I recently tweeted the results of a recent study that indicated “…no difference in increased fitness with swimming 50's vs. swimming 100's.” In this study, twenty-four swimmers were equally divided into a short-interval training group that performed eight weeks of workouts that consisted of 12-16 × 50m with 15 seconds rest or a long-interval training group that performed 6-8 × 100m with 30 seconds rest, and finally, a control group. The researchers then measured predictors of aerobic performance such as lactic acid threshold and heart rate recovery, and also measured overall swim performance.
It turns out that, after eight weeks of training. the short-interval (50m) and long-interval (100m) protocols conferred very similar improvements in swimming performance and aerobic adaptations. Problem is, once you match the workouts for distance and time, they’re actually pretty similar. At first glance, there really isn’t much of a time-hacking exercise takeaway, but rather just an indication that doing short, hard repeats is just as effective as doing slightly longer repeats.
However, when training for an Ironman triathlon for nearly a decade, I would quite often forego the traditional 45-60 minute long, grinding, continuous swim workouts and would instead get in and out of the water fast, performing 20-30 minute workouts that consisted of short and explosive 50 and 100 meter repeats. And yes, I was still very competitive in the 2.4 mile Ironman swim distance, typically completing it in 54-59 minutes.
How can this be? As I explain in great detail in my book Beyond Training, the amazing thing about the human body is that it has two different pathways to trigger mitochondrial and cardiovascular fitness adaptions: a pathway that responds well to long and slow workouts and a pathway that responds best to short and explosive workouts.
In other ways, there’s two ways to build fitness: LISS (low intensity steady state exercise) or HIIT (high intensity interval training). So in addition to doing short, frequent swims instead of long, slow, time-sucking swims, what are some other time hacking fitness tips? Here are six more:
Time Hack 1: Tabatas
Tabata sets, which are appropriately named after a researcher named Dr. Izumi Tabata, involve four minutes of very intense exercise. During those four minutes, you alternate between 20 seconds of your maximum effort and 10 seconds of complete rest.
You can perform a number of exercises with Tabata training— including jump squats, push-ups, sprints, cycling, elliptical—you name it! They key is to go as hard as you can possibly exercise during the 20-seconds-on and then rest for the 10-seconds-off. Tabata training is not only a great way get a better body fast, but it will boost your metabolism and improve both your aerobic and anaerobic (sprint-style) cardiovascular and muscular endurance in a manner very similar to longer training sessions, but in far less time.
In fact, in Dr. Tabata's 1996 study, published in the Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, subjects improved their fitness by 28% after just 6 weeks of training, with 5 days of Tabata sets each week. I’ve also written an article about how even extreme athletes can benefit by including Tabata sets and high intensity interval training into their training routine.
If I’m pressed for time and I only have one workout I can do, it’s a Tabata set that incorpates any of the full body calisthenic exercises I highly in time hack #5 of this article. You can also learn more about Tabatas in my “8 Minute Fat Loss” article.
Time Hack 2: Hurricanes
The majority of treadmill workouts that I see people performing at a health club or gym go something like this: get on treadmill, set treadmill for X amount of time (typically an extremely boring 20-60 minute death-march slog), move on treadmill at steady pace for allotted time.
Frankly, this is a waste of time. Using something called a “Hurricane” approach (which I first discovered in the MMA training book “Warrior Cardio: The Revolutionary Metabolic Training System for Burning Fat, Building Muscle, and Getting Fit”), you can squeeze the equivalent of a 60-90 minute run into just 15-20 minutes on a treadmill, and be highly entertained and “busy’ in the process, making time go by quite fast.
So how do you do a Hurricane?
Simple. Get on a treadmill. Set it for maximum pace and maximum incline (e.g. 10 miles per hour and 10% incline). Get on, begin sprinting and hang on for dear life possible for 30 seconds (don’t literally hang on – stay off the treadmill railing/handles!).
Hop off the treadmill and do two back-to-back exercises, such as push-ups and mountain climbers, or squats and kettlebell swings. Get back on the treadmill for another bout. Do 8-10 repeats.
You’ll feel as though you’ve just finished slogging for hours on the treadmill, and burn many, many calories for a long time after the workout (in exercise research, this phenomenon is termed excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC).
Time Hack 3: Ten Minute Timer
There is a theory in the world of productivity that “tasks will expand to the time allotted.” Thus, if you plan on working out for 60 minutes, you’ll be at the gym for 60 minutes, often wandering around performing slightly less than productive fitness activties, such as reading Men’s and Women’s Health magazines or fiddling around with some new exercise machine.
Alternatively, if you set your stopwatch for 10 minutes, you’ll squeeze in an extremely efficient workout. Just 10 minutes, you ask? Absolutely. Here’s three examples:
10-Minute Workout #1: Full Body Burn
Equipment: 1 pair of dumbbells and a chair, step, stairs, or box.
