Strength Training For Busy People

• Strength Training can be done even when you are super busy and can make to the gym only two days a week.
• Lifting weights two days a week is better than not lifting at all.
• Select exercises which are more bang for buck.
• Keep a clear focus, work hard and stop making excuses.

The Two-Days-A-Week Trick

It’s not always necessary to be in gym 5–6 days a week. Most of you are holding a full time job and then there are other pressing concerns of life like parenting, working a second job, a devil like boss who gives you work just at the end of the day and so on. How do you think that you can be in gym 6 days a week with so many things going around? The solution is simple you think. Just stop going to gym right? Wrong! You go to the gym but instead of struggling to make it all week long, you try to hit the gym for at least two days of the week.

I myself use this since it’s very difficult for me to make time for gym 4-days a week as I am a father of an hyperactive kid and I help my wife with it. So, for me it’s 2-days a week most of the time.

Now, many of you would start screaming “Man, 2 days a week just don’t cut it”. This brings us to the next couple of points.

The Two Days A Week Split

Lifting weights two days a week is better than not lifting at all. If you are hard-pressed on time then fix two days a week on which you should program your workouts.

Now you may ask that how you can squeeze an entire week's workout to just two days given that you have your entire body to train ? I say that it's not only possible but it's actually a better way to make gains while managing the stresses of life. But the big question is how to do it? How to select exercises and which exercises to select, what would be the rep ranges etc. Well hold on let's go through this in the next section.

Exercise Selection

Well, you need to be smart about the exercise selection. You can’t just expect to take the same number or types of exercises which you normally did and plug it into your “two days a week” routine. The reason being that now you have only 2 days to train and you need to train your entire body in just 2 days. If you are used to traditional 3 days or 5 days splits then you would be doing anywhere between 4–5 different exercises in each workout and may be if you are into bodybuilding style workout then you would be splitting your workouts to address specific body parts each day. When you switch into a 2 days split then that would mean doing 3 days worth of exercises in each workout, which if you think is a sure shot road to the injury and exhaustion. So, the right way to do is to play smart and select exercises which hit the maximum number of muscle groups and take less equipment and lesser setup. Well you know what? let me lay around a few of my choices of exercises and I hope that would make it clear what I am pointing out at.

• Back squat
• Front Squat
• Deadlift
• Muscle snatch
• Power cleans
• Power snatches
• Snatch grip high pull from racks
• Power jerk
• Push press
• Pull ups
• Zercher squat
• Cable crunches
• Toe to bar or leg raises

The way I usually include the above exercises in my 2 day split is as under→

Day 1 (Vertical push/Horizontal push superset)→

• Back Squat (5,4,3,2,1)/Push ups(as much rep as possible in each set)
• Push press(5,4,3,2,1)/Decline Press(as much rep as possible in each set)
• Calve raises(as much rep as possible in each set)

Day 2 (Pull)→

• Cleans 3sets of 3 reps each
• Deadlift 5,4,3,2,1
• Dumbbell row/Dumbbell curl 3sets (as much rep as possible in each set)
• Good mornings 3 sets (as much rep as possible in each set)

Now the week following this I would try to beat the weights or reps of the previous week and I usually continue this for 3–4 weeks before changing things.

The above workouts are just samples and are by no means engravings on stone. You can change the exercises, sets or reps to whatever works for you. The point is that you can maintain your strength and shape even with two workouts in a week and you just need to be smart in exercise selection, work hard and maintain a healthy diet.

I am not an expert or genius when it comes to workout programming but what I am good at is I read a lot and try to learn continuously. I first read about the philosophy of having two workout sessions in a week from this article at T-nation.com and I think that you would also benefit from this article and gain some more knowledge about exercise programming.

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