No Time to Lift Weights?

Strategies for efficient gains in strength

While you may think strength training is not for you, you are too old to start, or you don’t have time or equipment, there are many ways to get this done with lots of options to take advantage of. Strength training is as important as cardiovascular exercise from a health perspective. Muscle weakness, termed sarcopenia and dynapenia, is a normal age-related phenomenon, occurring at a rate of 1% to 5% annually from the age of 30. Losing strength as we get older is potentially debilitating. Sarcopenia or muscle mass loss can lead to falls, a decline in function and a host of metabolic changes resulting in a higher prevalence of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, poor blood cholesterol and fat levels, and high blood pressure.

Many Ways to Get at It

Muscle requires an adequate stimulus, or overload, to get stronger. Similar to the cardiovascular system, skeletal muscle requires a workload of approximately 60% of maximum available strength, to increase in strength. This starting point will obviously be different for everyone. Long lasting and significant change in strength occurs over a 12 to 16 week period.

Strength gains can be achieved through a wide spectrum of intensities. Lower weights with higher repetitions can be as effective in gaining strength, as higher weights with fewer repetitions.

Higher loads with fewer reps are going to be most effective for making strength gains in a time efficient manner. Here training to fatigue or failure is less important. Deciding which is best for you depends on your goals. To perform everyday activites at a minimum, the higher repetiton with a lower load may be sufficient. This is also practical when you don’t have a lot of heavier home equipment.

Ideal Volume

Ideal are 4- 10 sets per week for each muscle group. Since less volume is needed to maintain strength gains than to gain strength, you could ramp up your sets/week at certain times of the year and then ramp down to maintain. Because training frequency appears less important than maintaining a certain levels of volume, you can decide to spread those 4-10 sets out over 1-3 times/week for more time efficiency.

Warm Up and Stretching

Stretching need not be prioritized unless joint mobility is a goal, and can be done more dynamically as part of the strength training.

General warm up ( like 5-10 min on the bike or TM are ok with a time crunch) but specific muscle group warm ups are useful if you are doing heavier loads.

Drop Sets, Rest Pause Training and Supersets for increasing muscle mass gain with less time

Drop set training reduces rest between sets by using a lower load. It reduces total time of training but is best suited for single joint exercises.

Rest pause training is higher weight, shorter sets and short rests.

What do You Need to Maintain Strength

Younger adults can probably maintain muscle mass and strength by training with as little as one brief session per week, while older adults probably need somewhat more weekly volume. One session of 3-4 sets of each muscle group appears to be sufficient to maintain strength gains.

Machines vs Free Weights

While ultimately this may be a personal preference, they both have pros and cons for efficiency. For someone not accustomed to strength training, machine are more efficient from a technique standpoint, but may require waiting to use. For someone more experienced in weight training, free weights can be used for multiple exercises. Free weights are more practical for home use. A mix of both is another option. Using resistance bands and body weight can be an alternative that is time efficent and easy at home. The challenge is finding the appropriate intensity as well as being able to progress while maintaining a good level of muscle activation, especially in the lower body. Still body weight exercises can be progressed but can get challenging. Recomendations for an ideal would be to use free weights or machines to do some training and use the bands and body weight as a supplement when traveling or when other equipment is not available. To quantify intensity with bands or body weight you can use a percieved exertion scale or a repetitions in reserve scale.

Types of Exercises

For time efficiency use both arms or legs and multiple muscle exercise that use large ranges of dynamic exercise. Warm ups should be exercise specific, meaning you do a lower load of a similiar or same exercise as the training exercise.

Muscle Power

Power is the ability to accelerate and move quickly. This can also become comprimised as we get older. After the age of 60, power loss is quicker and may have a bigger influence on physical function. This involves moving more quickly through one part of an exercise and then slowly through the other.

In summary, strength training can be made more time-efficient by prioritizing both sided, multi muscle movements through a full range of motion with ≥ 4 weekly sets per muscle group using an appropriate amount of weight, sets and reps. Using additional techniques like super sets can reduce time even further. Strength training can involve a variety of types of equipment. Use exercise specific warm ups, and prioritizing stretching is not necessary. Sessions should involve some power training, especially in the older adult. Lastly, strength training is a very important way to maintain muscle mass and avoid health declines.

Engage Physical Therapy and Wellness can help you get started getting stronger through individualized Physio-Fitness programs. An advantage of having a Physical Therapist partnering with you is we can adjust for and assist with painful conditions or injuries as we move through our program.

Resources:

Avers, D and M. Brown; Strength Training for the Older Individual. Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy Vol. 32;4:09, 2009.

Iversen, V. et al. No Time to Lift? Designing Time‑Efcient Training Programs for Strength and Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review.Sports Medicine (2021) 51:2079–2095