What about very short (but intense) workouts 6 days a week?
Just 2 or 3 exercises per day,so it’ll take 15,20minutes.
Is it a crazy idea ? is it good ? anybody have tried this?
im thinking that this wont work really. the whole idea of going to the gym is to lie to your body that it needs to grow bigger muscles. thats mostly done by tiring it with more weight and repetitions.
im guessing you can do only very few compound movements but i doubt you could get all the reps and sets in for all the different exercises you’d need to do in just 20 minutes. or you could only do fewer exercises but im guessing you’ll create imbalances that way
There’s really no reason it shouldn’t work. You have to warmup first, Jogging to the gym could do it, then a few pushups. You could fit it in on your lunch break. Obviously you can’t fit in a whole body workout unless you did clean & jerks. You could do something like this:
Monday - Squats
Tuesday - Bench
Wednesday - Bent Rows
Thursday - Deadlift
Friday - Military Press
Saturday - Pull Ups
Doing full workouts 6 days a week would be too much and you would risk overtraining but a workout like this could work.
Stu
[quote]stuward wrote:
There’s really no reason it shouldn’t work. You have to warmup first, Jogging to the gym could do it, then a few pushups. You could fit it in on your lunch break. Obviously you can’t fit in a whole body workout unless you did clean & jerks. You could do something like this:
Monday - Squats
Tuesday - Bench
Wednesday - Bent Rows
Thursday - Deadlift
Friday - Military Press
Saturday - Pull Ups
Doing full workouts 6 days a week would be too much and you would risk overtraining but a workout like this could work.
Stu[/quote]
Agreed - with the right amount of load and intensity this could work IMHO. I suspect after a week like that you’d need Sunday off to recover.
Horazio - Have you thought of trying Tabata?
This is somewhat similar to DC and HIT. Nothing new. It will work.
It can work if you pick the right lifts and right volume. 15 to 20 minutes isn’t really long enough for me personally, I’d shoot more for 30.
I had to stop going to the gym and I’m doing these short workouts at home
mon : biceps / reverse curl
tue : squats
wed : chest (pushups), tris extensions
thur: OFF
fri : shoulders
sat : deadlift
sun : OFF
I know it’s not optimal,but I hope to get back to the gym soon and get back to my old program (push/pull/legs)
Whattya think ?
Not good. I don’t know how else to word it haha, sorry. I’d say use some of the programs around the site until you get more advanced and can make a logical program by yourself. CW and CT both have articles on formulating your own program, I’d check those out first.
You might not have the equipment/space for it, but when I was starting to lift, I’d head to the gym and do 1-3 sets of squats and deadlifts and an assistance exercise (ab-work or bench). I’d do this 1-3 times/day.
It’s really effective, because you’re super focused, and you’re done in like, ten-fifteen minutes. And you can regulate the amount of volume you can handle by varying how many sets you do. Every fourth week de-load. Works like a charm. Bigger AND stronger.
If you want to do many short workouts, you might look into EDT (Escalating Density Training). It will help ensure that your 15 minutes are productive.
The basic idea is to pick a pair of non-overlapping exercises (e.g. Pullups and Pushups) and superset them for a specific amount of time (e.g. 15 minutes). Using a 10RM weight, try to get as many sets of 5 as possible. Try to increase that number each workout. The good thing about EDT is that it keeps you very focused for the 15 minutes and encourages you to do as much work as possible in that period of time.
If you’re working out at home and have a laptop, you can also use the EDT workout tracker I wrote (some nice changes in version 1.03 released last month). It charts your EDT session against previous sessions in real-time so you know if you’re on track to beat your PR or if you need to pick up the pace.
http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=1492558
www.brienv.com/edt-tracker/index.html
I used the following for my EDT workout :
Pair A: Deadlift and Bench
Pair B: Chinups and Dips
Pair C: Squats and Overhead DB Press
Do one or two pairs per day.
-Brien
[quote]undeadlift wrote:
This is somewhat similar to DC and HIT. Nothing new. It will work.[/quote]
No, not really. Similar to DC only in higher frequency (although DC is nowhere near 6 days/week) and HIT only in short workouts.
OP, Try doing one set of squat, deadlift, row, bench, shoulder press, and chin every day. Kind of like Siff’s saying that doing 1 set of 5 5 days a week is more effective than 5 sets of 5 on one day.
the problem is that I only have a barbell and dumbbells…anyways this is only temporary until I go back to the gym again