Time seems to be the most important thing in one’s life, only behind family and religion. Being a coach, I see time and time again various things come up. From the kids getting sick, to work keeping you late day after day.

Regardless, there is always a way to get a workout in. Consistency will beat perfection every time. Even if the workout isn’t what you normally do, that’s not the point. The point of these workouts is to stay on track with your fitness, rather than making up an excuse to why you can’t do it.

The Workouts

One workout will be based on assuming you have access to a gym, and one will be assuming you just have your living room floor next to the couch.

Both workouts will be a total body workout, with circuit style interval training included. The workout will be three sets of each exercise, with a set being 35 second work time and a 15 second rest time. After you complete three sets of the exercise, you will move on to the next exercise. Follow the exercises in order as they’re listed.

Those who are curious, there is a method behind this. There is always at least one push movement, one hip dominant movement, one quad dominant movement, one trunk movement, and one full body movement.

This makes up most of the major movement patterns, contributing to the total body circuit. In the workout including the gym, there is a pull movement (the dumbbell rows). If you are home, you can use bands for this to get a pull movement if you have them. If not, again this is just to stay on track, so no need to stress.

These workouts will not only work your total body but also get your heart rate up as well. They can act as a bit of cardio, so you’re killing two birds with one stone, all in 20 minutes.

1. Workout with Gym Access

• Goblet Squat Jumps
• Reverse Lunge into Curl and Press
• 1 Arm Dumbbell Swings
• Dumbbell Flat Bench Press
• Bent Over DB Rows
• Burpee with Tuck Jump
• Leg Lifts with Hips Up
• Russian Twist with Weighted Ball

2. No Equipment Needed Workout

• Squat Jumps (bring your arms low to high as you jump)
• Alternating Lunge Hops
• 1 Leg Glute Bridge
• Close Grip Push Up to Wide Grip Push Up
• Plank (from your elbows up to your hands)
• Triceps Dips (off the couch)
• Burpees with Tuck Jump
• Mountain Climbers

You Can Find the Time

Whether you are not able to get to your favorite class because your meeting went late, or you are home with a sick kid, your workout can still go on. Use tools like the workouts above to keep you moving and build consistent habits.

The post The 20 Minute Total Body Workout appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Between work meetings, having kids, being in school, or whatever responsibilities you may have in your life, it is inevitable that you get busy. This may lead to finding it difficult to stay on track with your health and fitness goals. You might have said yes to one, two, or all of those things and while I have empathy for them, I must ask what you’re doing to work around them and achieve your goal?

Motivation Versus Discipline

If you think about fitness goals in general, the word motivation is often front of the mind. During this time of year, that only compiles.

You see these people in the gym, or this may even be you, and after two months that “motivation” feeling fizzles out. Life gets to you, putting you right back where you started from. That strong feeling you had to make changes slowly starts to fade as things start to happen around you that derail you from the path of your goals.

This is why I believe motivation to be an over-used, and over-relied on tool within the fitness industry. It is true that everyone has to start somewhere—every fire starts from one spark. I am not saying it’s a bad thing to have motivation. I am saying, however, it’s all about what you do to continue those habits the motivation creates.

Discipline is the big brother to motivation. It will always reign over the little brother—always reminding it why it is better. It’s the way you see the certain people every single day in the gym. It’s the way you follow someone on social media eating the same thing at the same time day in and day out, they learned discipline.

This can go for anything in life. I can assure you the best CEOs of the world, or Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, or the amazing single mom or dad, all have one thing in common. That one thing would be discipline.

The way to stay on track when you aren’t feeling the spark of the motivation anymore is to learn and practice discipline. This is staying on your routine relentlessly, being able to find ways to work around obstacles that inevitably will come up.

Life is not an A+B=C equation, things happen along the way that divides, subtracts, and all the other crazy symbols math has provided us. Learning how to continuously keep finding the solution when life throws you for a complicated equation, will undoubtedly lead you to down the right path of achievement.

The importance of following a routine consistently, is not about being perfect every single day, every single meal, and every single workout, it’s more about creating habits. You don’t have to be perfect to create habits, just be consistent.

Those same people who stick to their diet, who go to the gym five days a week, who work countless hours on their craft, they all have created habits in their life. Everyone has habits, some are just different than others. When you create habits based on your health and fitness, they will be routine.

It won’t seem impossible to go to the gym five days a week or eat vegetables with every meal. That will be your normal life. These will be the things that you have done consistently over a duration of time, to create habits you can now have every day. Motivation is overrated, discipline is what sets people apart.

What will be covered below are some tips and strategies to ensure your nutrition, workouts, and mind are able to stay on track even when faced with adversity.

Tip 1 – Use Liquid Calories

The first tip is something people tend to forget a lot about, and that’s liquid calories. Now, some people do a protein shake, but they stop there. In reality, you can take that a step further, and create a whole meal. This meal can include all the proper nutrients to fuel your metabolism.

Take that protein shake a step farther, and add in a scoop of a greens powder supplement. Then, add one tablespoon of flaxseed oil. This creates a whole meal. Protein, greens, and healthy fats—a perfect recipe for a lean body.

