Strength training can be a time-consuming practice.

Whether you are someone who is pressed for time throughout the week or someone with an abundance of time that can be dedicated toward this practice, it is to your advantage to understand what time-saving strategies are available.

So, the purpose of this article is to outline the best strategies to save time in your strength training, without sacrificing results.

#1: Don’t dilly dally in your warm-ups

Your warm-up should include only what is necessary.

Anything extra should be seen as a luxury if time is plentiful. Although, if time is plentiful, that extra time would probably be better used by doing more actual training.

So, what constitutes “necessary” in a warm-up?

The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) recommends the RAMP principle [2]. It goes as follows:

• Raise your body temperature

• Activate & Mobilize the muscles or movements to be trained

• Potentiate the movements to be trained

In practice, this could look like the following:

• ~5 minutes of cardio at a low intensity

• 1-2 sets of the movement to be trained with a light weight through as full of a range of motion as possible (treat this more as a stretch than a lift)

• 1-2 sets of the movement to be trained with a heavier weight, but not quite your working weight and not to full intensity

This structure would be sufficient to ensure you perform well and feel good in your movements.

Anything else including foam rolling, stretching, etc. should only be performed if time allows and it is your preference to do so. These sort of activities should never replace the aforementioned warm-up structure.

#2: Supersets

A superset can be structured in many ways.

At it’s core, it is when you alternate between two movements that have no overlapping muscles.

For instance, instead of doing 3 sets of bench press with 2:00-3:00 rest in between sets followed by 3 sets of bent over rows with the same rest period, you could alternate back and forth between the two exercises and only rest ~1:00 between sets.

The idea is that while you’re doing the bench press, your back muscles are resting and vice versa. Thus, less total time is required in between each set to maintain performance.

The benefits of doing this are as follows [1]:

• Nearly identical strength and hypertrophy gains (when volume is equated)

• Increased muscular endurance from doing supersets compared to traditional sets

• The volume of the session can be performed in half the time with supersets as compared to traditional sets

It is for these reasons that in my own training and the programming I write for clients, I use supersets whenever they make sense to use.

With that said, supersets don’t always make sense to use.

If you perform a superset between two movements that have overlap in recruited musculature, then the result will be hindered performance and less results seen.

For instance, a barbell back squat trains the quadriceps and a deadlift trains the hamstrings. However, they both also train the glues, adductors, and back muscles. Therefore, these two movements would not make sense as a superset.

However, a dumbbell reverse lunge and a seated leg curl do not have overlap. The reverse lunge will recruit the quads, glutes, and back. The seated leg curl, however, will isolate the hamstrings. Therefore, these could make a good superset.

Another consideration is what sort of superset makes sense from a gym etiquette perspective.

For instance, a seated leg curl and machine leg extension superset makes sense insofar that they don’t overlap, but it’s generally considered poor gym etiquette to take up two machines at once.

The aforementioned reverse lunge and seated leg curl superset makes more sense from a gym etiquette perspective because all you need to do is bring the dumbbells to where the machine is and perform the exercise there. That way, you aren’t taking up two pieces of equipment.

Of course, if you are in a home-gym this is not a problem.

If you are training in a facility, though, it is worth your consideration.

#3: Drop sets

Similar to supersets, drop sets are another means to decrease the training time required to complete a given volume of work.

These are sets where you perform an exercise to failure or close to failure. Then, you lower the weight by ~30% and immediately continue.

For all intents and purposes, you can consider one drop set performed in this way the equivalent of 2 sets.

The research on this training strategy suggests that you can cut your training time down to 1/2 or 1/3 of the time required for traditional set training; all while achieving the same results [3].

The easiest way to perform a drop set would be to use a machine so that you can simply pull a pin and change the weight.

Dumbbells also make an easy tool for drop sets, but there may be a gym etiquette issue here as well if you are using multiple sets of dumbbells.

Drop sets are a bit more impractical when using a barbell, unless you have someone to change the weight for you.

However, there are ways you can get creative with your drop sets.

A “mechanical” drop set is one way to get creative. This entails using the same weight but modifying how you perform it to an easier path of motion for the drop.

A good example of this is to perform standard push-ups to failure and then immediately switch to knee push-ups.

Or, you could perform dumbbell flies for your chest until you are near failure and then switch to a dumbbell bench press for the drop.

If you are performing a barbell exercise and want to perform a drop set, you could just drop to a different exercise that is similar to the barbell exercise but easier. For instance, you could do 6 reps of a barbell back squat and then begin performing dumbbell goblet squats with a lighter weight immediately after.

The overarching point is that there’s a lot of room for creativity here.

Something worth noting is that drop sets an feel much more fatiguing than performing traditional sets.

If you use drop sets on every set from the beginning to the end of the workout, your set quality toward the end may be hindered.

So, I don’t typically recommend using a drop set approach for every set you do.

Something more practical would be to perform a drop set on the last set of each exercise you perform in the workout.

Something you may have thought of, but I’d like to bring up any way, is that the use of supersets and dropsets together can REALLY decrease the training time you require.

If you are able to and are looking to save time, I’d highly recommend that you do.

#4: Consider a workout at home 1-2x/week

If you train at a facility other than a community gym or a home gym, then the commute should be taken into account toward the time requirement of training.

Even if it’s just a ten minute commute and you go just three times per week, that’s an hour per week.

If you find yourself struggling to make time for your workouts, then an hour out of the week should not be discounted.

If you were to audit the movement patterns in your program, it’s likely that some of them can be done at home with a few equipment purchases; a flat bench and adjustable dumbbells alone would do the trick.

#5: Keep track of your rest periods

This tip isn’t one that modifies your workout, it is more a point of accountability.

There are specific rest periods that are optimal in your training.

How much rest is best depends on the type of training and the goals at hand, but discussing that is not the point I’m seeking to make.

What many people do is perform a set, rest until they feel like doing the next, and so on.

It is easy to let the rest times become excessive with this practice, and that can add up over the course of a whole session.

Instead, have a timer ready to go whenever you finish your set, and work in accordance with that.

This way, you won’t let the time escape you.

#6: Skip the cooldown

Plain and simple: there is not great evidence for the use of a cool down after a workout [4].

• They do not reduce soreness or improve recovery

• They do not improve next session performance

• They do not reduce injury risk

Subjectively, it is hard to deny that it can feel good to do one after a session.

However, similar to other concepts discussed so far, these should be seen as a luxury if time allows.

References

1. García-Orea GP, Rodríguez-Rosell D, Ballester-Sánchez Á, Da Silva-Grigoletto ME, Belando-Pedreño N. Upper-lower body super-sets vs. traditional sets for inducing chronic athletic performance improvements. PeerJ. 2023;11:e14636. Published 2023 Feb 21. doi:10.7717/peerj.14636

2. Haff, Gregory G., Triplett, Travis N., 2016, Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning, 4th edition.

3. Sødal LK, Kristiansen E, Larsen S, van den Tillaar R. Effects of Drop Sets on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Sports Med Open. 2023;9(1):66. Published 2023 Jul 31. doi:10.1186/s40798-023-00620-5

4. Iversen VM, Norum M, Schoenfeld BJ, Fimland MS. No Time to Lift? Designing Time-Efficient Training Programs for Strength and Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review. Sports Med. 2021;51(10):2079-2095. doi:10.1007/s40279-021-01490-1