Exercise on a Tight Schedule

 I recently received a question I wanted to share. Its a good question, and in our culture, time is an issue we all struggle with. Hope what I shared with this reader is helpful to you too.

Hello, I am trying to get back into a fitness routine. I’d like to do a 3 day split, specifically like this: Monday - Back and chest; Wednesday - Bootcamp; Friday - Shoulders and Arms. I don’t have a lot of time to fit in a workout, so if just do one exercise for each body part, around 5 sets per body part, would that be a good enough starting point?

-George, 28, Little Rock, AR.

Remember: doing something will always be better than doing nothing. My first recommendation, though, is to make sure you are hitting your legs. Most “bootcamp” workouts will tire the leg muscles out; however, if weights are not used for leg exercises, you’re missing a great opportunity to build muscle and put an additional caloric burn on your body. As for the workout you’ve put together, make sure your chest workout is a true pressing motion, such as dumbbell bench or incline, so that you will also be working your shoulders, triceps, and serratus. In other words, don’t let flys be your one exercise for your chest. For back, apply the same mentality. Whatever pull you do, you want to work your biceps and the back head of your shoulder, in addition to your back. And five sets of this type of lifting would be good for your back. Doing 5 sets on your biceps and triceps will cause fatigue to occur pretty quickly. Because they are smaller muscles, 5 sets will be hard to do, especially at first. I would switch up exercises on those. For instance, you could do 3 sets of curls with a bar and 2 sets with dumbbells. For triceps, do 3 sets of dumbbell extensions overhead, and 2 sets of cable extensions. For your shoulders, I would go ahead and do overhead presses, simply because it is a compound lift and you are going to burn more calories, handle more weight, and tire out less quickly. Here, do 3 sets of shoulder press, 2 sets of bent-over lateral raise.