Expert: Brandon Briggs, MS - 6/24/2008

Question
What is the best way to do an upper/lower split in 3 days per week, in about 30 minutes per workout, no longer, and one that’ll really build muscle?  I came across this one program by a respected author, but it's taking about 45 minutes to 1 hour to complete a workout.  You cycle between 4 different workouts.  The workout is as follows:

Mon - Upper Body (heavy)
5 exercises, 4sets, 5-7 reps, rest 90 seconds between sets

Wed - Lower Body (heavy)
4 exercises, 4 sets, 5-7 reps, rest 90 seconds between sets

Fri - Upper Body (light)
5 exercises, 3 sets, 8,10,12 rep scheme, rest 90 seconds between sets

Mon - Lower Body (light)
5 exercises, 2-3 sets, 12-15 reps, rest 60-150 seconds between sets

You superset all exercises.  Seems like a good program, but it's taking too long.  Can I modify this program any, and how, to make it last 30 minutes per workout?

Many programs tell you to superset one opposing exercise with another to save time, but how do you do this effectively in a gym, especially when it's crowded?  Say for example your doing bench presses and supersetting with sets of rows.  You just can't leave the bench to go do rows.  Someone else is going to take the bench by the time you get back to do your next set.  Can you still superset in a gym, or are there other methods that will save time too?  Thanks very much for your help.


Answer
Trying to get a complete strength training workout done in 30 mins is tough. You can do the 70-80-90 method, which is using 70% of your max and so on. That way you are doing 3 sets of the exercise with about enough time to change weights in between as rest. One thing you can do is focus on certain muscle groups such as:

Mon:
chest, back

Wed:
Legs

Fri:
Arms and core

this will shorten the time because you will only have to do a selected number of exercise to hit each group.

Doing supersets in a crowded gym is really hard. One suggestion is to have free weights available to supplement another exercise. Also with supersets your time of rest is minimal. Hope this helps some, I know how tough it is to get a good work out in a crowded gym.


In good health,

Brandon