No More Excuses! Be Quicker in the Gym

By Adam Sinicki

Many people who fail to take up a new training regime (Si) blame lack of time as one of the major factors standing in the way of massive guns. Well I'm about to blow that excuse out of the water by showing you how you can make your gym sessions 10-20 minutes shorter while improving the intensity at the same time.

Wait for no man
A lot of guys who walk into the gym are sticking to a very set routine, often one that they printed off of the internet or that was given to them by a trainer. This is a mistake for several reasons. First of all � by sticking to the same routine week in week out your muscles will hit a plateau and you will become bored. 'Muscle Confusion' is a term bodybuilders use to describe the practice of mixing it up in the gym to keep the muscles growing through sheer shock. You�ve got to keep them guessing!
The other problem is that if you're waiting for a particular machine to become free you are wasting time as well as pump. Keep your workout flexible so that you can use machines that are free and shave minutes off your workout.

Go it alone
There are many advantages to going to the gym with a partner but saving time is not one of them. If you are really pushed for time then you will do better to go it alone this time.

Rest is for pussies
Rests between sets should very rarely ever be longer than three minutes. However this rule is one that is more often broken than kept to as many gym-goers get distracted by the belly-dancers on MTV and the hotties on the treadmill. If you�re in a hurry then try look at the clock instead. Give yourself no more than two minutes between each set and you will drastically decrease the time you spend there while exponentially improving the intensity of your session.

Superset!
Even better than cutting your rest time is to iron it out completely by doing a different exercise while waiting to return to the other.

Kill lots of birds with only a few stones
Not real birds � metaphorical ones that represent muscles. What I�m saying, in a pretty roundabout way, is that you can save loads of time when you're in a rush by performing exercises that hit several muscle groups or even by combining two. For example you can do shoulder presses at the same time as squats. I sometimes go one step further doing a shrug in one hand while doing a curl in the other then immediately switching over.