Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 7 Tips to Save 200 Hours in the Gym (Without Losing Muscle) | Ep 390

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7 Tips to Save 200 Hours in the Gym (Without Losing Muscle) | Ep 390 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're spending five, six, even seven hours a week in the gym trying to build muscle and lose fat, and you're starting to wonder if there is a smarter way to get the same results without sacrificing so much time away from work, family, and everything else you're trying to prioritize, this episode is for you.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna show you seven evidence-based strategies to cut your training time by 40 to 50% while maintaining or even improving your strength and hypertrophy gains.
• 0:27
  Philip Pape: We're talking about as much as 150 to 200 hours back in your pocket every year.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: And the best part is you'll learn why more time in the gym doesn't equal better results.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: It is time to engineer your training for maximum stimulus per minute.
• 0:43
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:59
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Cape, and today we're gonna tackle a problem that affects just about every lifter I work with, and that is spending way too much time in the gym for the results that you're getting.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: Now, you might have heard that building muscle requires a certain amount of volume, and oftentimes more is better, depending on where you're starting from.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And for many people, this translates to, oh, I need to be in the gym for 90-minute sessions or potentially more, or four, five, six days in the gym.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: I know people who like to go to the gym every day of the week.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: And if you're not doing that, are you working hard enough to get the results you want?
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: But in my opinion, that approach is not only inefficient, and I'm all about inefficiency or efficiency, it's often counterproductive.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Many things in life, you do more, you do get more results.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: But when it comes to your body and your recovery, uh, there is this fine balance.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: And so today we're gonna break down seven time-saving strategies backed by research, things that I really love that actually work.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: There are a lot of ways to save time in the gym, but these are the big hitters.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: And they're not really shortcuts, they're not hacks, they're just taking the principles and saying, okay, how can I do this intelligently to get the maximum stimulus, but minimize time, especially wasted time.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: And by the end of the episode, you'll know how to restructure your training to save as much as two to four hours every single week.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: Of course, it depends on where you're starting.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: And the goal is to still make all the progress you want to make.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: This is not like just the bare minimum I'm talking about.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: This is still making really, really good progress.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: Let's say 90, 95% of the results you could possibly get, but but still saving time.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: And for some of you, it's actually gonna improve your results because you're actually doing too much.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's just jump right into it and talk about the time problem, right?
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: The the typical lifter, if you're listening, you're probably training three to six days a week.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: But many of you, as you've gotten into the intermediate, maybe advanced stages, you've gone to four-day splits, maybe a five-day power building program, maybe a six-day body part split.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: I've I've seen the whole gamut.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: And if you're doing fewer days a week, they're probably 75 to 90 minutes a session.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: If you're a new lifter, if you've never lifted before and you're listening to this podcast, you're like, oh, that sounds like a lot.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: And it's it is a lot for a beginner.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: I think a beginner can get away with, you know, 30 to 45 minutes three days a week, period.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: Um, and right there off the bat, if you're doing way more than that as a beginner, we can address that with today's episode.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: But a lot of you then start to creep up, you do more and more, you increase the volume, and all of a sudden you're training maybe six, seven, eight hours a week when you add it all up in the gym, and then you have your commute time, and then you have your warmups and rest time, all that stuff kind of adds into that, right?
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: And there is a point of diminishing returns.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: And when I look at people's training logs, I see either redundant exercises that target the same muscles and they can just kind of strip those down.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: I see uh wasted time or not necessarily see wasted time.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: I know people are wasting time like scrolling on their phones, for example.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: I see way too much warm-up that's not necessary.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: I see a lot of extra accessory or isolation work that could be eliminated or combined with other movements.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: I see too many sets, like I see a lot of things.
