~350 words, ~2 min reading time
It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. Anyway, I just recently made a change to my workout.
Previously, I had settled – at least in principle – on a full body routine derived from lvysaur’s 4-4-8 (Google is your friend), with some extra accessories thrown in. Basically, it was 7 exercises with 5 working sets of each. The goal was to do this routine about 3 times a week.
The problem: it took 1 1/2 hours or so to complete. Since I really can’t start it until the kids are all in bed, that meant I was often starting my workout around 9 or 10pm. This made it VERY easy, especially on the evenings where I have an evening class, to just not do it. As a result, I often had weeks where I didn’t work out at all – and other weeks where it was 1 or 2 times. Way less than I had hoped.
So, I started looking around for a solution and stumbled on this: a circuit-based workout. I modified what I was doing to this (dumbbell versions of all of these):
“Heavy” exercises: floor press, squats, one-arm rows
“Light” exercises: shoulder press, tricep extensions, bicep curls
To speed things up, I do 10-15 reps of each exercise – so warming up isn’t particularly necessary. The “Heavy” exercises all use the same weight on the dumbbell, and the “Light” also all use the same weight on the dumbbell – so no need to adjust between exercises. I only rest (for 2 min) at the end of a circuit. I can do 3 circuits in under 30 minutes.
I alternate this circuit workout with a pull-up routine that takes 10-15 minutes.
This all made things much more doable. Before this change, when it was a workout night, I had to convince myself to spend an hour and a half exercising. I often failed to do that. Now, I exercise nearly every day (making it the “default”), and it’s a lot easier to talk myself into it – after all, we’re talking about a 15-30 minute commitment.
Ideal? Probably not. However, a good plan that you do follow is better than a perfect plan that you don’t.