Improve your Training Efficiency for Faster Results

It’s not how about how many hours you spend in the gym that counts, it’s about what you do with those hours that dictates your success and results. Generally there are two types of “normal” gym-goers – the ones who spend 2-3hrs in the gym and brag about it later to their friends and the ones who don’t have enough time to get to the gym for a workout and complain about it to their friends. Both groups would see much better results if they improve their training efficiency with density training.

Muscles are funny things. They respond to just about any type of training, as long as it’s hard and as long as it’s not the same damn thing you’ve always done. Its safe to say most wouldn’t have herd of the term “density training”. In density training you focus on the total amount of work you can accomplish in a fixed amount of time. As you progress, you’ll naturally increase your sets & reps and be able to use more weight. Lets say the total workout time (not including warm ups) is 30 minutes – the goal would be to complete as many reps or sets as possible in that time. Record how many you completed and aim to beat it next week. This works best with supersets of opposing muscle groups, for example: dumbbell shoulder press & lat pulldown or leg press & hamstring curls.

Why it works?

  1. Hormones: growth hormone and testosterone levels peak about 30-40 minutes into a training session and steadily decline thereafter. At that point, cortisol secretion begins to rise. This means the muscle-building hormones shut down and the muscle-eating hormones kick in. Thus, workouts lasting 90 minutes to two hours are a classic example of ‘two steps forward, one step back.’
  2. Motivation: even if you love everything about training and the gym, your enthusiasm will take a hit at some point spending so many hours working out. Imagine if your workouts only took half as much time. How much time would that free up for you to pursue career goals, spend time with your friends and loved ones, educate yourself, or even just get out and do something different.