• 4:07
  Philip Pape: And I think it comes from maybe a misunderstanding of what drives muscle growth, but also just a lack of clarity and confidence of really what to do and like what programs are appropriate for them, or putting together their own program that doesn't make sense.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: We think of training volume, volume definitely matters.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: It definitely matters, but beyond a threshold, more volume doesn't mean more growth, and everyone responds differently.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: So there's a sweet spot where you get that maximum stimulus with a minimum time, kind of like a curve, and we want to find that point for you.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: Because unless you have the extra time or you're retired or you're a competitor or something like that, and you want to spend the extra time to get that little extra boost in optimization, you know, that this episode's not for you if that's the case.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: We're actually talking about going the other direction and saving time.
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: So, my first strategy of the seven is to just cut the number of exercises you're doing per session.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna map this out.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: I think one of the biggest time waste wasters is bloat in exercise selection.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: And I see it online.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: If you go to, if you just Google like strength training programs, you'll see these either full body or body part split programs that have like nine, 10, 11, sometimes 12 exercises, which is insane in my opinion.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: Again, unless you're Arnold doing two days for two hours a session and you're enhanced, you know.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Uh, and I'll see like lots of overlapping things, you know, leg press, leg extension, leg curl, calf raises, flat bench, incline, decline, cable flies, pec deck, right?
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: And a lot of redundancy, and it ends up eating up like an extra half hour than you probably need for the benefit.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: I like I want you to think of this in terms of coverage and efficiency with the movements, meaning the more you can do movement patterns and incorporate more muscles, whether it's targeted directly or indirectly, the more efficient you're gonna be and get to do fewer exercises to get the same result.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: So the first principle here is thinking of movement patterns, not muscle isolation or muscle groups.
• 6:07
  Philip Pape: Even though I talk about that a lot in the context of hypertrophy, the first principle we need to start from is the movement patterns, the squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, lunging, carrying, right?
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: The movement patterns.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: And when you structure training around those instead of muscle groups, you're gonna recruit more total muscle mass per exercise.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: Eliminate redundancy.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: You're gonna find out that it's pretty hard on your body, such that you need to make some trade-offs elsewhere, and still you're gonna get the result, right?
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: So instead of, especially if you're a beginner, but instead of like leg press, leg extension, leg curl, calf phrase, you can do a squat variation and an RDL, for example.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: Squat variation, RDL.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: That's gonna hit your quads, your glutes, your core, your upper back, a whole bunch of stuff.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: The RDL is probably the best thing to hammer the hamstrings, the glutes, the lower back, two exercises right there, complete lower body coverage and other muscles as well.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: And there's a lot of overlap.
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: That's just that's just one example, right?
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: All the big movements have a similar result.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: And so when you equate weekly volume, we actually find there is no difference in a hypertrophy as well, muscle size, when you spread sets across 10 exercises versus five exercises, as long as the five are efficiently chosen.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: But that could save you right there 30 to 40 minutes.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: So I really want you to look at the programs you're following.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: And if they're these really long packed in programs with a ton of movements, you're gonna save a lot of time by consolidating those.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: Thinking of the big movement patterns, the compound lifts.
• 7:34
  Philip Pape: Very important, right?
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: And what was the other thing there?
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: Oh, and it's gonna save you time because if you're going to a commercial gym, you don't have to worry about fighting for all those machines and worrying about their availability.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: So that leads me to strategy number two, which is gonna sound similar, but it's it's different in its own way.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: And that is to prioritize compound movements specifically.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: So the first the first strategy was really about consolidating the exercises.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: The second one is prioritizing compound lifts, squats, bench press, overhead, deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, actually, rows.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: I prefer pull-ups to rows for newer lifters, but rows can get in there later on.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: Not just uh barbell rows, but T-bar rows and chest supported and all that.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: Um, but anyway, these are efficient because they hit multiple muscles, muscle groups, as I mentioned already, and they produce greater total muscle activation per rep, and they improve your work capacity and your tolerance for systemic fatigue as well, which is going to translate to your overall fitness level, your cardio capacity, and your ability to lift harder and more with more quality with the accessory and isolation work.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: Just think about when you bench press, you're recruiting your chest, your shoulders, your triceps, your lats, your core, and you can change the grip and the width and target different things more effectively, like your triceps with a close grip.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: You know, compare that to like a chest fly.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: I mean, I I love a chest fly as much as the next guy, um, especially when it's done bottom to top, and you really, you know, tighten that uh contraction, right?
