Your Workouts Are Cluttered!

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." - Lin Yutang

With the inception of the Internet, the modern person’s every-day itinerary has become increasingly more complex. Technology, in many ways, has helped us simplify our expanding daily responsibilities: even the busiest of us could get the majority of tasks completed from our Smartphone.

Conversely, the simplicity provided by today’s technology also provides increased complexity in our daily lives. This is evidenced in the amount of time our faces stay buried in a screen as we try to keep pace with the never-ending “to-do” lists such devices enable us to take on. This same notion of hyper-complexity can be applied to our current training regimens.

Exercises, sets, and repetitions are piled on ad nauseam in hopes that the additional workload will coerce our bodies into yielding better results. Take a second and wield your sense of reason and logic at this belief: why are we complicating what should be a clean and simple strength building program? Take a second and wield your sense of reason and logic at this belief: why are we complicating what should be a clean and simple strength building program?

The answer, of course, is a simple one: our increasingly complex day-to-day lives have infiltrated our workouts, leading us to believe that the more you do and the longer you do it will expedite your growth and progress. We have bamboozled ourselves by believing such a myth. High-volume training is retroactive in achieving the results you desire.

For a truly effective training regimen, simplify your program and increase your return on investment by maximizing the 45 minutes to one hour you should be spending in the gym, rather than unnecessarily adding exercises and sets.

To do this, decrease your training volume, total sets per session, and total reps per set/exercise. And most importantly, improve your exercise selection. You want to spend more time focusing on the bigger lifts such as heavy presses and pulls, squat variations and deadlift variations. By simplifying your workout, you eliminate a lot of wasted time in the weight room and allow your body more time to recover, thus allowing your muscles to heal and grow more quickly. Simplification will lead to a more rapid result schedule.

An increase in weight and intensity (how quickly and efficiently you work, and how much time you are dormant between sets) more than supplants the loss of volume in your routine. Three to five exercises per workout, performed with focus, vigor, and intensity, will ensure that you are providing your muscles with a quality workout.

To maximize your weight training results, keep the complexity of every day life out of your workout routine. In other words: (K.I.S.S) Keep It Simple, Stupid!