Using Compound Exercises and Why

One of the most frequent excuses we hear from people on the street in regards to why they do not go to a gym and workout is “not enough time.” Little do they realize that if done a certain way, you can get great results, change your life, change your look, and sleep, breathe, function and feel physically and mentally fantastic with only one hour of gym time twice a week. Of course that’s the minimum, but done consistently, is still very effective.

So having said that, how can we do that? Can you really get a good and effective workout done in less than one hour? The answer is yes. I do it all the time myself.

So for those of you who are after a good strength training workout in a minimal amount of time, here it is:

You should be using compound exercises as much as possible.

For those of you who are not familiar with that term, a compound exercise is an exercise that works more than one muscle with only one movement as opposed to an isolation exercise which “isolates” one muscle and works predominantly that particular muscle only.

If you were to do only isolation exercises in your workout, it would likely take more time for you to complete your workout than you would like, increasing the likelihood that you would quit.

That’s why we at the gym include many compound exercises in our orientation when you start to be sensitive to the time restraints most people have to contend with.

Since time is so scarce for a lot of us, I thought I would try to help with a few suggestions on how you can get done in the gym what you need to get done in a lot less time than your current workout is likely taking you now.

Believe it or not, you can do a very effective full body strength training workout in forty-five minutes by using compound exercises.

Here’s how, step by step.

1. With a staff member or one of our trainers, go upstairs (yes, we have an upstairs folks!), and have them teach you how to do an incline dumbbell press and an incline press on the Atlantis free weight machine so you can choose which you would like to do. This exercise will work your chest, your shoulders and your triceps. I prefer the incline presses using the dumbbells.

2. Next, still upstairs, have our staff teach you how to do squats properly. You can start off on the Hack Squat Machine, then once you’ve built up some good strength in your legs you can graduate to the Safety Squat and then eventually to a free weight squat. This exercise will work every muscle group from your belly button down to your toes! Your abs, your glutes (butt muscles), your hamstrings, your calves and your quadriceps will never be the same.

3. Go back downstairs where you will learn how to use the chin-up machine that allows you to do chins no matter how strong you are because it is weight assisted. This exercise done properly will work your back and your biceps.

Are you with me so far? You’ve done only three exercises and worked nine different muscles! At three sets per exercise that’s only nine total sets. If you were to use isolation exercises you would have to do nine exercises at three sets each and that would be 27 sets!

4. Now finish with three sets on the ab crunch machine and the low back machine for your core and you are done.

So there you have it. A total of five exercises, three sets each for a total of 15 sets, one minute to do the exercise, one minute maximum rest between sets is 15 sets x 2 minutes equals 30 total minutes to complete this full body workout.

If you absolutely will not or cannot go upstairs, use the leg press machine on the main floor instead of the leg machines upstairs and use the chest press machine instead of the incline presses.

There are many other variations of compound exercise routines that can be substituted for the one outlined above. Our trainers can help you with those.

Hope this helps,

Gino