time by pairing two movements that don’t interfere with each other—like bench press with rows, or squats with calf raises.
You rest one muscle group while training another.
You maintain performance while cutting total rest by up to 40%.
You keep intensity high without turning it into cardio.
Avoid pairing heavy lifts that tax the same stabilizers (like squats and deadlifts). Think of it as efficiency, not exhaustion.
4. Reduce Sets but Train Closer to Failure
Two hard sets near failure stimulate nearly the same growth as four or five easy sets.
Aim for 1–3 reps in reserve (RIR) on working sets.
Use the top set + back-off set approach: one heavy set of 4–6 reps, then one lighter set of 8–10.
Focus on effort, not volume.
You’ll gain strength, save 20 minutes per session, and recover better between workouts. As Philip says, “Make every set count.”
5. Increase Training Density
Training density is work per unit of time. Raise it intelligently:
Shorten rest on accessories to 60–90 seconds.
Walk or stretch between sets instead of scrolling your phone.
Group 2–3 non-competing exercises together if logistics allow (e.g., leg press → leg curl → calf raises).
You’ll maintain output while compressing total session time from 75–90 minutes down to 45–60.
6. Use Rest-Pause, Drop Sets, or Myo Reps
These intensity techniques condense effective reps into less time:
Rest-pause: 1 set near failure, rest 15–30 sec, then repeat twice.
Drop sets: Lower weight by 20–30% after failure and continue immediately.
Myo reps: Mini-sets of 3–5 reps with short rests.
Use these sparingly for isolation work like curls or lateral raises—not your big barbell lifts. Expect another 10–15 minutes saved per workout.
7. Streamline Your Warm-Up
Most people waste 20–30 minutes on mobility drills and foam rolling that don’t translate to performance.
Spend 5–10 minutes max raising core temperature and moving dynamically.
Use ramp-up sets to prepare for working sets: start light, add weight, drop reps each time until you hit your working load.
Example: 95x5 → 135x3 → 185x2 → 225x1, then begin your work sets.
Warm up the movement, not the muscle.
The Time Math
If you currently train 6–7 hours weekly, implementing these changes can cut your training time nearly in half while keeping 90–95% of your gains. That’s 150–200 hours saved per year—the equivalent of four full work weeks—all while maintaining or even improving strength, muscle, and recovery.
And here’s the real kicker: shorter, smarter workouts improve consistency. When lifting fits your schedule, you actually show up more often, enjoy training again, and see better long-term results.
Takeaways
Efficiency isn’t doing less—it’s doing what matters most.
Fewer lifts, done harder.
Smarter programming, not more volume.
Shorter sessions, better adherence.
If you want a done-for-you program built around these principles, check out the Ignite training template inside Physique University. It’s a four-day upper/lower split that maximizes hypertrophy, minimizes wasted time, and delivers real results.
Visit witsandweights.com/physique to get started.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
If you're spending five, six, even seven hours a week in the gym trying to build muscle and lose fat, and you're starting to wonder if there is a smarter way to get the same results without sacrificing so much time away from work, family, and everything else you're trying to prioritize, this episode is for you. I'm gonna show you seven evidence-based strategies to cut your training time by 40 to 50% while maintaining or even improving your strength and hypertrophy gains. We're talking about as much as 150 to 200 hours back in your pocket every year. And the best part is you'll learn why more time in the gym doesn't equal better results. It is time to engineer your training for maximum stimulus per minute. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Cape, and today we're gonna tackle a problem that affects just about every lifter I work with, and that is spending way too much time in the gym for the results that you're getting. Now, you might have heard that building muscle requires a certain amount of volume, and oftentimes more is better, depending on where you're starting from. And for many people, this translates to, oh, I need to be in the gym for 90-minute sessions or potentially more, or four, five, six days in the gym. I know people who like to go to the gym every day of the week. And if you're not doing that, are you working hard enough to get the results you want? But in my opinion, that approach is not only inefficient, and I'm all about inefficiency or efficiency, it's often counterproductive. Many things in life, you do more, you do get more results. But when it comes to your body and your recovery, uh, there is this fine balance. And so today we're gonna break down seven time-saving strategies backed by research, things that I really love that actually work. There are a lot of ways to save time in the gym, but these are the big hitters. And they're not really shortcuts, they're not hacks, they're just taking the principles and saying, okay, how can I do this intelligently to get the maximum stimulus, but minimize time, especially wasted time. And by the end