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#124 - Training Smarter And Not Just Harder, To Track Calories Or Not & More
32 Plays24 days ago
Most people think fitness is about doing more, eating less, and grinding harder. But the truth is your approach has to evolve if you want results that last.
In this episode, I break down real questions about training, calories, and what actually works.
What you’ll learn:
- Why your 20s and 30s require very different approaches to training and recovery
- Do you really need to track calories to lose weight—or is there another way?
- The most effective way to set your calorie target (and mistakes to avoid)
- How to maximize results when you’re short on time with warm-ups, mobility, and exercise selection
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host Latham Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We got that weekly episode coming to you as we always do. And before I get into this, if you can leave a review if you've not done so, just continuing to get this out to more people. I appreciate that.
00:00:24
Speaker
It is time for another Q&A episode. So questions that I get from you guys who listen to this podcast, questions that I get on social media, questions that I get from clients, questions that I get from people who just ask me different questions in person.
Evolution of Exercise Routine
00:00:38
Speaker
I'm gonna answer some of those common questions today. And so I have five of those questions. With this podcast, we are going to talk a little bit about how to actually figure out how many calories you need to lose weight. And so figuring out how many calories you need to be in a calorie deficit some different methods to go about doing that.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you're limited on time, how can you fit in things like warming up, stretching, and how important those things are? What are the most effective exercises if you are limited on time?
00:01:07
Speaker
Whether or not you need to track calories and some tips around tracking calories, if that's something that you decide you want to do. And then somebody also asked me about my routine now versus when I first started. so I'm go to talk a little bit about that as well. And so Getting into question number one, how has your exercise routine changed over the years?
00:01:27
Speaker
My exercise routine has changed quite a bit. When I started getting into fitness pretty heavy, I was 21, 22.
00:01:35
Speaker
What I knew about fitness is so much different than what I actually understand now and like understanding the things that are important. And just to be honest, like as you get older, the way that you train is probably going to change a little bit. There's some basic principles that I think you should know, and I'll give you some recommendations on what I think is a really solid foundation for most people to focus on when it comes to wanting to look better, feel better, get those general recommendations.
Customizing Workouts for Personal Preference
00:02:00
Speaker
qualities that everybody wants to have but there's so many different ways that you can train and i get this question a lot and i think what a lot of people are asking when they ask this question is basically like how did you get the results that you have because i've lost 100 pounds i've built a decent amount of muscle and i've been able to just get more fit and more in shape and so when people ask me this question they're thinking in their mind okay can i do some of these things that he has done And I think it's good to ask other people who have done what you want to do and also just to look at patterns. But ultimately, you have to find a routine that is going to fit with you, that's going to vibe with you. Because if it's a style of training that you really don't like, that you don't enjoy, you're probably not going to be consistent at it. And even if you do get in the gym and you are fairly consistent, you're probably not going to train as hard as if you actually enjoy the program and we're getting good results. And so
00:02:51
Speaker
Yes, you want to look and see what other people have done, but at the end of the day, you have to find the right plan that fits for you.
Reflecting on Early Exercise Mistakes
00:02:58
Speaker
When I was 21, 22, was just doing a ton. Like I was getting in the gym six days a week, sometimes seven days a week.
00:03:06
Speaker
I was strength training four sessions per week. And I actually found one of my old notebooks. I used to track all my workouts in a notebook. I would just make them up myself. I was looking at like how much volume I was doing and how many sets and all that stuff. And I was doing a crazy amount, which when you're in your early twenties, you can get away with that.
00:03:23
Speaker
You can sleep like crap. You can eat like crap. And if you're training, you're still going to be able to recover. You're still going to make progress. As you get older, that's not really going to happen. And that's not going to be a very good long term strategy. You might get injured. You're just going to feel like crap. you're not going to get great progress. And so when I was in my 20s, strength training probably four times a week, sometimes five.
00:03:42
Speaker
I was doing like 10 to 12, sometimes 15 exercises in a single workout, which is probably a little much. I was doing a couple cardio sessions. So I would mix in like HIIT training and I would do some longer state cardio. And so like recovery was not really high on my list. It's not really something that I thought about whole lot.
