Whether you’re a busy working professional, a parent, or a full-time student, keeping workouts short & sweet is the best option for most.

It turns out, the stimulus threshold for building muscle & strength is relatively low.

You only need three, 30-40 minute training sessions per week to induce muscle hypertrophy & build strength.

It’s the approach I’m using the build upon my current physique.

This article states that maximizing muscle hypertrophy requires applying mechanical tension on the muscle, causing muscle damage & metabolic stress.

This is just a fancy way of saying:

• Apply tension to your muscles for a long period of time.

• Keep rest periods shorter.

• Both cause muscle damage which is theorized to induce a muscle growth response.

So, how can you train for only 120 minutes per week to grow muscle & build strength?

High-intensity full-body workouts.

1. Prioritize compound movements:

Focus on compound or multi-joint movements in your training sessions.

They use the largest amount of muscle mass → bang for your buck.

You should pick 1 compound movement in each workout for:

• Push

• Pull

• Squat

• Hinge

2. Use super-sets or tri-sets for time efficiency:

This is your tool to drastically reduce your workout time.

Use antagonistic supersets → pair opposite movement patterns (which use opposite muscle groups).

For example → complete a set of pull-ups, rest 30 seconds, then complete a set of push-ups.

If you’re really time-short, use tri-sets.

Same concept as super-sets, but you’re doing three exercises in a row.

Pull-ups → rest 30 sec → Push-ups → rest 30 sec → Goblet squats.

Both are time-efficient and allow you to work on each area with maximum intensity.

3. Focus on INTENSITY:

I’m shouting this out because it’s imperative if you want to build muscle.

You need this if you’re only spending 120 minutes per week in the gym.

Take each set 1-3 reps short of failure.

Or, lift the weight until you could only do 1-3 more reps before your head would explode.

4. Rep ranges:

Keep the reps within the 6-12 range to maximize intensity & mechanical tension.

Keeping the reps lower allows for high intensity & time efficiency.

This will be hard & you’ll need to put 100% GENUINE effort into each set.

It should not feel easy.

5. Amount of sets:

8-10 HARD sets per week, is all you’ll need if you’re a beginner to intermediate trainee.

Hard sets are sets taken 1-3 reps short of failure.

Typically, I’ll do 5 sets per exercise which gives me a total of 15 HARD sets per week.

This moderate to high volume is a key driver of muscle growth.

6. Focus on QUALITY rest:

You need to recover properly between sets to allow them to be high-intensity.

You will read from many sources that rest times for hypertrophy are between 60-90 seconds.

I’m telling you now, this isn’t enough if you’re training compound movements at high intensity.

Rest for 3-5 minutes.

This sounds counter-intuitive if you’re trying to save time, but you can’t complete quality high-intensity sets if you rest poorly.

This is my exact resistance training plan for the week:

Monday, Wednesday & Friday:

1a. Weighted pull-ups - 8-12 reps.

1b. Weighted dips - 8-12 reps.

2a. Barbell back squat or pistol squat - 8-15 reps.

2b. Hamstring curl or Romanian deadlift - 8-12 reps.

± accessory work if I have time.

3-5 sets per exercise. 3-5 minutes rest between each super-set.

Feel free to copy this, and swap in your preferred exercises for pull, push, squat & hinge.

Thank you for taking the time to learn & improve your health today.

Zak Wolstenholme

Aussie Physiotherapist 🇦🇺