of the episode, you'll know how to restructure your training to save as much as two to four hours every single week. Of course, it depends on where you're starting. And the goal is to still make all the progress you want to make. This is not like just the bare minimum I'm talking about. This is still making really, really good progress. Let's say 90, 95% of the results you could possibly get, but but still saving time. And for some of you, it's actually gonna improve your results because you're actually doing too much. All right, so let's just jump right into it and talk about the time problem, right? The the typical lifter, if you're listening, you're probably training three to six days a week. But many of you, as you've gotten into the intermediate, maybe advanced stages, you've gone to four-day splits, maybe a five-day power building program, maybe a six-day body part split. I've I've seen the whole gamut. And if you're doing fewer days a week, they're probably 75 to 90 minutes a session. If you're a new lifter, if you've never lifted before and you're listening to this podcast, you're like, oh, that sounds like a lot. And it's it is a lot for a beginner. I think a beginner can get away with, you know, 30 to 45 minutes three days a week, period. Um, and right there off the bat, if you're doing way more than that as a beginner, we can address that with today's episode. But a lot of you then start to creep up, you do more and more, you increase the volume, and all of a sudden you're training maybe six, seven, eight hours a week when you add it all up in the gym, and then you have your commute time, and then you have your warmups and rest time, all that stuff kind of adds into that, right? And there is a point of diminishing returns. And when I look at people's training logs, I see either redundant exercises that target the same muscles and they can just kind of strip those down. I see uh wasted time or not necessarily see wasted time. I know people are wasting time like scrolling on their phones, for example. I see way too much warm-up that's not necessary. I see a lot of extra accessory or isolation work that could be eliminated or combined with other movements. I see too many sets, like I see a lot of things. And I think it comes from maybe a misunderstanding of what drives muscle growth, but also just a lack of clarity and confidence of really what to do and like what programs are appropriate for them, or putting together their own program that doesn't make sense. We think of training volume, volume definitely matters. It definitely matters, but beyond a threshold, more volume doesn't mean more growth, and everyone responds differently. So there's a sweet spot where you get that maximum stimulus with a minimum time, kind of like a curve, and we want to find that point for you. Because unless you have the extra time or you're retired or you're a competitor or something like that, and you want to spend the extra time to get that little extra boost in optimization, you know, that this episode's not for you if that's the case. We're actually talking about going the other direction and saving time. So, my first strategy of the seven is to just cut the number of exercises you're doing per session. And we're gonna map this out. I think one of the biggest time waste wasters is bloat in exercise selection. And I see it online. If you go to, if you just Google like strength training programs, you'll see these either full body or body part split programs that have like nine, 10, 11, sometimes 12 exercises, which is insane in my opinion. Again, unless you're Arnold doing two days for two hours a session and you're enhanced, you know. Uh, and I'll see like lots of overlapping things, you know, leg press, leg extension, leg curl, calf raises, flat bench, incline, decline, cable flies, pec deck, right? And a lot of redundancy, and it ends up eating up like an extra half hour than you probably need for the benefit. I like I want you to think of this in terms of coverage and efficiency with the movements, meaning the more you can do movement patterns and incorporate more muscles, whether it's targeted directly or indirectly, the more efficient you're gonna be and get to do fewer exercises to get the same result. So the first principle here is thinking of movement patterns, not muscle isolation or muscle groups. Even though I talk about that a lot in the context of hypertrophy, the first principle we need to start from is the movement patterns, the squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, lunging, carrying, right? The movement patterns. And when you structure training around those instead of muscle groups, you're gonna recruit more total muscle mass per exercise. Eliminate redundancy. You're gonna find out that it's pretty hard on your body, such that you need to make some trade-offs elsewhere, and still you're gonna get the result, right? So instead of, especially if you're a beginner, but instead of like leg press, leg extension, leg curl, calf phrase, you can do a squat variation and an RDL, for example. Squat variation, RDL. That's gonna hit your quads, your glutes, your core, your upper back, a whole bunch of stuff. The RDL is probably the best thing to hammer the