workout minimalism

I went through a period of workout maximalism in the last year and I gained a lot from it. I got better at preventing injury, by working on mobility and core stability. I saw more aesthetic gains, with Arnold Schwarzenegger's workouts which had more volume and also more isolation exercises (just more everything, honestly). And I ran a little bit.

But I can't do it anymore.

The workouts got too long and also life is busy right now.

I was inspired to have shorter workouts because I started working out with my roommate in the morning and his workouts are an hour, maybe 1h 15m. I see how it's a lot more sustainable (and still intense). It also makes it more tenable to work out in the morning, which is AWESOME.

For the short term, I'll just do what he does, but in the long term, I've made a note to design a program for myself that is an hour at most and not too many times a week.

I want to make sure I'm still getting enough volume and also doing some isolation exercises though. I got such better results from Arnold Schwarzenegger's routine that I'm hoping for a program that gives me that but in less time 🥲

This workout program from this book looked like a fit for me:

Each exercise is 4 sets by 4 reps. Later "macrocycles" you can swap in different isolation exercises that are missing here. It has an upper body focus which saves some time.

Perhaps I could make each workout shorter by adding a 5th day and pulling out some of the isolations too. But I also want to run 1-2x a week so... idk.

Overall though, it might be a workout program I stick to for longer, which is the most important thing.

P.S. Mike Israetel on a podcast suggested that we don’t need general warmup (mobility, cardio, dynamic stretches, foam rolling). He suggested what we need is specific warmup (serious warmup sets) which might save time in the gym as well as being more effective.