Finding Time To Lift
as new dad and entrepreneur
I’m a runner, I love to bike, and as a vegetarian, I’m a pretty mindful eater. Despite being an active, driven (and competitive) person, I’ve had a hard time reaching some of my fitness goals. Some weeks I’d lose weight, but not build muscle. Other times I’d find myself stronger, but not leaner. I wondered if being a vegetarian was limiting me, but after months of tracking meals, I saw that I was getting plenty of protein from eggs, yogurts, beans and other plants, nuts, and occasional protein shake. Realizing that my diet wasn’t the problem, I set out to find a better balance between running and weight training.
In the past, I’d finish 3 months of high intensity training with minimal results, then try some random weight lifting workout for another few months — and still see no significant changes. So I’d quit for a few months until I felt like crap for not lifting and start something again.
Eventually, I invested in a power rack and pushed through a series of 5x5 workouts. Despite my commitment the results were still mediocre. I had recently become a new dad and on top of a full-time job and side business, I felt like my workouts were simply too long to cram into an already busy day. In a span of 6 months of no activity at all, I gained 25 pounds of fat. It was time to get active again with something more sustainable.
I needed to find a workout that:
- Had built in progression goals
- Is high intensity
- Includes weight training, but doesn’t require a gym membership
- Is no longer than 35–40 min (including warmup and cooldown).
That’s when I stumbled onto EDT (Escalating Density Training). EDT is basically a split workout, with two timed blocks. Each block has one pair of push/pull or upper/lower body exercises, for a total of four exercises per day.
For example, a typical workout could look like this:
WARM UP: 6 minutes
BLOCK A: 12 minutes
- Back Squats
- Biceps Curls
BREAK: 2 minutes
BLOCK B: 12 minutes
- Dead Lifts
- Triceps Pushdowns
COOLDOWN: 3 minutes
You’d start the timer, do a set of back squats, immediately followed by a set of biceps curls, and repeat until the time runs out. The goal is to do as many reps as possible within the timed block. By lifting roughly 70% of your max and not lifting to failure, over time, the number of reps you can do will naturally increase. When you beat your previous rep count by 10–20%, you know it’s time to increase your weight.
I started doing EDT three times a week and got noticeably stronger in only a month. I’m yet to reach all my fitness goals, but the workout itself quickly proved to be something I could stick to.
The only challenge I had, was timing and tracking the workouts. For a while I used pen and paper, but that got annoying. Moving so fast between exercises, I’d often forgot to record my reps or I’d forget how many I’d done. Sometimes I couldn’t even remember which exercise I just did (was it squats or curls?). If only there was an app for that!
SPLIT Workout App
A quick search didn’t reveal anything too helpful — so I decided to make my own. As a developer, I spend most of my time working on products that other people use, so working on a product that I actually used was refreshing.
I created a prototype, tested it, made notes, refined it, and repeated until I was satisfied.
The app is called SPLIT Workout and is available in both the App Store and Google Play Store.
I’m now in the fifth month of doing EDT and am seeing some good results. Time will tell how long I’ll be able to keep it up, but I haven’t gotten bored yet, and most importantly, I have more time to spend with my wife and son.