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: We're thinking of bodybuilding, but not if you're not doing bigger pressing movements.
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: And it doesn't have to be a bench press with a barbell, it could be with dumbbells, it could be an incline, you know, there's lots of compound lifts.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: So, and it doesn't mean you never do isolation work.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: It means you prioritize compounds first, build your program around that, then add isolation.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: And that is also gonna save you a lot of time.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: So you're consolidating your lifts and then you're prioritizing the compound movements and doing them first, most likely, most likely doing them first, okay, to get high effectiveness.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: All right, strategy number three is to use antagonist or non-competing supersets.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: I do love supersets these days.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: I used to kind of poo-poo them and file them under circuit training, but that's because I came from a world of either CrossFit or the gym machines where you're doing five exercises in a circuit and it's kind of random and you know rest periods and things like that.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: I think done correctly, supersets can still maintain your performance, but cut a lot of time because you're cutting rest time.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: And we know in the research, there's been some recent meta-analysis and season studies that show comparable results, whether you're using supersets or not, but you actually save a lot of time.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: And the best way to do this is to pair exercises that don't compete for the same muscles or the same, let's say, stabilizer groups, like benching and rowing.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: That's that's pushing, pushing and pulling, or uh squats and I don't know, calf raises, let's say.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: Let's say, and that came to mind because I was thinking if you have a squat safety bar and you're doing a version of a front squat, let's say with a squat safety bar, and then you can immediately go into calf raises.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: You can do the same thing with a leg press machine and calf raises, right?
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: Things like that.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: Um, pull-ups and leg curls.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: Like if you're doing a full body day, doing upper body and lower body, those are definitely non-competing muscles.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: But even biceps and triceps, those are antagonists, right?
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: Because while one thing is resting, the other muscles are recovered, ready to go, all out.
• 11:07
  Philip Pape: You might need to take, say, 20, 30 seconds.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: You don't have to do it immediately.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: This is the point isn't to get your heart rate up, although there is that side benefit.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: The point really is to just cut time, right?
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: And you're using the rest time now productively in between, you don't have to have as long rest time.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: But the effective rest period between the same exercise still ends up being longer because you're doing something else in between.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: So again, the research shows that antagonist supersets do maintain strength and hypertrophy and cut rest time by about 40%.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: So if you did that for your whole workout, which I'm not necessarily recommending, but let's say you did, a 60-minute workout would be as short as, say, 35 minutes, same results.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: Now, I think a mistake people make here is pairing exercises that are competing with the same muscle groups.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: Like, don't do squats and deadlifts as supersets.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: Don't do, you know, overhead press and well, I was gonna say overhead press and pull-ups.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: Um, I don't know.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: You could try those, but you get what I'm saying.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: Like, don't the second exercise is going to suffer quite a bit.
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: And you'll know what, you'll know what that is when you feel it.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: So it's okay to experiment.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: Now, you might want to do that on purpose to fatigue the muscles.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: That's a different strategy.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: That's not a time-saving maintained performance strategy.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: That's more of a bodybuilding like fatigue, you know, get closer to failure more quickly strategy, which is perfectly viable, but it's not really about saving time per se.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: So I would, if you do supersets, I would still have some rest period in there, like 30 to 60 seconds, so that your output, your reps are as effective as possible and you can, you know, bang them out.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: So this could save you, like I said, 20 to 30 minutes a session.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: All right, strategy number four is to reduce the number of sets.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna combine this with another strategy, and that's training closer to failure, which you should be doing anyway, but I'm gonna explain why.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Most of your muscle growth is going to occur when you have that high level of mechanical tension.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: Now, there's a huge debate raging right now about whether anything beyond mechanical tension causes hypertrophy.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: Like, does the metabolic stress cause hypertrophy?
