In strength training, less is more.

People often think you need to slave away in the gym to look decent. Work out 5 days a week, for at least an hour, maybe two. Put in the work. Suck it up if you want the results. The same old narrative.

Yet most people slaving away in the gym look average.

My biggest mind-blow of the last five years is how little time it takes to get almost all the results possible out of strength training. That is, muscle mass, strength, and a fantastic looking physique. It’s simply not about time spent training.

If we look at all the productive work included in the weekly training routine of even an experienced trainee who’s gotten great results, whether they work out six days a week or one, it probably only adds up to a couple of minutes per major plane of motion. Think about it—across the duration of the average gym session, at how many points in time are you really at the limits of your ability, needing to push with everything you’ve got to get through? For most people, this never even occurs. (And you need only look around you to see the results most people get from their exercise.) People who do get results and end up building great bodies might experience this for one portion of their final rep (the point when they reach near-failure) on a handful of sets, at best.

A Better Solution?

But it’s this experience of pushing your limits that drives the body to change—not whatever comes before it. Which begs the question: What if we could isolate that productive work, the stuff that drives results, and just do that? Theoretically we could save a bunch of time that usually gets flitted away on unnecessary work (training that isn’t driving any tangible changes—think every rep prior to failure) and filler activities (rest breaks, setup, useless exercises), while still getting the same results. Or perhaps even better results, because we are less distracted in our efforts and can put 100% of our energy and focus into the work that really does matter.

Well, we can. That’s exactly what I’ve spent the last 7 years trying to do. And the result is the system I now use and teach to everyone I have the blessing of coaching. It’s what’s gotten me my lifetime goal physique, and allowed me to finally reach my long-term strength goals after years of tinkering and a mix of results ranging from frustratingly subpar to excellent, even at intermediate to advanced levels of strength and muscle mass. All with less than 40 minutes of training a week and a simple diet.

So what exactly is this productive work that can achieve such insane results from such little time input?

In short: maximum-effort use of your current strength capacity. Nothing less.

If you can manipulate the exercises you do to keep them at 100% of the difficulty you can handle (as “heavy” as physically possible for you) at every point in time during every rep, then you can elicit all the training response you’d ever want from your body in literally minutes per week.

It makes intuitive sense—if your body’s going to adapt, it needs a good reason to. Especially when that adaptation involves building metabolically expensive muscle tissue. Anything less than using every ounce of your existing strength is, sensibly, going to send a sub-maximal signal to your body to change. Which means less gains. On the other hand, if you take on as much resistance as possible from the start of your training, overload yourself so that you’re forced down through the lowering portions and can barely struggle through the lifting portions, all the while doing everything in your power to lift the load regardless of the difficulty, then your body has very clear instructions on what to do: get stronger. Which translates to: build lean muscle tissue.

You could go to the gym 6 days a week for 2 hours a session and grind away.

Or you could do this.

And based on all my experience, your results will be much the same.

Take your pick.

How I get 12 hours’ training done in 30 minutes (every week)

1. Choose a strength goal for each major plane of motion

Remember, strength = muscle. You just want a handful of very heavy, difficult goals, so that reaching them will mean you’re jacked by the time you get there. Here are mine that I’ve been working towards for the past several years:

Straddle planche pushup

Front lever row

Handstand pushup

One-arm chin-up

60kg loaded single leg squat (75% bodyweight)

2. Figure out the variable that scales the difficulty of each movement

Why is each of those goals so hard? When you figure that out, you also have the solution to making the movement easier—simply reduce the extent of that variable to the point where you can manage the load.

e.g. One-arm chin-up: The amount of bodyweight on the pulling arm while doing assisted one-arm chin-ups (simple)

e.g. Planche pushup = The mount of lean—i.e., the horizontal distance between hands and shoulders—while doing pushups (slightly less intuitive, but simple and effective nonetheless)

Each movement has a variable that will allow it to scale from zero (a level of difficulty requiring no strength at all) to end-goal strength (requiring end-goal levels of muscle mass). Figure out what that is for each of your goals, and you have a roadmap to take you all the way there.

3. Use that variable to work as heavy as possible, and no less at any point in time

Now that you can manipulate each movement to be as hard or easy as you like (with a simple change in one clearly defined variable), you can choose how hard things are at every single point in time.

The way we make training as efficient as possible, and brutally effective, is to do nothing but work that is 100% difficult. Maxing out. Working at failure, from the start of the first rep to the end of the set.

The way you get better at moving more load… is by practicing moving more load. So waste no time. Don’t build up to failure. Start with it. Reduce the load only as necessary to continue working.

Do this and it will not take long to tire yourself out and feel like you’ve just done a full hour’s workout. (Because, in terms of effective work, you have!)

4. Keep it brief

The efficacy of this method comes from how little we do. This allows the body to work at levels of intensity otherwise impossible. My approach is to perform one continuous set at maximum effort until I feel like I’ve had enough, then that’s it—I won’t touch the movement again until the following week.

If you try and spread this style of work over multiple sets, even multiple sessions per week, you don’t cheat the system and “get more volume in”. Instead you dilute the same volume of work over more time, at a lower intensity. And in my experience, not only is this less fun, it gets fewer results.

You must be patient. The limiting factor here is our body’s recovery ability. Not your work ethic. So send the signal to grow (by maxing out the limits of your strength until you’ve had enough), then stop and let the body do its thing.

Repeat this for enough weeks, and you will get the results you’re after.

It’s only a matter of time.

But spend it how you want—you don’t need to be in the gym.