hamstrings, the glutes, the lower back, two exercises right there, complete lower body coverage and other muscles as well. And there's a lot of overlap. That's just that's just one example, right? All the big movements have a similar result. And so when you equate weekly volume, we actually find there is no difference in a hypertrophy as well, muscle size, when you spread sets across 10 exercises versus five exercises, as long as the five are efficiently chosen. But that could save you right there 30 to 40 minutes. So I really want you to look at the programs you're following. And if they're these really long packed in programs with a ton of movements, you're gonna save a lot of time by consolidating those. Thinking of the big movement patterns, the compound lifts. Very important, right? And what was the other thing there? Oh, and it's gonna save you time because if you're going to a commercial gym, you don't have to worry about fighting for all those machines and worrying about their availability. So that leads me to strategy number two, which is gonna sound similar, but it's it's different in its own way. And that is to prioritize compound movements specifically. Right. So the first the first strategy was really about consolidating the exercises. The second one is prioritizing compound lifts, squats, bench press, overhead, deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, actually, rows. I prefer pull-ups to rows for newer lifters, but rows can get in there later on. Not just uh barbell rows, but T-bar rows and chest supported and all that. Um, but anyway, these are efficient because they hit multiple muscles, muscle groups, as I mentioned already, and they produce greater total muscle activation per rep, and they improve your work capacity and your tolerance for systemic fatigue as well, which is going to translate to your overall fitness level, your cardio capacity, and your ability to lift harder and more with more quality with the accessory and isolation work. Right? Just think about when you bench press, you're recruiting your chest, your shoulders, your triceps, your lats, your core, and you can change the grip and the width and target different things more effectively, like your triceps with a close grip. You know, compare that to like a chest fly. I mean, I I love a chest fly as much as the next guy, um, especially when it's done bottom to top, and you really, you know, tighten that uh contraction, right? We're thinking of bodybuilding, but not if you're not doing bigger pressing movements. And it doesn't have to be a bench press with a barbell, it could be with dumbbells, it could be an incline, you know, there's lots of compound lifts. So, and it doesn't mean you never do isolation work. It means you prioritize compounds first, build your program around that, then add isolation. And that is also gonna save you a lot of time. So you're consolidating your lifts and then you're prioritizing the compound movements and doing them first, most likely, most likely doing them first, okay, to get high effectiveness. All right, strategy number three is to use antagonist or non-competing supersets. I do love supersets these days. I used to kind of poo-poo them and file them under circuit training, but that's because I came from a world of either CrossFit or the gym machines where you're doing five exercises in a circuit and it's kind of random and you know rest periods and things like that. I think done correctly, supersets can still maintain your performance, but cut a lot of time because you're cutting rest time. And we know in the research, there's been some recent meta-analysis and season studies that show comparable results, whether you're using supersets or not, but you actually save a lot of time. And the best way to do this is to pair exercises that don't compete for the same muscles or the same, let's say, stabilizer groups, like benching and rowing. That's that's pushing, pushing and pulling, or uh squats and I don't know, calf raises, let's say. Let's say, and that came to mind because I was thinking if you have a squat safety bar and you're doing a version of a front squat, let's say with a squat safety bar, and then you can immediately go into calf raises. You can do the same thing with a leg press machine and calf raises, right? Things like that. Um, pull-ups and leg curls. Like if you're doing a full body day, doing upper body and lower body, those are definitely non-competing muscles. But even biceps and triceps, those are antagonists, right? Because while one thing is resting, the other muscles are recovered, ready to go, all out. You might need to take, say, 20, 30 seconds. You don't have to do it immediately. This is the point isn't to get your heart rate up, although there is that side benefit. The point really is to just cut time, right? And you're using the rest time now productively in between, you don't have to have as long rest time. But the effective rest period between the same exercise still ends up being longer because you're doing something else in between. So again, the research shows that antagonist supersets do maintain strength and hypertrophy and cut rest time by about 40%. So if you did that for your whole workout, which I'm not