I'm going to tell you a secret. I do not train for 3 hours every day. Some times I do not train much more than 3 hours a week.
I love training but I have a full time non-fitness job. I also want to spend time coaching, making cool shit, hanging out with my friends, going for long hikes and taking my kittens to the emergency vet when they get in a fight with a bee. Ok, I don't love the emergency vet but I have a lot of things that I want to do with my time as well as training.
So how do I fit it all in? There's skill training, strength training, flexibility work, flow, rehab, prehab... It's exhausting just writing all that out. But I can do it all in less than an hour a day (on average).
Here are my top 3 tips:
- Do the minimum amount that you need to in order to be able to do the things that I want to do. Through practice and experimentation I have found that I get the best results when I do strength and skill work 4 times a week for between 60 and 90 minutes. I do not need to do more. In fact when I do train more I tend to get worse results.
- Don't try and learn everything at once. Focus on the things that are the most important to you. Would I like to be able to do a full split in my handstand. Hell yes! Do I need to? Not at all. What is your number 1 goal? Focus on that. I usually have 2 skills that I am focusing on and one flexibility goal.
- Stack your workout. I do rehab, prehab and flexibility exercises during my rest periods on my strength exercises. For example I'll do a superset of handstand push-ups and cossack squats with one of my shoulder rehab exercises during the rest period.
I am not saying you shouldn't train more. If you have the time and the ability to recovery, then go for it. I trained 30 hours a week when I was a teenager and I loved it so much. What I am saying is that you don't need to. It's about prioritizing what is important to you, smart programming and working with your lifestyle.
I thought it might be helpful to share how I organize my workout so I can both kick ass in my training and actually have time to work and enjoy the summer. Check out this video that I made of my workout:
If you are not interested in watching a 5 minute video here are the main takeaways:
- Warm-up: Keep it short and warm-up the things that you are going to use in that workout.
- Skill Work: I set aside a maximum of 30 minutes to work on skills but often spend less time.
- Skill Work: Stack your skill work so that you are doing a flexibility or rehab exercise during your rest period.
- Skill Work: If a skill is not working move on. Don't get frustrated.
- Conditioning: I include strength, active flexibility and exercises that are keeping my joints healthy and put them into circuits so that I can fit as much in as possible.
- Conditioning: I use smart programming and focus on the exercises that I need and not every possible exercise that I can do.
- Finisher: Short and intense endurance work at the end of my workout. It is important to do this at the end so that I am not exhausted for the rest of my workout.
“You don’t need to spend hours a day in the gym to be able to move well, build strength and learn some skills.”
So in total I spend 5-10 minutes warming up, 15-30 minutes on skill work, 20-30 minutes on conditioning and then 10 minutes on my finisher. I do sessions such as this 4 times a week.
You don't need to spend hours a day in the gym to be able to move well, build strength and learn some skills.
Have fun and enjoy your workouts!