RKC News - May 2015

The problem of having too little time for your own training is something we all know.

To ease the conscience, something is often done just to be able to say that one has trained for a few minutes.

However, there is the possibility to train effectively in short sessions. Instead of aimlessly working out, you should focus on a few exercises and condense your training time. This method is also perfect for improving in specific exercises over the long term.

You will get better with consistent training duration.

Here's how:

Determine how much time you have available for training. Let's assume it's 15 minutes. Choose two exercises. For example, Goblet Squat and bent-over rows with kettlebells. Choose the weight so that you could perform ten repetitions for each exercise.

The first round looks like this:

5 repetitions of Goblet Squat followed by 5 repetitions of bent-over rows.

The goal of the training should be to perform as many perfect rounds as possible in 15 minutes of training time.

The first rounds will seem very easy to you. But believe me, the fun won't take long to arrive. You will understand why you should only work with 50% of the repetitions by the middle of the training.

If you cannot complete the repetition numbers until the end, it is better to reduce than to train to the absolute limit. Ideally, you should stop each round fresh and start the next round fresh.

Here’s how the session could look:

Goblet Squat: 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2 (45 repetitions)
Rows: 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2 (42 repetitions)

The goal for the next session would be to increase the repetition numbers for the exercises. So do more in the same time. But be careful! Watch out for your ego. The risk of doing more and sacrificing movement quality is extremely high with this training method.

In case you have more training time, you can also do two or more training blocks of 10-15 minutes each. The principle remains the same.

… you can incorporate corrective exercises during the breaks between rounds, thus condensing your training even more and wasting less training time.