Four Tips For More Efficient (And Effective) Strength Training Sessions

March 11, 2023
Written by Christopher Tyler

Four strategies to promote efficient and effective strength training sessions and how you can easily implement them.

Pressed for time but still want to ensure you’re getting in an effective strength workout?


The issue: There are thousands of things you could include in a training session. All of them may have a time and place for being useful, but when you’re constrained by time (and energy resources), it’s important to be including things that give you the greatest return for the time you have set aside.


The solution: There are strategies you can implement and ways of organising your session so that you get the most out of this time you’ve set aside, and ensure you’re progressing in a meaningful direction.


Here are four:

1. ‘Core work’ for your warm-up


Your warm-up doesn’t have to be as elaborate as you may have been lead to believe.


The general goal is to increase your body temperature, blood flow, use the relevant muscle groups, mobilise etc.


Some of this occurs just by anticipating the workout that you’re about to engage in, and the rest can be achieved through some core work, and a couple of lighter sets for your first main movement.


So you get your warm-up, but what are the other benefits?


• A good use of your time: Because the lower intensity core work won’t fatigue you, it’s a great way to get your warm-up and simultaneously train the core (rather than setting time aside for a specific warm-up and having to do core work later on in the session).


• A good way to be able to progress: Ideally, you want to be progressing in all aspects of your training (including your warm-up). A common issue with many warm-up routines and protocols is that they lack ways of progressing. By incorporating core work, it’s an easier way to track and slowly progress your warm-ups (more reps, core movement progressions etc.)


• Encourages intention: If you find it hard to transition from your work/daily life mental state to being ready to train, some core movements which require more coordination and proprioception than other warm-up routines is a great way to force yourself to be present and ‘switch on’. For example, try doing a bear crawl cross-connect (in the video below) while thinking about your work assignments.


So what does a 'core warm-up' look like? Here’s an example:




2. Emphasising Compound Movements (Multi-joint exercises)


What are compound movements? Compound movements are movements that require the use of more than one of your joints (think the ‘big’ movements like deadlifts, squats, overhead presses, bench presses, pull-ups and so on.)


The benefit of emphasising compound movements (as opposed to isolation movements eg. a leg extension or bicep curl) is the following:


• Time efficient: Instead of hopping on three to five different machines to exercise different muscle groups, you can focus your efforts on a compound movement (like a trap bar deadlift (shown below) ) to stimulate all of those muscle groups at once.


• Stimulus: The benefit of isolation movements is that you can really stimulate specific muscle groups with less general fatigue. However, If you’re working out two to three times a week (as opposed to 5-7 days), compound movements become extremely useful as you don’t have to worry about the high fatigue that will be generated. The compound movements will generate a very large stimulus on many of your muscles!


These larger movements are going to be considerably more fatiguing and whole-body stimulating = more muscle growth for multiple muscle groups and more calories burned.


• Life transfer: Life forces you into odd positions and moments where you have to navigate and control your body in space. These positions and moments are similar to what you experience when performing larger compound movements (eg. having to pick something heavy off the ground = a deadlift). So, it would make sense to stress these positions so that you become generally more robust and resilient in your day-to-day life!


*This doesn’t mean only do compound movements and avoid isolation movements, it’s just worth emphasising compound movements so that you can get a huge amount of stimulus through multiple muscle groups in the short amount of time that you have. Throwing in some isolation movements at the end of your session can be a great way to really drive some extra stimulus into specific muscle groups.




3. Supersets for opposing muscle groups/movement patterns


What are ‘Supersets’? Supersets involve completing two exercises back-to-back.


Their main advantage is time efficiency.


There are a few ways you can incorporate supersets, but when it comes to a more time efficient session, you can use them by performing a compound movement that stresses one group of muscles and then immediately performing a contrasting compound movement that stresses a different group of muscles.


This way, you’re not limited by the fatigue from the muscle groups you just stressed but you can still get through more work (by performing two movements in a short time period as opposed to just performing one).


Another advantage of supersets is that it can challenge your conditioning to a greater degree than if you were only performing a single movement at a time.


For this kind of superset variation i’m describing, choose exercises that don’t involve the same muscle groups (eg. upper body muscle groups into lower body muscle groups) or are the opposing movement patterns (horizontal pushing movement into a horizontal pulling movement).


Here are some examples (Video 1: RDL into a Military Press and Video 2: Goblet Squat into Pull-Up):







4. Mobility during rest periods


Mobility movements can be a great addition to your strength training sessions. The only issue is that they can be time consuming and there’s so many you could include that they start to detract from your strength training session (it instead becomes a mobility session).


Performing your mobility movements during your rest periods is a great way to structure your session.


Why?


• Again, the main advantage is time efficiency. Rather than performing various mobility movements over a specific time block within the session, you can fill the required rest periods with them instead.


• It forces you to take rest periods (to complete the mobility movement). Having adequate rest in between exercises and sets is an important part of successful strength training but can very easily be neglected.


• The exercises you performed prior to your mobility can assist with the mobility movements (joints are moving better, more blood in the muscles etc.) just as the mobility movement can help the next exercise you perform (you can access greater ranges of motion).


What mobility movements to include? There’s lots, but most people can benefit from extra attention through the thoracic spine and hips. Below is an example of two you can include in between your sets:





THE TAKEAWAY


When you have a limited amount of time to set aside for your strength training sessions, it becomes even more important to ensure you’re having both efficient and effective workouts. From performing core work as your warm-up to using supersets for your main movements, implementing a few of these strategies (or all four) is a great way to transform a disorganised and time consuming session into one that is time efficient and effective in progressing you towards your health and fitness goals.

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