Shorten Your Workouts to Double Your Results!

Shorten Your Workouts to Double Your Results! By Stephen Cabral

I promised to deliver a formula we use in Boston to condense a full hour workout into just 45 minutes. These shorter exercise bouts leave clients feeling energetic and looking fantastic in usually less than 3 weeks.

By using the principles of Escalating Density Training, we choose opposing push, pull, and twisting exercises to eliminate the need for most rest periods between sets.

Here's how it works in 3 easy steps

1. Choose a muscle group to work

Example: You decide to start your first set by working your chest

2. Choose a compound (multi-joint) exercise for that muscle group
Example: You need to work your chest muscles so you chose a dumbbell ball chest press
3. Pick an opposing upper or lower body exercise to superset it with.

Example: You need to work an opposing muscle, so you can either choose a back exercise, or a pulling lower body exercise such as Romanian deadlifts or 1-legged reaches since chest is an upper body pushing exercise.

So now that you know what formula to use to develop a more efficient workout, you can now go back and reinvent your current exercise program. Just make sure to superset or even triset all the exercises by grouping opposite muscle groups.

When do you rest?

Here's where the brilliance of EDT principles shine. Since you are working opposing muscle groups, you are in essence resting each previously worked muscle complex while the current one is under tension. Using this formula, if it were to take you 40 seconds to complete each exercise and then you rested for 30-60 seconds after you completed the superset, you would have essentially given the first muscle group 1 min/10 sec to 1 min/40 sec rest. Unless you are a powerlifter going for substantial strength gains, that's more than enough time to rest a muscle group before hitting the weights again.

Let's take a look at this in action!

Here's an actual workout that you could use today to get started:

5 minute dynamic warm-up

1A. Dumbbell ball chest press 1B. Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts

2A. Cable 1 arm row (standing) 2B. Dumbbell front squats to box

3A. Band Rotational Chops 3B. Prone lying cobras on a stability ball (like a ball back extension)

- Choose 2-3 sets per exercise - Complete either 8 or 15 reps of each set for this entire program

At the end of the workout, you could finish it off with some 30 second fat burning intervals to leave your metabolism revved up for the rest of the day. This entire workout, including warm-up and intervals, should take you no more than 40 - 45minutes. As your conditioning gets better, you can decrease your rest period down to 30 seconds before beginning the next superset.

This type of workout will yield at least twice the results of an ordinary exercise program where you are just circuiting through machine after machine. The time flys by and you'll absolutely love what it does for your body and energy levels!

If you need a place to start, check out my free weight loss e-course on "How to Lose Belly Fat Starting Today!" I've reserved a limited number of copies to give away and you can grab yours today at http://www.stephencabral.com/FreeReports.html

Committed to your success,

Stephen Cabral Author of Lose5in7 Health Consultant for MTV, NutritionData, Diet.com, Gather, EDGE http://www.Lose5in7.com

Stephen Cabral is a national health & fitness correspondent with over 10 years of credentials and media appearances. He holds national and international certifications in strength & conditioning, personal training, yoga and nutrition. His Trim, Tone & Tighten newsletter is seen by over 100,000 people each week.

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