00:04:00
Speaker
And like I said, since I was in my early 20s, like I was not sleeping a ton. I was still freshly out of college. so I was drinking a lot more often. My diet was getting better because I was starting to focus on losing weight. And so I was like learning about food and things like that.
00:04:14
Speaker
But it still wasn't the best. Like i didn't really know how to feel myself properly and eating things that were going to actually just make me feel good versus just eating as little as possible. And so I was doing a lot of things wrong. But even with that being said,
00:04:26
Speaker
The simple fact that I was young and I was just working really hard, I was seeing really good progress. And so now as I've learned a lot more, I've gotten a lot smarter. My routine looks quite a bit different. And I also focus a lot more on things outside of the gym, like sleep, like diet, like recovery, like managing stress, because that stuff is critical. And that's the stuff that holds a lot of people back. Once you get a solid routine in place.
00:04:49
Speaker
getting your workouts in and getting your steps in eating at a solid diet. Most of the time, a lot of the things that will hold people back are things that are
Current Fitness Routine and Activities
00:04:56
Speaker
outside of the gym. And so like not sleeping enough, being stressed all the time and that leading to like stress eating or missing workouts and things like that.
00:05:04
Speaker
So you really need to put a focus more on the time outside the gym as you get older, because that becomes more of a factor. And so now at the age of 32, Over a decade later, my workout routine is a little bit different. And I've tried tons of different styles of workouts and different splits and different times per week that I'm working out. But I've always come back to four strength workouts that works really well for my routine.
00:05:27
Speaker
I'm able to see really good progress. I feel good. And it doesn't feel too much like I can recover pretty well. And so typically that's been like an upper lower split. So two days upper body, two days lower body. But right now I've been doing what's called a body part split.
00:05:40
Speaker
And the reason that I switched to that is just because when I was doing two lower body days and trying to mix in like running a couple of times a week and playing basketball and playing volleyball and like doing these activities, my legs just never felt fresh. And so I've switched to lifting legs once a week. And that way I can run a little bit more and do things outside of the gym because.
00:06:00
Speaker
Your routine doesn't allow you to actually live the life that you want to live and like do the things that you want to do outside of the gym. To me, that just doesn't make sense. You want those two things to work together. You want them to work in unison. So if you're beat down all the time, if you're sore all the time, if your knees hurt all the time, if you feel like trash, if you can't recover because of what you're doing in the gym and your life outside of the gym is suffering because of it.
Importance of Cardio and Staying Active
00:06:23
Speaker
You probably need to look at making some changes to your routine. So I do that for workouts for strength workouts per week. And that's every single week. That's one of my non-negotiables. It's very rare that I don't get four lifts in unless it's like a plan deload or like maybe I'm on vacation or some certain special circumstance comes up. But that's always been a staple for me that's worked really well it's something that i really enjoy doing and it's manageable like five six times a week for me i've tried it i don't like it because i don't have very much flexibility if you miss one day or have to push a workout it's really hard to get all your workouts in and then you're just stressing to get everything in you feel like crap because you're not sticking to your routine and so that's another little tip for you start with something that you know that you can do for sure and then if you want to build on that later absolutely do that so that might be two sessions a week that might be three sessions a week
00:07:10
Speaker
And then if you want to add more later, then do that. Outside of the strength workouts, I've been adding in some yoga this year and I do abs once a week as well. So I'll do like a 20, 30 minute yoga session once per week and then I'll add in some abs right after that.
00:07:25
Speaker
And then from a cardio standpoint, this is something that I do a lot more regularly now because the benefits that I've gotten from cardio have been huge. Like a resting heart rate has dropped tremendously, like 10 to 15 beats.
00:07:36
Speaker
My energy is better. My endurance is better. Mental clarity, all that stuff is better because of doing regular cardio. And so I used to think like, do i need to do weights or cardio? Like which one is better for my goals? But now I think of it as weights and cardio. So mixing that in is important as well, especially as you age, because having good cardiovascular health is one of the most influential things that we know about in order to live a long and healthy life. And so adding in some of that and just doing that on the regular can certainly help improve all your health markers.
