Don't use time as an excuse.

But almost everyone does.

Workouts have a reputation for being these long, drawn-out, and grueling episodes that go on for long, sweaty, torturous hours.

Fresh out of high school, and before I knew any better (and when I had all the free time I could ever want) I would workout for 5 sometimes 6 days per week, at up to 2 and a half hours a pop.

Like I said, before I knew any better.

If you workout for 2 and a half hours, you can't possibly be pushing yourself to the maximum the whole time, which was exactly the case for me.

I would do a set, then walk around and 'gather my energy' for 5 minutes before my next set.

But of course I didn't really have anything better to do with my time.

After going through university and being constantly under the gun for reports, and projects, and studying, I was forced to change this routine.

In fact, this morning's workout took me no more than 35 minutes INCLUDING cardio.

There is a simple rule that I tell all of my clients.

"You can have intensity, or you can have volume, but you can't have both"

What this means is that if you don't have time for long workouts, then you can make up for this by increasing the intensity of your workouts (less rest time, heavier weights, faster speed on the treadmill etc).

On the other hand, if you can't put in high intensity for certain reasons like illness or injury, then you can get away with longer workouts, but at a much easier and lighter pace.

When working with client's who are incredibly pressed for time, an intense workout is always the best option.

I have worked with law enforcement officers that would sometimes have to leave right in the middle of a session if they got called out to an incident, so we would go through each workout like we only had 15 minutes to spare.

Now those were intense workouts.

Yours in health,

RD