How much strength training do you actually need?
Here we are again. winter is upon us, the kids are firmly in their school schedule, and everyone’s schedules are getting rearranged, and somehow the calendar that looked so manageable a few weeks ago is now completely full.
And right about now, I start hearing the same thing from clients:
“I just don’t have an hour to work out.”
Being honest...good. You probably don’t need an hour.
One of the biggest changes I’ve made with many of my clients is moving away from the idea that a “real” workout has to be 60 minutes long. If you were to Google current recommendations on strength training, you would see most suggest atleast two days of "muscle-strengthening" activity per week, but there isn’t a magical 60-minute threshold where your workout suddenly becomes worthwhile.
For a lot of people, 20–30 minutes is plenty of time to get some meaningful strength work done.
And here’s where I think frequency becomes really useful. Instead of trying to find two or three one-hour blocks in an already chaotic week, what if you found four 20–30 minute windows?
Monday: 25 minutes. Tuesday: 20 minutes. Thursday: 30 minutes. Saturday: 25 minutes.
If my math is correct that’s 100 minutes of strength training. More importantly, you’ve removed the pressure of needing to carve out a giant chunk of your day every time you want to exercise.This is something I’ve seen work incredibly well with my clients. A short workout doesn’t have to mean an easy workout. You can get a lot done in 20–30 minutes when you know what you’re doing, choose your exercises well, and stop worrying about cramming 14 different movements into every session.
And there may actually be a performance benefit to spreading your training out. Research consistently shows that resistance training improves strength and muscle mass, while frequency can be manipulated to distribute your weekly training volume across more manageable sessions. When total volume is equal, training more frequently doesn’t automatically produce more muscle, but spreading that work out can make it easier to accumulate quality training without turning every session into a marathon.
The goal is to find a training schedule that you can actually maintain. You don’t need more time to make that happen, you just need a plan that fits your available time.