00:08:10
Speaker
So I do cardio. My goal is at least three times per week. I usually play basketball at least once a week. So I count that as a cardio session. And then I'll typically run two or three times per week as well. When it comes to your practical recommendations, I think for a very large majority of people, if you can get in the gym and strength train two to four times per week, that is a super solid place to be. You can make really good progress as long as you're consistent every single week with getting in the gym at least two, three, four times per week.
00:08:39
Speaker
Outside of lifting, if you can get some cardio in at least one to two times a week, and this doesn't have to be like running. If you hate running, then you don't necessarily have to get into running. Pick some sort of cardio, something that gets your heart rate up, something that gets you breathing heavy, gets you sweating a little bit, get your heart pumping a little bit and do that. So that could be playing basketball. That could be hiking, that could be biking, that could be anything, anything that really gets your heart rate elevated more than usual for an extended period of time and get you breathing heavy. So you can get a lot of those benefits and something that you actually enjoy doing.
00:09:10
Speaker
You're going to see a massive increase just in all your health markers by adding in some regular cardio. And then outside of the gym, I know time is a big thing for a lot of people. So just thinking about ways that you can get active outside of the gym. So walking, maybe doing a little bit of yoga here and there, like playing with your kids, going on hikes, doing stuff outdoors. You don't necessarily have to like think a bit think about it as structured exercise.
00:09:36
Speaker
You just want to make sure that you're staying active outside of the gym because there's a lot of hours that you're going to spend outside the gym. And when you break it down, if you're working out, two to three times per week, and maybe getting in a cardio session or two per week, that probably is going to total to about anywhere between two to four hours of exercise.
00:09:55
Speaker
And there's 168 hours in a week. And so if you're only moving in that four hours, yeah, you're going to get tons of benefits. But you also want to make sure that you're staying active outside of those hours as well, just so that your body doesn't feel
Calorie Tracking and Diet Insights
00:10:07
Speaker
like trash. We are made to move.
00:10:09
Speaker
We're made to Squat and lunge and run and jump and bend like our bodies expect us to move and we feel better when we move from a mental standpoint, from a physical standpoint. And so find ways outside of the gym that you can just stay active.
00:10:24
Speaker
Question number two, I've tried to track calories in the past, but I fell off. So I'm wondering, do I need to track calories to lose weight? The simple, straightforward answer is no, you don't have to track calories to lose weight, just like you don't have to have a budget in order to save money, but it helps.
00:10:41
Speaker
My opinion and what I've seen work really well is to spend a good chunk of time tracking calories, and this is to learn more about food, Learn about things like portion size. Learn what foods have lower calories versus higher calories.
00:10:56
Speaker
Learn more about macros. So understanding what foods have more proteins, which foods have more carbs, which foods have more fats, which foods have a combination of those things. And then paying attention to how your body feels on these things. Do I feel better when I eat more carbs versus more fats?
00:11:11
Speaker
How do my workouts feel depending on what things I'm eating? And with tracking calories, I found that it gives lot of people just clarity and it gives them a little bit more freedom and flexibility.
00:11:23
Speaker
What I mean by that is once you understand that tracking calories is just like a numbers game, it's and basically a simple math equation. You understand that you can start to fit in all different types of foods in moderation and still be able to hit all those goals that you have. Because a major thing that I see a lot of people hold them back is they think that they have to cut out a lot of different foods or they struggle because they feel like they're eating healthy, but they're not really making any progress because at the end of the day, you can eat, you can overeat healthy calories and you can overeat
00:11:57
Speaker
maybe foods that aren't as high of quality. And so just understanding that and realizing that, okay, when I start to track calories, I probably do wanna focus on more higher quality whole type foods, single ingredient foods, your lean proteins, your fruits, your vegetables, your healthy fats. and Good carbs and things like that. But you can also fit in other stuff as well. And tracking calories gives you that freedom because you understand, OK, I'm hitting my calorie target and I'm still losing weight or I'm still making progress. I'm still building muscle.
00:12:24
Speaker
And it just opens up a whole different way to view food and to make this ah a much more long term sustainable thing. And so I don't think tracking calories is something to look at as like, I have to do this for the rest of my life. But if you really want to learn a lot about food and you want to make progress and actually be sure that you are making progress, tracking calories is a really good way to do that.
00:12:48
Speaker
With that being said, one thing that you need to understand is as you get closer to your goals, you have to be a little bit more detailed and you have to be a little bit more dialed in with things. And that is really where tracking calories can help a lot. And so something that I'll see is somebody who has a lot of weight to lose, like they have a hundred pounds to lose or more. They don't really need to track calories at first because they have a bigger window as far as flexibility. And they can just start making some simple swaps, some simple tweaks to their diet, and they're probably going to lose weight. But as you get closer to that goal, as you lose more weight,
00:13:23
Speaker
the window is going to shrink down with how much flexibility that you have in that calorie target that you need to be hitting is going to get lower and get a little bit tighter. And so you need to be a little bit more dialed in with your nutrition. And so losing that last 20 pounds is going to be a lot more detail oriented than losing that first 20 pounds. And so you may not need to track at first, you might just need to make some simple tweaks. But if your progress starts to slow down, you start to hit plateaus for a really long time,
00:13:50
Speaker
Tracking calories is the best way that I know of in order to break through those plateaus and start to make progress again. Because when you have the numbers, you can tweak them. But if you don't have the numbers, like if you actually don't know how much food you're eating, it's really difficult to make the decisions that you need to make in order to continue to see progress and do all the things that you want to do.
00:14:10
Speaker
And it's extremely frustrating when you feel like you're eating healthy, you feel like you're making making all the right decisions, but you're not actually seeing the progress that you want to see. and this is where a lot of people get frustrated, they quit, they give up those sorts of things. And so tracking calories, in my opinion, is a really good idea for a lot of people to do, at least for a certain time period to learn and to just really understand what it takes to lose weight, to gain weight, to maintain weight. It's just a really, really good learning tool. And so I'm a big fan of it.
00:14:39
Speaker
Do you have to track calories? No, you do not. Is it helpful? I think it's helpful for a large majority of people. And with that being said, a couple of tips when it comes to tracking calories, just understand that it's a skill just like everything else. When you first start, it's going to take some extra time. You have to weigh out food. You have to measure. You have to figure out how to use whatever app you're using. And it takes a little bit of extra time. But the more that you do it, the easier it gets. So like when you first start, it might take you an extra 10 minutes a day to put all that stuff in there and When you eat your meals, it takes a few extra seconds to log everything. And that can be a little bit annoying. But I would rather spend 10 minutes a day tracking my food and have guaranteed results and lose 50 pounds, 75 pounds, 100 pounds and change my life forever and learn all these things about food than just say, ah that's too much work. I can't do that. I don't want to put this extra 10 minutes in per day.
00:15:27
Speaker
so that's the way that i look at it and also just a couple other things when it comes to tracking your calories when you first get into it eating similar meals and snacks can make tracking really easy and so that's something that i recommend for a lot of people if you don't mind eating the same foods which if you look at the research a lot of us do eat the same 20 to 30 ish foods on repeat and so if you can eat similar meals and snacks makes tracking really easy another thing that i like to do is like if i don't want to be dealing with adding all that information into the app during the day i'll just do it the morning of i'll put in the meals that i'm planning on eating the snacks that i'm planning on eating or everything that i know that i'm going to be eating that day that way i don't have to mess with it throughout the day or even the day before that's an option as well and then the last thing that i would say is like
00:16:12
Speaker
You don't need to be 100% perfect. And so I'll find that some people, because they can't be perfect with it, they can't find this exact food, this exact brand, this exact amount. Like I don't know what was in this or what was in this. They just say, screw it. and they get like mad about it because it's not perfect. Well, it's not going be perfect regardless. But the more that you just start to think about tracking food and you start to make these choices, even the act of just like food journaling or even like taking pictures of your food has been shown to help with people improving their diet. So the act of starting to track food
00:16:46
Speaker
is going to help you start to make healthier decisions. Obviously, you're going to get better results the more accurate that you can be with your tracking, but don't stress it if you can't be perfect. This is a trial and error thing and you're going to learn and get better as you go.