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: And there's some camps that are like, absolutely not, it's all about mechanical tension.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: And others say that, well, we see studies that show when you have higher metabolic stress, like a higher pump, you know, you see greater hypertrophy.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: They're probably both right to an extent.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: It probably comes down to the first principle of the mechanical tension.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: Anyway, there's probably a lot of overlap or correlation, is what I'm saying.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: And honestly, you don't have to worry about it.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: All you have to, all you can control is how hard you train and getting close to failure.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: Now, how close depends on the lift, the safety of the whole setup, what your goals are.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: But everything beyond that is gonna contribute diminishing return, diminishing returns.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by on that is beyond that is I'd rather you do two really hard sets close to failure than three, four, or five, or you're half-assing it, or you're not getting close to failure, right?
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: That that's where we're gonna save time.
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: Because we do see similar hypertrophy with, let's say, two or three hard sets compared to four or five.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: There's like this fine balance.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: And there are arguments, you know, some people say, look, getting that third set in, if you are training really hard and you have the capacity, you're eating enough, you're sleeping enough, does give you that little extra volume that can help.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: Sure.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: But if we're trying to save time, is it worth it?
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: Is the trade-off worth it?
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: So by hard sets, we are mean, we are talking about, I'm gonna say uh one to three reps shy of failure, reps in reserve, also called seven to nine RPE, uh rated perceived exertion, right?
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, some people would argue and go as far as four reps from failure, but if we're only gonna do two sets, I want you to get, you know, in that really stressful regime, stressful in a good way, as in mechanical tension, close to failure.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: So a lot of people are doing workout programs that have like four or five sets sometimes, right?
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: And then, and that's not a bad thing necessarily, but then they're not really pushing the first three sets, and only the last two are challenging.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: And so then the first three are effectively becoming warm-up sets.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Well, you should already be warming up anyway with a few sets, unless you're already warmed up, and then go after it really hard with the working sets.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: And so if you could do two or three sets instead of three or four, that's gonna save time, obviously, right?
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: As long as you make it count.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: And I really love the two set idea in what's called top set back off set.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: I originally learned this from my coach Andy Baker.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: In fact, he was on the podcast talking about exactly this thing.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: We did an episode on bodybuilding a while back.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Uh, but I've seen others use Jeffrey Verdi, Jeffrey Verity Schofield has uh a good program that uses that structure.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: And I've seen it done with lots of different bodybuilders.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: And all it is is, you know, you you warm up and then you do your working weight at some rep range, let's say four to six for one set, and then you drop the weight, say 10 or 15%, and perform one more high effort set, probably at a lower rep range or a higher rep range, if that makes sense.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: So your first set might be four to six, you drop the weight 10 to 15 percent, your second set might be eight to 10.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: That's just an example, right?
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: And doing those two sets really hard not only covers the two different rep ranges, but also reduces the volume, but still gets you some good work and saves time.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: And this might save 15, 20, 25 minutes a session if you do if you normally have all three sets and now you do all two sets.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: Try it out.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: See if your results don't change or even improve because you're training with maybe even more intensity now, because you're so focused on getting those two sets to mean something, and you're not getting as much systemic fatigue.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: So it could be a win-win.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: All right, so that's the fourth strategy.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: All right, if you're if you're thinking, like, how do I structure all of this into a complete program?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: Because that is where people get tripped up is okay, now I need to execute this.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: Um, we've got you covered inside physique university, just to let you know, we have a whole bunch of training templates there.
• 16:57
  Philip Pape: I call them training templates.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: I don't call them workout programs.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: They are training templates because they are flexible and we give you substitutions so that if your gym or your home gym doesn't have certain equipment, you can swap something out.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: We also tell help you understand how to do that and reprogram it for you.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: And we have a new template called Ignite.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Coach Carroll came up with this.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: It is a time-saving template that is based on some of these principles.
