Skyrocket your gains with these 4 super-dense workouts
Who says a good workout needs to take an hour or even more? If you're like me and have a busy lifestyle, with plenty of job/school/family obligations and endless amounts of "other stuff" slamming your schedule, finding a spare hour can be about as unlikely as watching a judge congratulate Lindsey Lohan on the progress she's made.

That's the bad news. The good news is that a great workout can be had in only 10 minutes, just 1/6 of an hour. The key is upping the high intensity to account for the decreased training time.

When time is short, think of yourself as a member of the Bomb Squad. You've got 10 minutes to give yourself a high intensity workout-any slacking or lagging, and… BOOM. There's plenty of work and muscle to be had, so there's no room for a half-assed effort.

So that's it. If you are ready to push yourself and want to save a huge amount of time, here's a workout for you. Remember, the clock is ticking…


Increasing Intensity


Intensity is the key to getting the most out of a quick workout. In this case, I am defining intensity two ways: work done per unit of time and intensity of effort. I understand there are differing views as to what the term intensity means and that intensity of effort is something that is hard to put into real terms, as it is largely subjective.

In this case, intensity of effort is tied into extended set techniques and training to failure. Quick does not mean have to mean easy! One of the other keys is to accept you will not be able to use a lot of exercises per bodypart. You have to make good choices here and pick quality movements.

In every routine I will present, you will train with little to no rest between sets. Even the warmups will be done quickly. For the most part, we still want to work up to a heavy weight on the big basics, but we'll need to get there fast. You can still train in a progressive manner, which to me is first and foremost continuing to add weight on several core movements, such as Squats, Deadlifts and Bench Presses.

Yet, progressive really means beating your performance from your last workout, be it doing more work in the same or less time, adding weight to the bar, or adding a rep or two to a tough exercise. Even though I am not a "heavy duty" or "HIT" advocate, as I tend to believe in the need for more volume, the concept of taking a set to or past failure makes sense in the case of the need for a short workout.


Training To Failure


Currently, the idea of training to or past failure has come under quite a bit of questioning, with many people going with the thinking that says failure is not necessary. I believe that even if you make an educated choice to not go that far in your workouts, you should at least experience it once so you know what it's like to really push yourself in your training.

Personally, I tend to feel cycling progressively tougher workouts makes a lot of sense - variety is one of the keys to progress and one great way to maintain variety is to do different but progressive workouts. Those that follow my writings know I've talked a lot about this recently - your body adjusts to your routine within 3-4 weeks and then it's time to change.

You can make minor changes such as exercise order, body part groupings and so on and/or you can also make major routine changes such as going from straight sets to drops or rest/pause with static holds. I do think that, regardless of how your current routine looks, you should always keep certain core movements and should always be striving to add weight to the bar on those movements.



The Routine


Since much of my training currently has been short 10 minute sessions, I'll give you my exact routine for one week.

My current split is set up as follows:

Day 1: Back/Traps
Day 2: Chest/Delts
Day 3: Legs
Day 4: Arms
Now, I don't train 4 days in a row. In fact, I advocate training no more than 2 days in a row and then taking at least 1 day off. I train as my schedule permits but never more than 2 days in a row.