Determining Calorie Needs for Weight Loss
00:17:00
Speaker
Question number three. I know I need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight, but how do I figure out how many calories I actually need to get into one? So there's multiple ways that you can go about figuring out how to be in a calorie deficit. And yes, it's absolutely true. The only way you're going to lose weight is if you are in a calorie deficit and knowing that target, knowing how many calories your body needs is extremely helpful.
00:17:21
Speaker
And so there's three different ways that you can do this. The first way, which is probably the most accurate, but it also takes the longest is you could Get a food tracking app. You track your food for seven days and you average that out.
00:17:32
Speaker
And that would give you your maintenance calories for then. And then once you have your maintenance calories, you would subtract a certain number of calories. A really simple number that a lot of people will use is 500 calories per day to put them into a calorie deficit. Because if you subtract 500 calories per day for seven days, that's roughly around a pound a week.
00:17:50
Speaker
that is a way that you can go about doing that another way that you can do it is to just find the calorie calculator so if you just google calorie calculator or just go to chat gpt and enter in your information your height your weight gender ah those sorts of things it'll spit out a number based on all that information that you give it and that will give you a good place to start These things are not going to be perfect and you're going to need to adjust. And this is again, where tracking and having metrics and having numbers is super helpful. So like if it spits out a number and you track for two weeks, but you're not really losing at a good rate or you're not losing at all, you may need to adjust those numbers a little bit.
00:18:30
Speaker
Having those numbers helps you to make better decisions in the future. Because if you don't have numbers, people just go, well, I'm not losing on 500 calories. Let me just cut my calories in half. And that's not a good strategy either. So you want to make sure that your deficit that you are in is in a good range so that it's sustainable and you're not hungry all the time and you're not crash dieting. Because if you're doing those things, it's just it's not going to be a good long term strategy.
00:18:53
Speaker
The third thing that you can do, and you can do this literally right now, it's not going to be the most accurate, but it'll give you some baseline numbers to start with, is you can take your body weight, multiply that by 10.
00:19:05
Speaker
If you don't get a ton of activity right now, like you don't get more than 5,000 steps and you work out less than a couple times a week, you'd probably use this number 10. If you do work out a little bit, you get, you know, six to 8,000 steps in a day. You work out consistently at least three times a week. You could use 11. And if you are very active already, like you're getting 10,000 plus steps and you work out three, four or five times per week, you could use 12 for this number. and you take your body weight and you multiply it by whatever number you fit into for your activity level. So for example, if weigh 200 pounds and I'm not very active, I'm pretty sedentary right now, I take that, multiply that by 10, 2,000 calories is going to put me in a calorie deficit.
00:19:48
Speaker
Some mistakes that you want to avoid when doing this is to look at trends over time. Don't get so caught up in the day-to-day, the fluctuations, looking in such a short time period because you can't really see what's actually happening in that short amount of time. So look at weeks, look at months rather than looking at daily fluctuations.
00:20:07
Speaker
The other thing that I mentioned already is to not cut calories too low. lot of advice that you'll see out there when going into a calorie deficit deficit is to be somewhere in the 10 to 25% range.
00:20:19
Speaker
And so let's say, for example, my maintenance calories are around 2500, just for easy math. If I want to be in that 10% to 25% range, I'm going to take 2500 and multiply that by 10%.
00:20:31
Speaker
ten percent That's going to give me 250 calories to roughly 500 ish calories to put me in that 10 to 20% range. And that's going to be a range that's going to be sustainable.
00:20:42
Speaker
Again, at the very top end, you can go around 30%. So you could take 30% of your maintenance calories and subtract that and still be in a calorie deficit and that's manageable. But if you're starving all the time, if you're really hungry, if it's really hard to stick to, it's probably not going to be a very good calorie deficit for you for the long term.