• 17:21
  Philip Pape: It's a four-day upper-lower split, so it prioritizes compound lifts, but it also uses supersets, drop sets, strategic selection of your exercises.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: And you shouldn't require more than a half an hour if you're doing it efficiently for those four sessions.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: And it's still considered more of an intermediate program, so it's still gonna get you great results.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: If you want access to Ignite plus all my other training templates, we've got power building templates, we've got volume and set-based templates, we've got beginner templates, we've got gluten leg templates, and then all the nutrition coaching, community support courses that go with that.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: Just go to witsandweights.com slash physique.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash physique for the Ignite training template, and you'll see a special code in the show notes to get you another bonus along for the ride.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: All right, we've got three more strategies.
• 18:11
  Philip Pape: So strategies five, six, seven.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: Strategy number five to save time in the gym is to increase your training density.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: Now we talked about supersets.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: That is kind of a way to increase training density.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: You're not actually doing more training, but you're doing it in less time.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna expand on that with this one with some other ideas.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: Training density is effectively your work divided by time, right?
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: How much volume are you moving per minute?
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: The higher your density, the more efficient your training, with the caveat that the efficiency isn't offset by a lack of performance because you're moving too quickly and not resting enough.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Get it?
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: So we got to make sure we're not becoming a YouTube workout here or an F-45 or a CrossFit workout.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: We're not trying to do that.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: We're not trying to do that.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: No, no offense to YouTube workouts because I know that's a catch-all, but you know what I mean by that.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: So, what do I mean here?
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: Well, you could shorten your rest periods on your accessory movements.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: I am a big fan of resting enough on the bigger movements of like say three to five minutes.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: Some of the, I'll say quasi-big movements, like an RDL, you could probably get away with two to three.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: And then the accessory movements, you can get away with a minute, maybe two, and be okay.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: And sometimes that actually is helpful, right?
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: Because it keeps you close to that failure point.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: Like, let's say you're doing three sets of maximum pull-ups.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: Take no more than two minutes between them and just go really hard.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: And you'll probably not be able to get as many reps on sets two or three, but you're still gonna get that uh those effective reps, right?
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: And again, there's there's arguments about this.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: Should I take a full two and a half, three minutes here to be able to get what my maximum reps would have been?
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: Again, it's a time versus outcome trade-off.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: I don't think it's worth it for everybody if you're trying to save time because all that rest period adds up.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that uh putting that out there, but the other piece here is put that damn phone away.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: And, you know, I'm talking to myself here.
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: This is critical because a lot of people think they're resting a certain amount of time.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: Maybe they do have a rest timer, but then they're scrolling Instagram, they're checking their email, they're trying to do work, whatever.
• 20:15
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's productive stuff on your phone.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: But then you end up resting another minute or two and it kind of adds up.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: I would rather you just pace around and get some steps in and just be mindful and ready to jump in, which by the way, could be more effective for your training anyway when your headspace is into the workout rather than constantly getting distracted, right?
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: Because that is not the point of training.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: And again, I'm talking to myself here too.
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: I do this a lot, and I know I'm here to train.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: And really the way to do this completely is abstinence, meaning leave your phone in your bag.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: However, if you're using it to track your workout, I know you have to have it out.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: So just put it down between sets.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: So that's one thought as far as training density.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Another thought is to expand the superset concept to three or four non-competing exercises, if that's possible, and then rotating them together.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: Again, this is you're like, well, isn't that more like circuit training?
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: Yeah, kind of.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: But again, if they're non-competing, you can still expand that same concept.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: You know, if you're gonna do leg press, then hamstring curls, then calf raises, and then some loaded ab crunches on a cable, right?
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: And if you're doing cable work, for example, that could be an efficient way to do it as well, because you have the machine and you can just change the positions and stuff like that, change the attachments.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: So three, maybe four.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: Don't go beyond that, because then it truly becomes more of just like a circuit that you where you may lose performance and get too winded during the process.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: But again, hypertrophy isn't gonna get sacrificed very much at all.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: If anything, you might get closer to failure in some of these movements because you're a little bit fatigued.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: So really think about organizing your workouts.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: Just because a program doesn't say to do it as a superset doesn't mean you can't, or you can't move the lifts around to get more work done in less time.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: That's my thought there.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: All right, strategy number six is to use rest pause or mile reps or drop sets, basically any type of set where you're shortening the time it takes you to do the reps, or you make it where you can't just can't do as many reps, but you're close to failure.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: So this is again expanding on some of the concepts we're already talking about.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: So, what are these?