Instructions: Warm-up with 25-50 jumping jacks, then complete 10-12 repetitions of each set of exercises twice, back-to-back with minimal rest, and move on to next set.
Set 1: Dumbbell Squat With Overhead Press to Bent Side Raises Set 2: Dumbbell Push-Up Row to Single Arm Dumbbell Row Set 3: High Knee Step-Ups to Reverse Lunges
10 Minute Workout #2: Butt, Abs, Thighs
Equipment: none
Instructions: Complete this routine as a circuit, one time through, with minimal rest between exercises. No warm-up required.
25 Body Weight Squats 10 Lunge Jumps per side 10 Side Plank Rotations 10 Front Plank Taps 10 Lateral Lunges per side 10 Squat Jumps 25 Kickouts per Side Finish with 60 second Squat Hold
10 Minute Workout #3: Maximum Calorie Burn
Equipment: none
Instructions: Complete this routine as a circuit, 3 times through, with minimal rest between exercises. No warm-up required.
25-50 Jumping Jacks 5 Push-Ups 10 Squat-Thrust-Jumps 5 Push-Ups 10 Vertical Jumps 5 Push-Ups
Time Hack 4: Full Body Calisthenics
Whether you use them for a Tabata set or you crank out a few reps while waiting at an airport gate or you have some time to kill in a park, backyard or basement, it can be quite useful to have a few exercises in your “back pocket” that give you a full body burn in a very short period of time. I have three favorites. In order of full body training effectiveness, they are:
1. Burpees – drop into a pushup position, do a pushup, jump forward to a bent over position, stand, jump, repeat.
2. Sit-To-Stands – sit down with your legs outstretched in front of you. Now stand up, however you want. Jump. Repeat. It’s harder than it sounds.
3. Lunge Jumps – get into a lunge position. Jump into the air and alternate legs, landing in a lunge position with the opposite leg forward. Repeat.
If there were only three moves I could rely upon for fitness for the rest of all time, these would be it (and a close fourth would be the pull-up).
Time Hack 5: Slow Down
Yes, it may seem ironic, but by subjecting the muscles to a very slow, grinding repetition, you can achieve complete for a muscle group in a very short period of time. This is the approach I describe in the recent Get-Fit Guy article “Does a 20-Minute, Once-a-Week Workout Really Work?”, in which I highlight exercise science research that proves you can get surprisingly efficient fitness results by completing one single, slow set to complete failure or exhaustion (that complete exhaustion part is important) for one muscle group or motion, then move on to another muscle group or motion until you’ve completed working your entire body, which, using this approach, you can often do in just 12-20 minutes.
As I point out in that episode, this style of one single, hard weekly super slow training routine probably isn’t going to break any Olympic records anytime soon, but it appears to be a viable strategy for staying fit when time is limited. Perhaps better yet, as the author notes in the article, you don’t have to hunt down fancy exercise machines to do this style of training, and using your own body weight, a kettlebell or a set of dumbbells along with moves such as squat, lunge, pushup, overhead press, pull-up or row, you can easily perform 4-6 different superslow exercises for each body section in your home, backyard, basement, or office.
Time Hack 6: Weighted Vest
A weighted vest is simply a vest that is either made from a heavy material, or equipped with small pockets that can be filled with tiny sand bags, small steel bars, or other weighted objects. The general purpose of a weighted vest is to add extra weight for body-weight exercises, walking, distance running or speed, agility and quickness drills.
When it comes to performance, research (highlighted in my previous episode “5 Ways To Use A Weighted Vest”) has shown that using this type of extra load during sprinting or speedwork requires your lower-body muscles to generate more force against the ground, and can lead to improvements in strength, power, and acceleration during running, as well as increased strength and efficiency during speed, power, and agility drills.
But even if you’re not a professional athlete, you can still benefit from using a weighted vest as a time hack for efficient exercise or calorie burn. In fact, simply doing your daily activities or your normal workout with a bit of extra weight can significantly increase the metabolic cost (aka, your calorie burn), and muscle fiber load and tension for any movement. It can also increase intensity of an activity or exercise that would normally be easy and even help with bone density by loading the skeletal system.
In other words, donning a weighted vest for just about any activity makes that activity harder and shortens the amount of time and repetitions necessary to make that activity a fitness stimulating activity.
So that’s it! When it comes to getting very fit, there’s really no need for marathon-esque weight training sessons at the gym or death-march pavement-pounding runs, unless that floats your boat, makes you happy, satisfies your urge to move, or you’re getting paid to, say, run marathons. Do you have questions, comments or feedback about how to get more done for your fitness in less time? Join the conversation at http://ift.tt/1PKzcip.
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