Short On Time? Try These Bodybuilding Workout Tips

If you’ve ever entered the weight room ready to squat only to find the racks were taken, you know the pain of a disrupted workout routine. If you’re strapped for time in the gym, the last thing you need is a crowd to compete with.

Bodybuilding workouts can take plenty of time to begin with, and an added time constraint can play havoc with your mood, mindset, and even the results you get from the work you put in. Sometimes, a brutal three-hour back workout just isn’t in the cards. Sometimes your training needs to be quick and dirty.

To get more out of less, you can employ some clever tricks and tactics that will keep the gains coming. Getting a good bodybuilding workout in less than an hour isn’t easy, but it’s certainly doable. Here are some tips for making your sessions more efficient and no less effective.

Have a Backup Plan

Indecision is the enemy of efficiency. If you walk into the gym as a blank slate, you can’t expect the universe to guide you to gains. To make the most of your time and train your muscles effectively, you should have your workout mapped out before you ever pick up a weight. However, what you put on paper doesn’t always apply in practice. There’s a chance that the workout you have planned on a given day might not be possible in the gym at the time.

Why It Works

It’s all too easy to suffer from paralysis by analysis if you don’t have structures in place to guide you. Time spent debating internally between hammer curls or dumbbell curls is time you could be training. If you know your exercises, sets, and reps ahead of time, you can move fluidly through your session without stopping to contemplate your next move.

It’s also wise to have alternatives in place. If you need to bench press, but all the stations are occupied, be ready to pivot to dumbbells instead. As long as you roughly match up your movement patterns — replacing one press with another, for instance — the implement you use once in a while won’t be a problem. You’ll still get a hearty workout in.

Order Your Exercises Properly

If you want to perform the best, your meat and potatoes movements should come first. You may find it quite difficult to deadlift at the end of a back day if you’ve spent an hour wearing yourself out with other movements. In that case, your pulling power would likely suffer. Beyond that, you can shave minutes off the clock by ordering your exercises in a way that reduces downtime, travel, and reliance on too many kinds of equipment.

Why It Works

Crossing the gym floor takes time, as does changing the equipment you’re using. You can make your workouts more convenient by grouping your lifts accordingly. On leg day, for instance, the right exercise sequence can have you running like a well-oiled machine. Here’s a sample routine showcasing how to order your movements for maximum efficiency:

Back Squat (power or squat rack)

Rack Pull (power or squat rack)

Walking Lunge (dumbbells)

Romanian Deadlift (dumbbells)

Leg Extension (machine)

Leg Curl (machine)

Crunch (cables)

Focus On Compound Exercises

Compound exercises involve more than one joint moving at a time. By association, compound lifts also involve multiple muscles or muscle groups at once. This makes them extremely valuable if you’re crunched for time. If one exercise can do the job of three others, there’s no reason to leave it by the wayside.

Why It Works

If you tried to train your back with nothing but isolation movements, you’d be stuck in the gym for hours. Isolation exercises are great for focusing on a specific area you want to improve, but take up plenty of time if you include too many.

A compound movement like the deadlift will stimulate your hamstrings, glutes, lower back, traps, forearms, and core all at once. While you may not get the same level of targeted stress on any individual area, for saving time and covering your bases, compounds are second-to-none.