Winter is coming. Over this season we may become busier at work or want to spend more time watching our favourite TV show! Either way with limited time we can still have a great workout by making a couple of tweaks. The best way to do this is to eliminate those time consuming isolation exercises with some heavy compound movements. Compound movements work more muscles than isolation exercises so we can compensate less work time by using bigger exercises.
Here are a few exercise replacements to help you cut down time and bulk up muscle:
Tricep extension to close grip bench press
Skull crushers to California press (The best exercise for your triceps you’re not doing)
Light barbell curls to weighted supinated grip chin ups
Leg extension to lunges
Hamstring curls to deadlifts
Pec flys to decline barbell press
Another tip is to increase intensity by dropping your rest time. Reducing your rest period helps to increase lactic acid levels, which in turns increase the release of growth hormone. Growth hormone is great at burning fat giving you the lean, toned look.
Try to keep your rest period to 1 min. This helps to exhaust our ATP energy system which leads to greater hypertrophy (building muscle). Also keep a strict tempo – no one wants to see poorly executed cheat curls done at the speed of light!
For most of these exercises a 4 second eccentric contraction followed by a 1-2 second concentric contraction with 7-12 reps per set will ensure you reach hypertrophy.
Even though you may need to cut your workout time down this season you can still achieve that strong physique.