id: ewt title: Exercising with Little Time previous: afh next: deepwork date: 2021-02-19 ---

## Exercising with Little Time

I feel like a lot of my posts are going to mention Tim Ferriss somewhere. He has led me to most of the people that I have studied and talk about. I always think it is good to remember, not only what we have learned but, how we got there. So as he is coming up again today I felt like this might be a good time to give this salute to him.

When it comes to exercise, the most common issue that I hear is that it takes a lot of time. It certainly can and for a large portion of my life it did. In my teens I was a competitive gymnast. It did not seem at all unusual for me to train for 20+ hours in a week. Once I stopped competing I sort of kept that up. Martial arts class every day, plus adult recreation at the gymnastics centre 2-3 days a week. Sprinkle in some parkour in the evenings and rock climbing here and there. I never gave much thought to the fact that a solid chunk of every day was spent on something athletic.

It resulted in me being in pretty good shape and it works. If you take care not to overtrain then your body is used to it and there is not really much downside physically. The problem that I ran into in my last few years of university was time. I needed more time for school, then I needed more time for work. Working a full day and training so much left me with no time to learn new things or pursue new skills. This is the problem that a lot of us face today, with more and more demands on our time we often take the all or nothing route for exercise.

I have not trained at a sport in a few years. I would love to get back into it but again time rears its ugly head. Classes are at specific times on specific days and it is not always possible to work that into my schedule. So I have focussed on general conditioning.

General conditioning is the act of improving your body without necessarily having a particular goal or sport in mind. It gives you a baseline on which to add skills and sport specific conditioning. It is what a lot of “going to the gym” is composed of. Lifting weights, calisthenics, running. That is unless your sport falls into that category.

I had been so used to training with a lot of specificity that spending hours a day on exercise seemed normal. My first forays into minimal effective training came from trying out the regimens in Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour body. Like all his books, it is a fantastic amalgamation of tips and tricks from all sorts of experts. I did have one problem with it and that was the fact that it had very infrequent workouts (for me). I use training in part to help set the tone for my day and as an integral part of my morning routine. Training 3 times a week just didn’t feel right mentally even if it was working perfectly physically. If you are trying to cut down as much as possible on time and want the best bang for your buck as far as physical benefit, then I certainly suggest taking a look at his book and giving it a try.

It was through a mention in his book and a guest appearance on his podcast that I found Pavel Tsatsouline and his work. I have read a fair few of the books he has written and have been following his programs for a few years now and it is exactly what I was looking for.

Pavel is a strong advocate of minimalism in training. While he has had no shortage of training high level athletes, he has also spent a considerable amount of time training special forces and other military personnel. His “Grease the Groove” methodology is I think the perfect system for daily training that leaves you more energized and ready for the day. The idea is quite simple, if training wipes you out; how are you going to be ready for anything else you need to tackle that day? The point of training is to slowly and methodically build up your fitness without ever pushing so hard that you can’t function. A controlled, and intelligent practice daily is much better in the long term then a few large body destroying workouts and fits perfectly with using it as a part of a daily routine.

I love his books. Some of his books cover only a few exercises but go deep into the science behind their choice and the programming that goes along with them. If you don’t like the long explanations then you can generally get the exercises and programming in a couple of chapters but I like understanding why. He spends a lot of time on progressions and technique for the few exercises in each book and then more time explaining the theory behind it. Most of his practices involve only a handful of exercises and some as few as one or two (yes he has a full practice consisting of a single exercise). This keeps the length of training sessions short and allows them to comfortably fit into even a busy schedule.

I think one of the most useful books for beginners is a collaboration between Pavel and Dan John (another strength coach) called Easy Strength. They focus on general conditioning but also discuss the broad types of conditioning that different sports need and then go into implementation and exercises. The general framework of 5 movements to hit in a training session for their 40 day training plan has been extremely helpful for me. The categories being: a large posterior chain movement, upper body push, upper body pull, full body explosive move and a core exercise. If you want to start and have access to a gym (you will need barbells), I advise taking a look at this fantastic book.

It is only in the last 6 months that I have had regular access to a gym and have been implementing the contents of Easy Strength. Before that I had to make do with what I could have at home. Kettlebells are a fantastically versatile piece of equipment and what I would suggest if you can only have a single piece of equipment other than space. The books that I use the most regularly however are: Kettlebell Simple and Sinister (KSS), The Naked Warrior (NW), and Relax into Stretch (RS).

KSS is a simple 2 exercise program along with a warmup.The exercises are kettlebell swings and turkish get ups. I still make use of that program almost everyday. It takes about a half hour from start to finish. The book has very in-depth progressions to follow if you are not familiar with the exercises and a system to increase the weight as you get stronger. It is the most compact strength workout I have tried and is very effective. You need a single kettlebell and that is it. If you master this, then his book The Quick and the Dead is a great follow up but I am still working towards it.

NW is a book about body weight training and is also only two exercises. It is hard to build strength beyond a certain point using only body weight. Pavel chooses the pistol squat and one arm pushup to counteract this slightly. They are exercises that take advantage of worse leverage and force one limb to lift your entire body weight. The book focuses a lot on technique so that these exercises require the use of your entire body. He has good progressions that make the moves easier without requiring other exercises as a lead up. Transitioning from one exercise to a harder one can be difficult, the technique is different and often is a large jump in strength required. I find that his slow progression of a single exercise allows finer control over the difficulty. This book is unique in my experience in that he does not ask you to set aside any specific time to train. The exercises are meant to be done throughout the day as you find time and only after you are completely recovered from the previous set. 5 pistols per side and 5 one arm pushups per side, that is it. As often as time and your body allow. Just a warning: your co-workers will look at you strangely if you start doing pistol squats at the office. Even so, it still makes a great break from sitting at a desk and can be done anywhere.

RS is the only book that I have ever read that discusses the theory behind stretching. There are different types of stretching and some require more skill but are more effective. He outlines the dangers of blindly stretching and ways to get more flexibility with less time. He also has a long list of stretches and the muscles they target for you to use and advises how often they should be done. Coming from a gymnastics background stretching was too often the coach pushing you down, which is dangerous. It was eye opening to understand how flexibility works and that there are actually systems in the body that we can take advantage of to increase our flexibility faster than we think and most importantly without injury.

Pavel’s work has been the foundation of my training for a few years now and has made me stronger than I was (while staying as flexible), and freed up a lot of time. I can get a solid practice with little time and if I am super busy I can squeeze it into the spare moments I have during the day. It has also helped me understand how our bodies respond to training and how best to take advantage of that. His work emphasizes longevity and regularity over the all-too-common ‘train till you drop’; and I think promotes better care of your body. I have not had a single day of extreme muscle soreness on his programs. This is in stark contrast to being so sore that I could barely stand from previous training sessions, while providing more of a benefit in terms of strength.

I strongly advise taking a look at his work. It is an endless supply of useful suggestions and information that I think anyone interested in the fundamentals behind physical training should read.

Thanks for reading.