00:20:59
Speaker
Another thing i would say is just to make sure that you're actually tracking accurately. a lot of people don't track things accurately. They don't track their weight enough to actually know whether or not they're losing or gaining weight. They just hop on the scale randomly.
00:21:12
Speaker
They don't track their food consistently, so they don't really know how much they're actually eating. If you don't have the numbers and and you don't have the right numbers, it's much harder to make the right decisions moving forward. And so the bottom line is you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. There's different ways that you can go about figuring out that number, but getting in a calorie deficit, doing it in a sustainable way that is, and then just being consistent. Those are the things that you need to do in order to get you on the right track.
Warm-ups, Stretching, and Efficient Workouts
00:21:39
Speaker
Question number four. I'm limited on time, so I don't spend much time warming up or stretching. How important is this stuff and how much will it affect my overall progress? So I'm not a huge fan of stretching, so I'm going to be a little bit biased in this answer, but I'm a big proponent of, especially when time is an issue, on focusing on the big rocks. So focusing on the things that are going to give you the most bang for your buck.
00:22:05
Speaker
And for a lot of people, that is like strength training, getting the workouts in, warming up and like mobility and that stuff all has its place. But if you're spending tons of time on that stuff and you're not really putting a decent amount of time into things like actually working out, strength training, like getting cardio in those sorts of things then you're really missing the boat because you're not getting as much benefit from those certain things as you're going to get from things like lifting weights and so when it comes to warming up i typically don't ever spend more than five minutes warming up and from a super basic level when it comes to your workouts like if you really really are limited on time and you just need to get in and get out and you don't have time to do like a 10 minute warm-up or something like that just
00:22:46
Speaker
whatever your first exercise is, just start super light on it. You do eight to 12 reps, add a little bit of weight, do like five to eight reps, add a little bit more weight, do like two to four reps, a little bit heavier, and then you're good to go.
00:23:00
Speaker
You don't need to spend tons of tons of time to warm up. This is something that I use quite a bit, like especially, i just don't really like warming up. Like I really don't like it. So If I'm really like not feeling it and I don't want to warm up, that's what I'll do. Or if I'm short on time, that's what I'll do. If I have a little bit longer and like I wanted to get just feel a little bit better going into the workout, then I will spend a little bit more time on it. Five, six minutes, something like that.
00:23:25
Speaker
I'll roll out a little bit like my back, my legs, things like that. I'll do a couple body weight movements, maybe some band exercises, and then I'll get right into that first exercise doing that same routine that I just explained to you. So you don't need to be spending 10, 15, 20 minutes on a warmup because you're wasting your time on things that aren't going to give you that much benefit.
00:23:44
Speaker
When it comes to things like stretching and mobility, again, I think there's some value to this stuff. And it's something that I've added to my personal routine this year because I do see the value in it and I want to feel good and I want my body to be durable and I don't want to be getting injured in those things. So I do try to add those things in there.
00:24:00
Speaker
But one thing you should also realize is really good strength training, like going through a full range of motion with heavy weights and really like focusing on good tempo and controlling the weight is helpful for your mobility and for your body feeling good.
00:24:12
Speaker
So if your training is not very good, like you use bad technique and you're just throwing the weights around and you're not really focused on using good form and technique, your body probably isn't going to feel very good and you're not getting the benefits of good stretching and mobility on your body that you would want. So From a time perspective, like from efficiency perspective, if you're strength training, use good form and technique, control the weight and really focus on like good stretch and good range of motion. And you're going to get a lot of those benefits as well.
00:24:41
Speaker
Some other things that you can do is to do some mobility stuff in between your sets. So during your rest times, you have 90 seconds, two minutes, three minutes between your rest, between your sets. Sometimes you can add in some little mobility movements here. This is something that we used to do when I played college football all the time. So in between our sets, our coach would have us do some sort of like mobility thing, whether it was with our hips or our shoulders or different things like that. So it's a really good way to maximize your time in the gym by adding in some of these things between the sets in the gym.