necessarily recommending, but let's say you did, a 60-minute workout would be as short as, say, 35 minutes, same results. Now, I think a mistake people make here is pairing exercises that are competing with the same muscle groups. Like, don't do squats and deadlifts as supersets. Don't do, you know, overhead press and well, I was gonna say overhead press and pull-ups. Um, I don't know. You could try those, but you get what I'm saying. Like, don't the second exercise is going to suffer quite a bit. And you'll know what, you'll know what that is when you feel it. So it's okay to experiment. Now, you might want to do that on purpose to fatigue the muscles. That's a different strategy. That's not a time-saving maintained performance strategy. That's more of a bodybuilding like fatigue, you know, get closer to failure more quickly strategy, which is perfectly viable, but it's not really about saving time per se. So I would, if you do supersets, I would still have some rest period in there, like 30 to 60 seconds, so that your output, your reps are as effective as possible and you can, you know, bang them out. So this could save you, like I said, 20 to 30 minutes a session. All right, strategy number four is to reduce the number of sets. And I'm gonna combine this with another strategy, and that's training closer to failure, which you should be doing anyway, but I'm gonna explain why. Most of your muscle growth is going to occur when you have that high level of mechanical tension. Now, there's a huge debate raging right now about whether anything beyond mechanical tension causes hypertrophy. Like, does the metabolic stress cause hypertrophy? And there's some camps that are like, absolutely not, it's all about mechanical tension. And others say that, well, we see studies that show when you have higher metabolic stress, like a higher pump, you know, you see greater hypertrophy. And you know what? They're probably both right to an extent. It probably comes down to the first principle of the mechanical tension. Anyway, there's probably a lot of overlap or correlation, is what I'm saying. And honestly, you don't have to worry about it. All you have to, all you can control is how hard you train and getting close to failure. Now, how close depends on the lift, the safety of the whole setup, what your goals are. But everything beyond that is gonna contribute diminishing return, diminishing returns. And what I mean by on that is beyond that is I'd rather you do two really hard sets close to failure than three, four, or five, or you're half-assing it, or you're not getting close to failure, right? That that's where we're gonna save time. Because we do see similar hypertrophy with, let's say, two or three hard sets compared to four or five. There's like this fine balance. And there are arguments, you know, some people say, look, getting that third set in, if you are training really hard and you have the capacity, you're eating enough, you're sleeping enough, does give you that little extra volume that can help. Sure. But if we're trying to save time, is it worth it? Is the trade-off worth it? So by hard sets, we are mean, we are talking about, I'm gonna say uh one to three reps shy of failure, reps in reserve, also called seven to nine RPE, uh rated perceived exertion, right? I mean, some people would argue and go as far as four reps from failure, but if we're only gonna do two sets, I want you to get, you know, in that really stressful regime, stressful in a good way, as in mechanical tension, close to failure. So a lot of people are doing workout programs that have like four or five sets sometimes, right? And then, and that's not a bad thing necessarily, but then they're not really pushing the first three sets, and only the last two are challenging. And so then the first three are effectively becoming warm-up sets. Well, you should already be warming up anyway with a few sets, unless you're already warmed up, and then go after it really hard with the working sets. And so if you could do two or three sets instead of three or four, that's gonna save time, obviously, right? As long as you make it count. And I really love the two set idea in what's called top set back off set. I originally learned this from my coach Andy Baker. In fact, he was on the podcast talking about exactly this thing. We did an episode on bodybuilding a while back. Uh, but I've seen others use Jeffrey Verdi, Jeffrey Verity Schofield has uh a good program that uses that structure. And I've seen it done with lots of different bodybuilders. And all it is is, you know, you you warm up and then you do your working weight at some rep range, let's say four to six for one set, and then you drop the weight, say 10 or 15%, and perform one more high effort set, probably at a lower rep range or a higher rep range, if that makes sense. So your first set might be four to six, you drop the weight 10 to 15 percent, your second set might be eight to 10. That's just an example, right? And doing those two sets really hard not only covers the two different rep ranges, but also reduces the volume, but still gets you some good work and saves time. And this might save 15, 20, 25 minutes a session if you do if you normally have all three sets and