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Well, rest pause is where you perform a set, it gets close to failure, and then you only rest 15 to 30 seconds.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: That's all it is.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: And then you do it again, then you do it again.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: And so the general drop-off is something like 50%.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: So if you're able to do 12 reps on set one, you'll probably get around like five to seven on set two, and then maybe a little more than half of that on the third set, really depends.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: What I like about these, besides saving time, they actually teach you what training hard feels like.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: They're actually a really good technique for that.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Because once you get to that second and third set, your brain is like, wow, I'm surprised I'm already tired, but I'm only getting, you know, five or up so far.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: Come on, I gotta get another one.
• 23:07
  Philip Pape: Almost it's almost like your ego helps you out a little bit there because you're like, I should be able to get more, right?
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: And then you realize the how much things get fatigued when you don't take enough rest.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: And in this case, you're intentionally not taking enough rest.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: So this is great for accessory work.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: Like if you're gonna do, I don't know, let's say uh incline dumbbell curls with dumbbells.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: By the way, little tip on incline curls.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: They're one of the best barbell curls if you do them right.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: If you're back at like a 30-degree angle, kind of like when you do an incline bench press and you hold dumbbells, you you curl them out at an angle, right?
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: Just keep your keep your palm up and curl them out at you, kind of like wings, just out and all the way down, get that full stretch and then and take a short pause and then up from the bottom.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: Anyway, so something like that, you'll see how tired you get on sets two and three, but that's the point, and it also saves you time.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: Another example of this is drop sets.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: Drop sets are where again you go to failure and then you immediately drop some weight, continue, repeat a few times until you're done.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: Uh, another example of this is density sets, where you just try to get, you know, 50 reps as quickly as you can, whatever rest you can, whatever rest you can fit in there.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: Another way to do this is time-based.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: You're like, okay, I have three minutes and I'm gonna go back and forth between these two, or I'm gonna do just this one thing.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna do neck curls or I don't know.
• 24:26
  Philip Pape: I'm thinking of that because I actually just tried some of those um ab crunches, you know, like I said, something really small and isolating, and you're just gonna bang out like as many reps as you can in X number of minutes, right?
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: In AMRAP.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: There's nothing wrong with these for the isolation movements as ways to save time, and you're probably gonna get similar, if not better, results doing them while saving time.
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: I would how I would, however, limit them to maybe a couple exercises per session.
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: Don't do it with everything.
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: Do them with machine work, with isolation work.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: Do not do these with heavy barbell movements or your form is gonna break down.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: Now, obviously, if you're using a barbell for bicep curls and you just want to drop do drop sets there, that's fine.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: That's not what I'm talking about.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: So this might save you 10 to 15 minutes just gloming a couple exercises together and using these density techniques, uh, rest pause, drop sets, etc.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: All right, strategy number seven is really about your warm-up.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: I think a lot of people are spending way too much time warming up before they they lift.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: 20, 30 minutes, you know, foam rolling, stretching, activation drills, um, way too many ramp up sets.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: They're not sure where their working set is, so they do too many warm-up sets.
• 25:31
  Philip Pape: Generally, five to 10 minutes of general warm-up max, which might include a little cardio, dynamic work, maybe you need to stretch and loosen up, whatever.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: I'm I'm cool with all that.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna criticize any of that.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: I think it's great, but maximum five to ten minutes.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: I mean, five minutes probably.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: And then your first lift, you're gonna have three to five warm-up sets, most likely.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: That is how you warm up because you're warming up the movement pattern.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: I've done entire episodes about this, and we actually teach about this in physics physique university.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: We have a whole series called Lifting Lessons, and we give you how to the warm-up ladder.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: You know, we teach about all the different things like bracing and breathing, et cetera.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: But effectively just get warmed up if it's cold, raise your core temperature, and then you know, one to one to two sets, um, or not one to two sets, uh, three three to five ramp up sets leading to your working weight, where you're increasing the weight, you're dropping the reps, and then you hit your working set.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: So if your working weight is 225 pounds, you might do, you know, five at 135, four, uh five at 135.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: Let's see, let me let me think of this the right way.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: No, let's start with 95.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: You might do five at 95, you might do three at 135, you might boot two at 185, maybe one at 205, but probably not, then you jump to 225, right?
