The time-poor man’s guide to getting jacked.
Introduction
You're busy, really busy – you have health and fitness goals that seem completely out of reach. You think you do not have the time to try, never mind succeed.
There is a solution, and I will explain it. It will require some effort in the 4 hours a week range, total, including training and nutrition.
Training
You're going to need to train three times a week to train all of your muscles effectively; each one of these sessions can be done in forty-five minutes to an hour.
The sessions will follow this structure:
Training Structure
Exercise 1:
Squats, leg press & deadlifts etc.
Leg compound movement*
4 Sets of 10–20 Reps
Exercise 2 & 3: Superset
Upper body push compound movement
Bench press, push-ups & dips etc.
+
Upper body pull compound movement
Pull-ups, barbell rows & inverted rows etc.
4 sets of 10–20 Reps
Exercise 4 & 5: Superset
Bicep isolation exercise***
Any bicep curl variation
+
Tricep isolation exercise
Any tricep extension variation.
4 Sets of 10–20 Reps
Exercise 6:
Side delt isolation exercise
Any form of lateral raise.
5 Sets of 20–30 Reps
Training Explanation
The reason for this structure is to get you in and out of the gym as fast as possible with as minimal compromise on efficacy.
The rep ranges are high to reduce warm-up times – the further the weight being used is from your one-rep maximum, the fewer sets you’ll need to do to warm up to it.
Legs come first to make sure they get done in the first place, and you’ll be warmer for the rest of the session.
The sets are high to make sure you are in the effective range for every muscle group across the week (10–20 working sets), which brings you into the optimal ranges for all muscle groups.
If you have muscle groups you would like to prioritise, you can always move them up in the order they come in the workout and increase the number of sets done per week.
Footnotes
*Compound movement – anything where more than one joint is moving at the same time, i.e., squat = knees and hips, bench press = shoulders and elbows etc.
**Superset – Two exercises done back to back with as minimal rest as is possible without degrading performance.
***Isolation exercise – Single joint exercises, i.e., tricep extensions, biceps curls etc.
Nutrition
You are going to need to track your food and correlate that with your bodyweight, regardless of whether you are trying to build muscle or lose fat.
The most accurate way of doing this is through a kcal tracker like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer. If that’s not an option, you can log your food in a diary. The latter takes a similar amount of time but is less accurate; unless you have a good reason why, I would go with the former.
Meal Prep
The fastest way to meal prep is by buying everything you need pre-cut or pre-portioned and cooking everything in baking trays with tin foil. It’s not the most cost-efficient or environmentally friendly, but you have a goal you want to achieve, so you are going to have to pick your battles.
Buy enough so you have at least lunches for the entire week and potentially a couple extra for dinner. Worst comes to worst, you can just put them in the freezer for next week.
Weigh everything beforehand (Just multiply the meal by the amount of days you are going to have it).
Line all trays with tinfoil to save on washing-up time.
Fill one tray with protein of choice and whatever low/no kcal seasoning you enjoy.
One tray with vegetables of choice.
Whatever starch you are having goes on to boil.
Roughly distribute the food between the containers. As you have weighed everything beforehand, you know what is there and don’t need to stress too much about being precise day to day.
On-the-go Options
Ironically, some of the easiest to track options are going to come from fast food or chain restaurants. Places like Chipotle are going to be your best friend as they are a happy medium between fast food options and your meal prep. The reason for this is that most fast food chains are going to have accurate calories listed on their website and the portioning is pretty standardised when compared to a mom-and-pop-style place.
When in dire straits and there are no other options, you can’t really go wrong with some pre-cooked chicken and some fruit from the supermarket. It’s going to get you some protein, a decent amount of food volume, and some micronutrients.
Sleep
You work long hours and you want some time to decompress when you get in from work by watching some Netflix or having a bit of a scroll. You are going to have to sack that off if you want to get the most out of your training.
Set a timer for a bedtime that you stick to every single day of the week, outside of circumstances where you have a really good reason not to. Is missing out on an hour’s worth of sleep worth an extra episode of a TV show that you aren’t going to remember in 6 months?
Going to bed at the same time helps create consistency in your sleep–wake cycle, which will improve the quality of your sleep and how easy it is to get to sleep in the first place. We are looking for 6–8 hours of unbroken sleep in an ideal setting, but any improvement on your current pattern is worth taking.