now you do all two sets. And you know what? Try it out. See if your results don't change or even improve because you're training with maybe even more intensity now, because you're so focused on getting those two sets to mean something, and you're not getting as much systemic fatigue. So it could be a win-win. All right, so that's the fourth strategy. All right, if you're if you're thinking, like, how do I structure all of this into a complete program? Because that is where people get tripped up is okay, now I need to execute this. Um, we've got you covered inside physique university, just to let you know, we have a whole bunch of training templates there. I call them training templates. I don't call them workout programs. They are training templates because they are flexible and we give you substitutions so that if your gym or your home gym doesn't have certain equipment, you can swap something out. We also tell help you understand how to do that and reprogram it for you. And we have a new template called Ignite. Coach Carroll came up with this. It is a time-saving template that is based on some of these principles. It's a four-day upper-lower split, so it prioritizes compound lifts, but it also uses supersets, drop sets, strategic selection of your exercises. And you shouldn't require more than a half an hour if you're doing it efficiently for those four sessions. And it's still considered more of an intermediate program, so it's still gonna get you great results. If you want access to Ignite plus all my other training templates, we've got power building templates, we've got volume and set-based templates, we've got beginner templates, we've got gluten leg templates, and then all the nutrition coaching, community support courses that go with that. Just go to witsandweights.com slash physique. The link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash physique for the Ignite training template, and you'll see a special code in the show notes to get you another bonus along for the ride. All right, we've got three more strategies. So strategies five, six, seven. Strategy number five to save time in the gym is to increase your training density. Now we talked about supersets. That is kind of a way to increase training density. You're not actually doing more training, but you're doing it in less time. So I'm gonna expand on that with this one with some other ideas. Training density is effectively your work divided by time, right? How much volume are you moving per minute? The higher your density, the more efficient your training, with the caveat that the efficiency isn't offset by a lack of performance because you're moving too quickly and not resting enough. Get it? So we got to make sure we're not becoming a YouTube workout here or an F-45 or a CrossFit workout. We're not trying to do that. We're not trying to do that. All right. No, no offense to YouTube workouts because I know that's a catch-all, but you know what I mean by that. So, what do I mean here? Well, you could shorten your rest periods on your accessory movements. I am a big fan of resting enough on the bigger movements of like say three to five minutes. Some of the, I'll say quasi-big movements, like an RDL, you could probably get away with two to three. And then the accessory movements, you can get away with a minute, maybe two, and be okay. And sometimes that actually is helpful, right? Because it keeps you close to that failure point. Like, let's say you're doing three sets of maximum pull-ups. Take no more than two minutes between them and just go really hard. And you'll probably not be able to get as many reps on sets two or three, but you're still gonna get that uh those effective reps, right? And again, there's there's arguments about this. Should I take a full two and a half, three minutes here to be able to get what my maximum reps would have been? Again, it's a time versus outcome trade-off. I don't think it's worth it for everybody if you're trying to save time because all that rest period adds up. Okay, so that uh putting that out there, but the other piece here is put that damn phone away. And, you know, I'm talking to myself here. This is critical because a lot of people think they're resting a certain amount of time. Maybe they do have a rest timer, but then they're scrolling Instagram, they're checking their email, they're trying to do work, whatever. Maybe it's productive stuff on your phone. I don't know. But then you end up resting another minute or two and it kind of adds up. I would rather you just pace around and get some steps in and just be mindful and ready to jump in, which by the way, could be more effective for your training anyway when your headspace is into the workout rather than constantly getting distracted, right? Because that is not the point of training. And again, I'm talking to myself here too. I do this a lot, and I know I'm here to train. And really the way to do this completely is abstinence, meaning leave your phone in your bag. However, if you're using it to track your workout, I know you have to have it out. So just put it down between sets. So that's one thought as far as training density. Another thought is to expand the superset concept to three or four non-competing