• 26:50
  Philip Pape: Something like that.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: So that's definitely gonna save time if you're not doing that already.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: So if we add all this up, I actually did some math here.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: If you're spending five to six sessions in the week, 75 to 90 minutes, right?
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: That's like seven and a half hours a week, that's 390 hours a year.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: If you did all of these strategies and you reduce the number of sessions, you reduce the time, four to five sessions, 45 minutes to an hour, then that's like three, three and a half to four and a half hours a week.
• 27:18
  Philip Pape: So that's around 200 hours a year.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: So you just reclaimed like 150 to 200 hours a year, which is up to four full weeks of your life back.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: Again, that's that's the extreme, but you get the idea.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: And that's without sacrificing the result with your muscle, your strength.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people improve when they do things like this because they're training with more focus and with more intensity and better recovery.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: And sometimes this increases your metabolism because you're not as stressed.
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: You're able to get more sleep.
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: You get it?
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: It kind of compounds on itself.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: So it's not about training more or training longer, it's training more intelligently, more efficiently, building that system that works for your life.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: Now, there's one huge side benefit I haven't mentioned yet.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: When you train more efficiently, your consistency goes up.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: Because when your workouts are shorter, you have a little bit more motivation to go, you have more time to go, you're less tired and fatigued, so you have more energy to go, right?
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: And so you've just reduced a bunch of friction.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: And that just naturally makes you show up more, look forward to it more.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: It's exciting, it's fun, it's not this huge commitment, right?
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: Some people love working out 90 minutes, six days a week.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: That's fine.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: We're not, I'm not talking to you.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: Talking about people want to save time and still get the result.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: And so there's this compound effect of efficiency like this.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: Shorter workouts lead to better adherence, that leads to more total training volume over time.
• 28:41
  Philip Pape: And that is where the results come from is that that volume over time applied consistently.
• 28:46
  Philip Pape: So I do see this a lot.
• 28:48
  Philip Pape: We have a lot of clients, this might be you, that come in, they're kind of burned out from quote unquote working out so much.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: And they're like, but how do I, you know, that's not working?
• 28:58
  Philip Pape: Do I have to do more to get more muscle and and more fat loss?
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: No, sometimes you have to cut that sucker in half and get rid of all the cardio.
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: And all of a sudden, now you start going to the gym more often because it's fun.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: It doesn't take that much time.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: You're walking in between in a flexible way, and now in six months, 12 months, you've made huge progress, way more progress you've made in the last three, five, twenty years or your whole life, possibly.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: Most likely.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: Consistency beats intensity every time.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: Remember that.
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: The intensity can ramp up slowly over time once the consistency is in place.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: And being efficient like this increases your consistency.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: And then again, the other benefit is you enjoy training again.
• 29:36
  Philip Pape: It becomes energizing.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: You look forward to it.
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: So, really, it's not just saving time, it's building a sustainable, consistent system for training.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: All right, so if you want the exact training template that puts some of these into practice, check out the Ignite program inside Physique University.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: Go to witsonweights.comslash physique.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: It's a four day upper lower split.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: We have a full library of other templates.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: We teach you how to.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: Do it.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: We give you substitutions.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: We give you training videos.
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: We give you, of course, support.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: Lots and lots of ways for you to succeed.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: Make this consistent, get the result you want, build that muscle, lose that fat.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash physique or click the link in the show notes and make sure to look for the code in the show notes for an extra bonus.
• 30:20
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 30:23
  Philip Pape: And remember, efficiency isn't about doing less, it's about doing what matters the most.
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape and I'll talk to you next time.