Training advice for the Fit Pros

Are you short of time but still want to get the most from your workouts?

You are not alone. Many of us work longer hours than 9-5 jobs, let’s face it, when you are at home this doesn’t count as “free time” to spend working on yourself and your body, you have other commitments such as children, housework, hobbies, side hustles and more. Fitting in training sessions is hard work and so prioritising your health and training becomes a challenge.

This challenge can be overcome by making your workouts shorter and more efficient so that you can fit them into your day without taking a massive chunk out of the time you have available. Let’s face it most people want to workout but don’t because it means they have to find the time to do so and this is difficult to do. In order to overcome this challenge creating workouts that are short can really help. In order to do this you need to be able to nail down the moves that give you the most “bang for your buck”. There are 3 big main movement patterns that are involved in resistance training, these are, push, pull and lower body. In order that you get the body working at its best you need to be able to do the 3 main movements. For legs this is mastering the squat, Pull workouts focus on your back areas predominantly and so a movement such as deadlifts can be the most effective movement to master here. The push workouts target your chest and shoulders and so a form of pressing movement such as the bench press is a good place to start.

These 3 movements are predominantly the areas that you should focus your workouts on. The suggestion here is to start with the main big movement and incorporate some accessory work alongside it in order to improve on these main big lifts. Accessory movements means working on muscles that enable you to get better at the big lifts. So for example, when you do pulling movements (deadlifting) having strong biceps is a important as they are involved. With push movements this is your triceps and when it comes to legs this means using exercises that target either your quads, hamstrings or calves.

My suggestion when it comes to training is that you start with your one big movement (Squat/Deadlift/Press) and follow it with two accessory movements. You don’t have to do many sets. 3 sets per exercise is enough. So 3 sets of 3 exercises would take you 9 sets in total and could probably be completed within 1/2 hour! This can be done at any time during your day that you find convenient for you- whether that is first thing in the morning, during your lunch break or in the evening after work (Keep an eye out for a post on “How to workout using minimal equipment”)

As ever getting a program set up can help you find the right accessory exercises to enable you to progress with the big lifts from the start! Get in touch with me and I can help provide you with the movements that will enable you to get the most out of your big lifts!

Keep raising the bar

Alex Osborn-King