Tip 2 – Easy, Edible Options

Whether you work at a desk or do a lot of traveling, or just are running around with your kids on a Saturday, easy things to grab and eat are crucial. Examples of these could be greek yogurt or low-fat cheese sticks for protein sources.

Packs of nuts or almonds can be easy. Preparing your vegetables overnight and keeping them in ziplock bags, or buy pre-packaged greens i.e. carrots.

Tip 3 – Research Your Surroundings

If you know you’re going to be traveling, or are in a new area, it’s a good idea to check what’s available. You can research restaurants to look over their menu. You can ask to get a macronutrient breakdown. Proper preparation prevents poor performance.

Tip 4 – Have a Time-Efficient Workout Routine

Various events during the day can lead to you may not be able to get to the gym or complete your regularly scheduled workout routine. This is why rather than just missing the whole workout day together, it’s a good idea to have a workout routine together that can keep you on track.

If your goal is to lose weight, an effective workout can be a 20 minute HIIT bodyweight circuit. If you want to build some muscle a 10 sets of 10 reps workout with push-ups, squats, lunge hops, and leg raises can be effective as well. These workouts are not to crush your personal bests, rather just keep you on track and be consistent.

Tip 5 – Plan Your Day The Night Before

It can be very helpful to take five to ten minutes to look ahead the night before and plan things out. If you plan ahead you will know what may hinder you from staying on track and that may make eating difficult—that’s when you know you may have to take those liquid calories.

Traveling is an instance that may necessitate one of those quick workouts.

The post 5 Tips for Training Discipline This New Year appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The days of spending an hour slaving away on the stair stepper, then another hour and a half working out with weights, are over. Most normal people with jobs, kids, school, amongst other things, don’t have time for that. It’s simply just not smart. There’s a smarter way to build muscle and lose body fat.

For everyone reading, actual training in the gym comes down to two categories—volume and intensity. In this article, I will cover both of those concepts and give you things to consider when thinking about each in regard to your training.

Doing More Isn’t Always Better

Volume is essentially broken down into how many minutes of cardio you do, how many sets you do, and how many reps you do—the total amount of work you do when you are in the gym. In my opinion, too much volume is the killer for most people.

The more cardio you do, the more weight you lose. Why? Is it because you “burned more calories”? As a trainer, I would much rather you take that hour of cardio you’re doing, cut it down, and use it towards meal prepping or researching what carbs do to your blood sugar.

Most people just burn more calories without taking into consideration what it does to their body. Little do they know they’re putting their body in starvation mode, and actually making them gain weight in the long term. But that’s a different topic for a different article. If you would like an overview on that leave a message in the comments or reach out.

The more sets you do or reps you do builds more muscle and burns more fat. Again, why is this? Take into consideration your recovery. If you just keep bashing your muscles with a chest day of seven exercises with 4 sets of 15 reps each exercise, twice a week, how is your body recovering from that? That’s just one body part. Total the amount of work your body endures over a week span and evaluate the amount of time you spend in recovery—it’s eye-opening. Trust me.

You must give your body adequate time to recover from the work you’re doing to it. When there’s too much volume your body can’t recover enough to adapt, and instead gets beat down consistently. This leads to all sorts of problems, including exhaustion, higher stress, brain fog, poor sleep quality, and lack of appetite, just to name a few.

Increase Your Intensity

Intensity is the other variable that goes into training that we talked about earlier. In simple terms, this is how hard your body is working and how much you’re pushing yourself to 100% maximal effort, every time.

Now you might think that if you’re doing all those sets and reps, you’re pushing myself. Okay, let me ask you if you’re doing all those reps and sets, are you really pushing yourself as hard as you can? Are you really pushing yourself to a point of exhaustion during every one of those 12 reps? Save the thinking, I can answer that no, you’re not. You’re going through the motions chasing the “pump” or following a certain workout because that’s what some Instagram person put out.

If I told you to do two sets of squats, one set of eight and one set of 12, you’d look at me like I had three heads, and none of them had a brain. But I urge you to find a weight for those two sets that are within the rep range of 6-12 (the rep range for hypertrophy and muscle growth) that challenges you. I want you to be challenged you to the point where you either come close to failure, or hit failure, and once you complete those two sets, move onto the next exercise.

By increasing your intensity, you will approach sets with a mentality to really push yourself and maximize your body’s output, rather than just trying to hit a number of reps and sets. Do this week after week, and I can guarantee you will see progress, which should be the sole standard to measure an effective workout.

The Takeaway

To take some tangibles away, this is what I would suggest for volume for strength workouts.

• For larger body parts (chest, back, legs, shoulders) eight to ten working sets will do you well.
• For smaller body parts, (bicep, tricep, calves) six to eight working sets should work.

As far as cardio, that all depends on your current body fat, nutrition, and a whole lot of other things. Generally speaking, 3-4 days a week of about 20 minutes should be a good gauge to see if you need more or less. Push yourself more mentally and physically with what you have, as opposed to trying to pile more on top of things that aren’t working already.

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