So in this post I wanna talk about the principles and training philosophy I’ve used for the past 3 years to consistently make progress with my physical fitness, even during periods of my life where I only have 20 minutes a day to exercise!

Keep in mind that I won’t be covering my diet in this post. You can check that out here if you’re interested.

So, there’s really only 5 major training concepts that you wanna keep in mind when you’re trying to build muscle:

1. Aim for 10+ controlled sets taken to or near failure, per muscle group, per week 

2. Re-stimulation

3. Progressive overload 

4. Sufficient recovery 

5. Consistency (THE MOST IMPORTANT!) 

So,

with the first point, plenty of studies have documented that getting over 10 working sets per muscle group per week is sufficient to make healthy progress.

Keep in mind that these need to be stimulating sets.

To avoid injury, I define failure as the point at which I can’t perform another controlled repetition with good form. 

So as long as you’re getting within 1-3 reps of failure, or going all the way to failure, it counts as a stimulating set.

Next,

re-stimulation - what I mean by this is that if, for example, you train your chest on Monday, you want to train it again later in the week, perhaps Thursday. 

Stimulating the same muscle group twice within a week has been associated with improved performance and growth.

By the way, I’m including references to studies because I obviously don’t post pictures of my physique online.

So I don’t know if it means much, but I can personally attest to using all of these principles and seeing lots of progress with my physical fitness.

Progressive overload

just states that you need to constantly challenge yourself. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean lifting more weight; it could also mean doing more repetitions, choosing a more difficult exercise variation, or something else. 

Practically speaking, every 1-2 weeks you can make some aspect of the exercises you’re doing a little more difficult. 

For example, say after 2 weeks you’re able to go from doing 6 reps of pull-ups to 10 reps.

During the third week you can add a 5 lb weight when doing your pull-ups to make them a little more difficult. 

This will likely bring your reps back down to around the 6-8 rep range.

Then, you can work back up to hitting 10 reps per set, consistently, and slightly increase the weight again. 

With regards to

sufficient recovery, it’s generally recommended that you avoid stimulating a muscle group after hitting it very hard for 1-2 days before re-stimulating it.

By hitting hard, I mean doing a lot of volume in a single session. 

For example, it’s much more taxing to do 8 sets of squats in a single session, when compared to doing 2 sets per day for 4 days. 

In other words, every set has diminishing returns. 

Your first set, when you’re the most fresh, is going to give you the most muscle stimulus and have the least impact on your ability to recover from it. 

The next set is going to be less stimulating, and hinder your recovery more than the previous one.

So the more you do in a single session, the longer your recovery time’s going to be. 

You’ll just have to test how much volume you can handle in a single session, and then adjust either how often you train or how much you do in a single session. 

The more you do in eeach session, the less often you can train. 

It’s really up to personal preference; either one works.

All a workout split is designed to do is distribute your weekly volume in a way that works with your schedule and your ability to recover.

Lastly,

consistency. 

It doesn’t matter how optimized your training plan is if you can’t stick to it for long enough.

People often ask me how I’m in such good shape and am able to maintain it year-round. 

It’s because I’ve been exercising in some form, nearly every day for the past 14 years!

And the reason I’ve been able to do that is because I enjoy it!!

So here’s what my workout split generally looks like: 

5 days of the week I choose 3 exercises: one push, one pull and one leg exercise. I do 2-3 sets of each of these exercises. 

I start with my push, then legs, then pull, and then I rest for 2 minutes. I do this so that I only need to rest between my pull and push sets, which saves time. 

For example, say I choose push-ups, squats, and chin-ups as my push, leg and pull exercises for the day.

I can do a set of push-ups and go straight into doing a set of squats because I’m working on very different muscle groups.

But if I did a set of chin-ups, it would make doing a set of push-ups immediately after, a lot more taxing.

So, I rest after doing chin-ups, and then do a set of push-ups.

In total, after warming up, my entire workout takes about 20 minutes because I just focus on compound movements. 

I might add in some isolation exercises to work on weak areas, but that’s maybe 2-3 sets for the entire week.

On the other two days, I do maybe 1 set of each type of exercise because those are more cardio-focused days.

I box on one day and I play basketball on the other.

With my current schedule I can block 1 hour a day to exercise, so I walk after most of my workouts because I enjoy it.

It’s also a great form of zone 2 cardio, which is essential for longevity! (I’ll make a separate post on it later). 

Now, here are a few reasons why I like this style of training: 

• It allows me to get over 10 sets per muscle group per week

• I can re-stimulate my muscles multiple times within a week 

• I have a lot of variety with my exercise-selection 

• I get different forms of cardio in 

• It’s very flexible:

Since most of my training is based on calisthenics, so even if I don’t have access to a gym I can still train

• If I need to skip a day, it doesn’t really hinder my progress because I’m not doing much volume on a given day.

• I don’t get cramps.

It’s a little counterintuitive, but since I’m only doing 2-3 sets per muscle group in a given session, each session isn’t very taxing.

So I don’t need as long to recover, which is why I can train every day. 

• It’s a very low time-commitment.

So if I’m really busy, I can workout at home in 20 minutes. 

• Lastly, I enjoy it for all of the above reasons and more, which is why I’ve stuck to it for so long.

And because I’ve been so consistent with my training, I’ve made the progress that I have.

That’s A Wrap!

I hope you found this post valuable.

If you did, consider sharing it with someone you think it could help! The bigger our community, the more we can all help each other :)

Thanks again!

Your Internet Siblings,

The Healthy Kangaroo Team ;)