4 HIGHLY Convincing Reasons to Speed Up Your Workout

Dilly dallying around the gym is a good way to fall out of love with fitness...try the "Get In and Get Out" method instead.

Burning fat and building muscle doesn't require you to spend several hours in the gym if you don't want to. That amount of time commitment isn't sustainable, especially if you're not a fitness professional, and for fitness to become a lifestyle, it must be sustainable. Furthermore, those long workouts could be one of the things keeping you from reaching your goals. A good aim for a beginner lifter is about 30 minutes of focused strength training. However, an intermediate to advanced lifter should still strive for a shorter 45min to 1 hour focused strength training routine. Notice I use the caveat "focused" because I'm certainly not giving advice for you to dilly dally for 45min instead of 2 hours. This discussion is about condensing your workout for better results overall.

Before we get into the reasons, remember that a more efficient workout begins with a solid foundation so always start by planning your workouts out in advance and stick to a 1-2 min rest period in between sets for greater muscle growth stimulation. Now without further ado here are four highly convincing reasons to get in and get out of the gym (in no particular order).

Reason No.1 Greater Fat Burning Potential

A faster strength training workout stimulates an increased heart rate and cardio effect of your workout. An increased heart rate means increased calorie burning and the aerobic aspect of this faster workout causes your body to burn carbs and fat for energy. What that means for you is that your one workout is providing double the benefits. The first benefit being helping you to grow muscle mass, which increases your metabolism over time, and the second being helping you to burn extra calories and thus fat in the short term.

Reason No. 2 Increased Productivity & Focus

A focused workout is an obviously more beneficial than one where you take multiple Twitter, or Instagram breaks, sit down in between sets and watch TV, or saunter across the gym multiple times to the water fountain. However, more than that are the mental benefits of a quicker more focused workout. First, faster routines are less boring, and thus more enjoyable to complete. Second, spending only the necessary amount of time in the gym means you avoid mental fatigue of the environment. You can get burned out on any activity that you go overboard on.

Reason No. 3 Improved Endurance

Increased muscle endurance means greater resistance to muscle fatigue which means harder workouts which mean faster results.

Reason No. 4 Added Muscle Growth

Quick and streamlined workouts have a better hypertrophic effect meaning better muscle growth. Sessions with shorter rest periods stimulate more anabolic hormone release post workout, and the increased blood flow encourages protein synthesis for muscle recovery and gains. Also, shorter training sessions prevent overtraining which can actually inhibit muscle gain

Now that I've hopefully convinced you to put some pep in your step, here's what you need to get in and get out of the gym. It's pretty simple: