Would You Like To Get Healthy In A Hurry?
At 40 plus you need to maximise your gains, minimise the time frames. It’s a beautiful double win.
If you want to get fit, fast plan for incremental gains.
THE BRIEF
Time to read: 3 minutes 10 seconds
Time to action: 3 minutes 30 seconds
Mantra: Less time, more results, regular wins
Main message: Build ‘me-mentum’, don’t stay for the sake of it
Stat: We use just 1/3 of our Gym time to actually workout
There’s nothing more disheartening than busting your hump in the gym, only to look in the mirror and see precisely no change in your physique whatsoever. As a 40+ gym user, though if you’re in the gym for an hour, you’ll be lucky to do 47 minutes of training. That’s not too bad (in fact it’s pretty good) except… 47 minutes of access to the equipment sadly breaks down to a meager 21 minutes of actual working out. As 40+ gym users, we spend over half of our time in the gym setting weights, moving seats, altering dials, resting between sets and most importantly, getting the playlist jusssssssst right. You’ve committed to the time and the cost. Now if you can just commit a little more to the workout, you will see change, guaranteed.
Pre-gym checklist
Water bottle
Banana
Phone (charged)
Headphones (charged)
Keys
Watch
Wallet
Padlock
Pass (code)
Go!
Don’t: workout Plan once you’re in the gym
Do: Walk in and start straight away
Time saved: 4 minutes
On your gym journey, pick the 2-3 pieces of equipment you want to start with and give them a priority order. When you get into the gym, if the first isn’t free, move on. Do not hang about or recalculate what to do next—just got to machine 2. Think about the resistance you want to use (this is key) and what your first workout music track will be. One of the biggest time vampires is the 5 minutes spent sizing up the equipment you’ve already seen a thousand times. Plan this bit and it sets you up for the rest of the session.
Don’t: Give yourself an unpopular target
Do: Target one goal per session
Time saved: 5 minutes
This goal isn’t ‘abs by 6 o’clock’. It’s, ‘I want to try and burn a bit of fat.’ Or ‘I want to develop my legs a bit more’. This is all you need to decide the nature of today’s workout. Do not worry about split-sets or muscle rotation. Instead, do what you want to do, and work on the bits that will make you feel better about yourself. It is the single best way to guarantee you’ll be back. If you feel it, the chances are it’s what you need to do anyway.
Don’t: Go for little moves
Do: Compound your efforts
Time saved: 6 minutes
If you’re less time-poor and more chronology-starving, aim to use big compound movements (squats, clean and jerks, or deadlifts). They’ll deliver better results overall than isolating small muscle groups. At 40+ years old, there’s a good chance you aren’t a performance athlete who needs to target small muscle groups for bespoke fitness challenges. This strategy saves a ton of time. If you think about how often you have to wait for a machine, load/unloading weights, wipe it down, rest between as well as the ‘rest’ of walking between machines - well, it’s a huge time vampire. One machine, multiple muscles, then go home. The holy trinity of working out.
Don’t: Sit & scroll
Do: Use the right rate for rest
Time saved: 7 minutes
It’s just 30 seconds between sets, regardless of how hilarious Instagram seems right now. For better or worse, social media will still be there when you leave the gym, so don’t do it. Most people underestimated the time they took by up to 120 seconds. If ‘X’ is doing 3 sets and 6 body parts, how much earlier could ‘X’ have gone home without looking at Instagram?
Don’t: Undo the feel-good
Do: Pay it forward
Time saved: An entire session
This is all about taking both the endorphin rush and sense of satisfaction and keeping it into the next session so your ‘me-mentum’ stays up. It means eating well post-gym but keeping it nutritionally loaded. Sleep as soon as you feel tired. You’ve earned it, and try to avoid alcohol before you go to bed as it can rest all sorts of body rhythms that you’ve worked hard to put together.
It’s simple, possibly a little obvious, but it will save you about 25 minutes of nothing. That saving can help you put activity into your something column for more of what you like and less of what you don’t. In your 40s, you deserve to feel good and to find the time to enjoy it. And no one needs to know you’re not in the gym. Now is the time to find those Insta stories that it would be rude not to share.
PT WOLF
(Fitness)
Wolf is a personal trainer who tries and tests every programme we put together. A celebrity trainer, Wolf has been a fitness journalist as well as practising what he preaches for over twenty years. Now into his 40s, Wolf has added muscle to his frame in every decade of his life.
ANTHROPOLOGY ANTELOPE
(Culture)
Sociology might have been ‘that degree’ in the way back when, but can you honestly think of a time when we needed to understand our society more than we do today? Antelope is the author of numerous thesis of the human condition and the nature of human interactions.
