Can Starting Strength be made faster?
At my work weight it takes me between 60 and 75 minutes to finish the novice Starting Strength program.
I would like to be in and out of the gym in about 40 min.
When I diminish my work weights I'm able to do the exercises faster, but when I try to push my current max I fail the sets if I cut the rest time shorter.
I have been following a strength training program for about 14 months (Stronglifts 2.5 months, Starting Strength the remaining time).
My current program and max work weights are:
Day 1
Squat 3x5 115kg
Bench 3x5 65kg
Snatch 5x3 37.5kg
Day 2
Squat 3x5
Press 3x5 42.5kg
Dead 1x5 100kg
Chins 9x6x5 (target is 3x15)
I follow this warmup schedule and rest 5 min between sets.
Can I optimize Starting Strength for workout duration while still doing progress, even if moderate?
(2)2 Comments
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On Day 2, you wouldn't need to follow such a strict warm-up set for deadlifts since you'll be nice and warmed up from squatting. It looks, in my opinion, that a lot of the time is being spent warming up and resting. Even 5 min between sets seems overkill if you're not working the same muscles directly after (like on Day 1). You can probably also eliminate some of the warm-up sets. On squat day, adding 15 lbs to the bar to knock out 5 reps, removing the weight, adding the next weight amount, etc. takes a lot of time. Add weight in 50 lb increments instead.
Forty minutes of gym time is an unrealistically low expectation if one is looking for the same effects as a multi-exercise program.
If 40 minutes is a hard cap--which I'd advise against having--then first I'd only do one work set. Warm up with the bar, add weight in logical big-plate increments (e.g. 20kg, then 40kg, then 60kg, then 80kg, then 100kg), then do a single maximal set (e.g. 115kg x5 reps). This eliminates nearly a majority of rest time since there is no rest time between warm-ups and after the work set you can immediately strip the plates and move to your next exercise.
That's probably not enough to get a workout down to 40 minutes. Remember, 40 minutes is a ludicrously short period of time to expect to complete a whole-body strength workout. At this point you need to start dropping exercises. Forget chin-ups, at least.
Thirdly, switch to a 3-day split so you can do fewer exercises per day. For instance:
A: Squat, bench
B: Deadlift, overhead press
This kind of schedule with only 1 work set would probably, most days, fit in a 40-minute workout.
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