exercises, if that's possible, and then rotating them together. Again, this is you're like, well, isn't that more like circuit training? Yeah, kind of. But again, if they're non-competing, you can still expand that same concept. You know, if you're gonna do leg press, then hamstring curls, then calf raises, and then some loaded ab crunches on a cable, right? And if you're doing cable work, for example, that could be an efficient way to do it as well, because you have the machine and you can just change the positions and stuff like that, change the attachments. So three, maybe four. Don't go beyond that, because then it truly becomes more of just like a circuit that you where you may lose performance and get too winded during the process. But again, hypertrophy isn't gonna get sacrificed very much at all. If anything, you might get closer to failure in some of these movements because you're a little bit fatigued. So really think about organizing your workouts. Just because a program doesn't say to do it as a superset doesn't mean you can't, or you can't move the lifts around to get more work done in less time. That's my thought there. All right, strategy number six is to use rest pause or mile reps or drop sets, basically any type of set where you're shortening the time it takes you to do the reps, or you make it where you can't just can't do as many reps, but you're close to failure. So this is again expanding on some of the concepts we're already talking about. So, what are these? Well, rest pause is where you perform a set, it gets close to failure, and then you only rest 15 to 30 seconds. That's all it is. And then you do it again, then you do it again. And so the general drop-off is something like 50%. So if you're able to do 12 reps on set one, you'll probably get around like five to seven on set two, and then maybe a little more than half of that on the third set, really depends. What I like about these, besides saving time, they actually teach you what training hard feels like. They're actually a really good technique for that. Because once you get to that second and third set, your brain is like, wow, I'm surprised I'm already tired, but I'm only getting, you know, five or up so far. Come on, I gotta get another one. Almost it's almost like your ego helps you out a little bit there because you're like, I should be able to get more, right? And then you realize the how much things get fatigued when you don't take enough rest. And in this case, you're intentionally not taking enough rest. So this is great for accessory work. Like if you're gonna do, I don't know, let's say uh incline dumbbell curls with dumbbells. By the way, little tip on incline curls. They're one of the best barbell curls if you do them right. If you're back at like a 30-degree angle, kind of like when you do an incline bench press and you hold dumbbells, you you curl them out at an angle, right? Just keep your keep your palm up and curl them out at you, kind of like wings, just out and all the way down, get that full stretch and then and take a short pause and then up from the bottom. Anyway, so something like that, you'll see how tired you get on sets two and three, but that's the point, and it also saves you time. Another example of this is drop sets. Drop sets are where again you go to failure and then you immediately drop some weight, continue, repeat a few times until you're done. Uh, another example of this is density sets, where you just try to get, you know, 50 reps as quickly as you can, whatever rest you can, whatever rest you can fit in there. Another way to do this is time-based. You're like, okay, I have three minutes and I'm gonna go back and forth between these two, or I'm gonna do just this one thing. I'm gonna do neck curls or I don't know. I'm thinking of that because I actually just tried some of those um ab crunches, you know, like I said, something really small and isolating, and you're just gonna bang out like as many reps as you can in X number of minutes, right? In AMRAP. There's nothing wrong with these for the isolation movements as ways to save time, and you're probably gonna get similar, if not better, results doing them while saving time. I would how I would, however, limit them to maybe a couple exercises per session. Don't do it with everything. Do them with machine work, with isolation work. Do not do these with heavy barbell movements or your form is gonna break down. Now, obviously, if you're using a barbell for bicep curls and you just want to drop do drop sets there, that's fine. That's not what I'm talking about. So this might save you 10 to 15 minutes just gloming a couple exercises together and using these density techniques, uh, rest pause, drop sets, etc. All right, strategy number seven is really about your warm-up. I think a lot of people are spending way too much time warming up before they they lift. 20, 30 minutes, you know, foam rolling, stretching, activation drills, um, way too many ramp up sets. They're not sure where their working set is, so they do too many warm-up sets. Generally, five to 10 minutes of general warm-up max, which might include a little cardio, dynamic work, maybe you need to stretch and loosen up, whatever. I'm I'm cool with