00:25:14
Speaker
and Another thing is just staying active throughout the day. And people call these exercise snacks. So this could be like doing 1520 squats, maybe doing a little bit of body work, like rolling out your back or something like that throughout the day. And these things only take 30 seconds, 60 seconds, just having some of that stuff around your house, maybe it's a roller, maybe it's a lacrosse ball, maybe you're just dropping down on the floor and do like a couch stretch, or you're even just sitting on the floor or hanging off of a bar or sitting in a squat, like just doing some of these random things throughout the day can just keep your body moving.
00:25:45
Speaker
Because as the old saying goes, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Compound Exercises for Time-Efficient Workouts
00:25:49
Speaker
So just finding some ways to get more active outside of the gym is really helpful as well. And the last question of the day,
00:25:56
Speaker
What are the most effective exercises if I have very limited time in the gym? So compound exercises versus isolation exercises is really the debate here.
00:26:07
Speaker
Compound exercises is just exercises that use a lot of different muscles at the same time. An isolation exercise would be just a exercise that really focuses in on one muscle.
00:26:20
Speaker
And so an example would be like doing a chin up, which is going to work my back, it's gonna work my biceps, versus doing just a bicep curl, where it's strictly just focusing in on my bicep. And so when you focus on compound exercises, you can hit multiple muscles at the same time, which from a time perspective, and from an effectiveness perspective, you're going to get better results, more bang for your buck,
00:26:42
Speaker
out of that. And so focusing on exercises like that, that involve a lot of different muscle groups is a really good strategy for people who are limited on time. So things like squats, things like deadlifts, things like bench presses, shoulder presses, your rows, pull-ups, pull-downs, RDLs, lunges, those sorts of things are going to work a lot of muscles at the same time.
00:27:05
Speaker
So focusing more on those compound exercises versus isolation exercises is a good strategy when you are pressed for time. And a practical style of training that I used for quite a while, when I was short on time, there was a time when I was coaching football and teaching.
00:27:22
Speaker
And so those days were long, like some days you'd be busy for 12 hours between teaching and coaching. And so I didn't have a ton of time to get workouts in. And I also just didn't wanna be in the gym for that long. Like that's a long day.
00:27:34
Speaker
And I don't want to be in the gym for an hour, hour 15. hour fifteen I want to get in, I want to get out, I want to get some quality work in. And so one thing that I used to do is what was called five by five training. And so I would take two exercises that use different muscle groups. And so typically it would be like lower body or upper body, or be like a pressing movement with a pulling movement or something of those sorts.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I would do that first exercise, I would do five reps with some sort of like medium weight, so moderate weight. So think like on a scale of hard or intensity it would be like a seven out of a ten and so i might do something like a bench press for five reps and then i would go straight into the second exercise where maybe i'm doing like some squats or some lunges or something with my lower body i do five reps of that exercise and then i would rest 60 to 90 seconds and then i would do that again and i'll repeat that for five sets so Within that little superset, I'm already got 10 sets of solid work in and then I would do that one more time. So I would pick two different exercises, I would pick maybe this second time I would do like some pull ups.
00:28:36
Speaker
And then I would do some RDLs and I would do five reps of pull ups go straight into the RDLs, do five reps of that rest 60 to 90 seconds and then repeat that five times and At the end of the workout, this is something that you can knock out in 35 to 40 minutes. And you just did 20 good sets of really good compound exercises, worked a lot of muscles, and you're in and out of the gym in not that much time with a really solid workout. So that's something that I've used a lot in the past when I am short on
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:29:05
Speaker
time. And so if you are short on time, that's a really good format that you can use.
00:29:10
Speaker
And with that, that is all five questions for today. If you have some questions in the future, you can always shoot me a message. I always like diving a little bit deeper on these questions and answering to help you guys out with the questions that you have. So if you have those, you can always shoot me a message on social media is probably the best way to get ahold of me.
00:29:29
Speaker
One-on-one coaching link is in the show notes. If you're somebody looking to make some changes, lose some weight, build some better habits, start to build that lifestyle that you want. I can help you with that. You can check the show notes, see if it's a good fit. And with that being said, I appreciate you listening as always, and we will see you next week