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Abbreviated Workouts

Does Abbreviated Training Work?

Abbreviated training is not a training style you hear about very much and there is a reason for that. Most bodybuilding magazines print the routines of the top professionals (after all, who wants to hear what plumber Joe is working out with in the gym, right?). And professionals don't need abbreviated training as they typically take drugs to allow them to train longer and recover faster.

For non-drug users, the abbreviated training approach works much better. One of the best factors of abbreviated training is that it is naturally structured to prevent overtraining.

In order to ensure that abbreviated training works as intended, each exercise, each set, each repetition has to be maximized. You have to hit each session with all the intensity you can because your training parameters are smaller. Abbreviated training can be abbreviated in the amount of time spent in each workout as well as the amount of workouts per week.

Don’t Go Too Brief

Abbreviated training is by definition short, but you don't want to make it too short. For instance, when you perform working sets (the main sets you do after a warm up) you want to do at least two per exercise. That's because research shows that performing only one set for an exercise is best for maintenance, not growth. You can maintain your muscles where they are with a one set approach, but to move ahead, you need more than that. To spark growth, you need 2-3 working sets per exercise as a minimum. So this is the bottom end of the range for abbreviated training – get in at least two sets or more per exercise.

Abbreviated training does work as long as you don't get too abbreviated and also that you crank out a very hard core, ultra intense workout in that abbreviated time.

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