all that. I'm not gonna criticize any of that. I think it's great, but maximum five to ten minutes. I mean, five minutes probably. And then your first lift, you're gonna have three to five warm-up sets, most likely. That is how you warm up because you're warming up the movement pattern. I've done entire episodes about this, and we actually teach about this in physics physique university. We have a whole series called Lifting Lessons, and we give you how to the warm-up ladder. You know, we teach about all the different things like bracing and breathing, et cetera. But effectively just get warmed up if it's cold, raise your core temperature, and then you know, one to one to two sets, um, or not one to two sets, uh, three three to five ramp up sets leading to your working weight, where you're increasing the weight, you're dropping the reps, and then you hit your working set. Right. So if your working weight is 225 pounds, you might do, you know, five at 135, four, uh five at 135. Let's see, let me let me think of this the right way. No, let's start with 95. You might do five at 95, you might do three at 135, you might boot two at 185, maybe one at 205, but probably not, then you jump to 225, right? Something like that. So that's definitely gonna save time if you're not doing that already. All right. So if we add all this up, I actually did some math here. If you're spending five to six sessions in the week, 75 to 90 minutes, right? That's like seven and a half hours a week, that's 390 hours a year. If you did all of these strategies and you reduce the number of sessions, you reduce the time, four to five sessions, 45 minutes to an hour, then that's like three, three and a half to four and a half hours a week. So that's around 200 hours a year. So you just reclaimed like 150 to 200 hours a year, which is up to four full weeks of your life back. Again, that's that's the extreme, but you get the idea. And that's without sacrificing the result with your muscle, your strength. And a lot of people improve when they do things like this because they're training with more focus and with more intensity and better recovery. And sometimes this increases your metabolism because you're not as stressed. You're able to get more sleep. You get it? It kind of compounds on itself. So it's not about training more or training longer, it's training more intelligently, more efficiently, building that system that works for your life. Now, there's one huge side benefit I haven't mentioned yet. When you train more efficiently, your consistency goes up. Because when your workouts are shorter, you have a little bit more motivation to go, you have more time to go, you're less tired and fatigued, so you have more energy to go, right? And so you've just reduced a bunch of friction. And that just naturally makes you show up more, look forward to it more. It's exciting, it's fun, it's not this huge commitment, right? Some people love working out 90 minutes, six days a week. That's fine. We're not, I'm not talking to you. Talking about people want to save time and still get the result. And so there's this compound effect of efficiency like this. Shorter workouts lead to better adherence, that leads to more total training volume over time. And that is where the results come from is that that volume over time applied consistently. So I do see this a lot. We have a lot of clients, this might be you, that come in, they're kind of burned out from quote unquote working out so much. And they're like, but how do I, you know, that's not working? Do I have to do more to get more muscle and and more fat loss? No, sometimes you have to cut that sucker in half and get rid of all the cardio. And all of a sudden, now you start going to the gym more often because it's fun. It doesn't take that much time. You're walking in between in a flexible way, and now in six months, 12 months, you've made huge progress, way more progress you've made in the last three, five, twenty years or your whole life, possibly. Most likely. Consistency beats intensity every time. Remember that. The intensity can ramp up slowly over time once the consistency is in place. And being efficient like this increases your consistency. And then again, the other benefit is you enjoy training again. It becomes energizing. You look forward to it. So, really, it's not just saving time, it's building a sustainable, consistent system for training. All right, so if you want the exact training template that puts some of these into practice, check out the Ignite program inside Physique University. Go to witsonweights.comslash physique. It's a four day upper lower split. We have a full library of other templates. We teach you how to. Do it. We give you substitutions. We give you training videos. We give you, of course, support. Lots and lots of ways for you to succeed. Make this consistent, get the result you want, build that muscle, lose that fat. Go to witsandweights.com slash physique or click the link in the show notes and make sure to look for the code in the show notes for an extra bonus. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, efficiency isn't about doing less, it's about doing what matters the most. I'm Philip Pape and I'll talk to you next time.
