More Exercise in Less Time = More Awesome You

When working towards weight loss goals and getting fitter, one thing that can make a big difference is being able to do more exercise in the same time or in less time.

The benefit of doing this is it challenges the muscles more and creates a greater metabolic demand on the body. This means it causes the body to work harder and therefore burn more calories. On the fitness side, if it is set up in the right way, it can improve your fitness levels dramatically.

An easy way to do start doing this is through supersets.

There are a few different descriptions of what a superset is or can be. For this post, it means doing two back to back exercises with no rest between them. Then rest after the second exercise. Then repeat.

There are a number of ways to set supersets up.... which I'll save for another time :)

A typical workout will often be in a straight sets format:

Exercise 1 – 2 sets 15 reps – 60 second rest between sets, then
Exercise 2 – 2 sets 15 reps – 60 second rest between sets, then
Exercise 3 – 3 sets 10 reps – 60 second rest between sets, then
Exercise 4 – 3 sets 10 reps – 60 second rest between sets

Assuming each set lasts 30 seconds, the total time for this would be around 15 minutes

Using two exercises back to back (supersets) the workout would now look like this:

Exercise 1a) 1 set 15 reps
No rest
Exercise 1b) 1 set 15 reps
Rest 60 seconds. Repeat 1a and 1b once more.

Exercise 2a) 1 set 15 reps
No rest
Exercise 2b) 1 set 15 reps
Rest 60 seconds. Repeat 2a and 2b twice more.

Again assuming 30 seconds per set, the total time for this would now be about 10 minutes.

You’ve now cut 5 minutes from this alone, over the course of a typical hour workout you could easily cut the time by 15 minutes. This allows you to get in and out of the gym quicker or spend another 15 minutes doing more exercises.

You can then ramp this up even more with set ups such as trisets (three exercises back to back), giant sets (4 exercises back to back) and circuits (Usually between 4 and 10 exercises back to back).

If you've never tried supersets before, try them first and see how you get on!