Post: #1

This came up as I was heading home from gym today - it was a reasonably short session, but still, door-to-door it was >2 hours, counting commute time, shower time etc. It's similar in the weekdays, I could be home at 7 instead of at 9pm with a short while to cook and eat, then hit the sack. Usually do gym 4x or 5x a week.

I started thinking of how much time would be saved by not going to the gym or doing some basic training at home some days. Apartment living would mean no man cave, but a couple of kettle bells could be managed.

That saved time could then be used to do other self-improvement.

Has anyone done this?? Any tips or suggestions? I think I'd go crazy if I didn't lift at all, so some lifting has to be on the menu every week.

Post: #2

Do you enjoy going to the gym? Keep going.

Is it not worth the commute? Do you dread going? Stop going.

No one can tell you how to juggle your life. Only you can dig deep and determine how much you value certain aspects of life.

Post: #3

Here is a simple suggestion: train on the weekend. If you lift hard on both Saturday and Sunday (for example split lower body / upper body), that will be more than enough to maintain and grow strength. And you'll save yourself the commute time, the likely disturbance to your sleep from exercising too late, and the risk of injury that comes from training after spending a whole day seated in a chair in front of a computer monitor.

Instead, when you come home from work take a hot shower and then do some flexibility/mobility training and good simple stretches -- it can be as little as 15 minutes. Then have a small last meal and wind down for the rest of the night. On the weekends you will be relaxed, limber, and ready to train hard. That's a great routine for an office worker and especially a commuter.

Post: #4

Doing body weight exercises has saved me tons of time and gym membership money.

A weighted pulley, chin up bar, and different angle push ups with perfect form at a slow steady pace has done more for me because I have more energy to work out more often, harder, and whenever I please easily.

My genetics in fact do better with volume body weight exercise then they did with heavy lifting as far as size and definition is concerned. Has been a win for me. I was enthralled with the gym for 5 years or so then quickly got over it.

I have had several more friends with beach bodies and get hotter girls easier that do only body weight stuff and stay very lean with their diet than any of my gung ho gym friends have save for one ultra natural that was dumbell pressing 120lb'ers for sets when he was 19yo with no juice and a very good looking guy. The same friends used that extra time to go out more with people and keep improving on their style and excel in their hobbies or money making skills.

Post: #5

Why not set up a home gym or find a gym that's closer? There's also bodyweight exercises if your worried about cost and time.

There's no way around training, and no shortcuts. Put in the time. It's a core aspect of self-improvement for a man.

Post: #6

What can you do to make your life easier during off time? I am way too busy to juggle gym, diet, social life on top of work. So if I am going into a week disorganized then I am going to let something slide, which is usually diet or gym time.

On Sundays I now devote almost the whole day to meal prep. For example, today I went to the butcher and bought a bunch of chicken breasts and two whole chickens, and had the butcher grind me up some sirloin and brisket meat. Then went to the grocery store and bought some veggies and stuff. Got home, made three dishes -- braised Chicken Paprikash in the Dutch oven, cabbage and beef stew in the pressure cooker (I just use the same ingredients as a Polish Cabbage Roll recipe but don't bother with the rolling part because it takes forever, chopped cabbage in a stew is more timely), and then grilled the chicken breasts. I made five lunches with the breasts (with some brown rice and steamed veg), and now have a dozen frozen meals to add to the freezer with old batches of chili, chicken soup and braised lamb shanks from prior Meal Prep Sundays.

I have found that a one or two Sundays a month where I can Make a metric shitload of food will save me SO much time during the rest of the work week. I may cook a fish meal a couple of times if I feel like it but other than that I now have no excuses to eat crappy take out or restaurants. And by premaking lunch now I never eat out and can duck out to the gym downtown at lunch. Sometimes I stay for 90 minutes and make the time up by working late, but that isn't a problem because when I come home I have a frozen homemade meal ready in minutes so the burden of making dinner doesn't weigh me down.

Post: #7

It would definitely be one solution to go to a gym closer to home, but I was looking for more out of the box suggestions when I made the thread... gym seems to suck up most of my weekday evenings, and many times I feel too impatient or tired to cook afterwards.

Devoting one day to meal prep takes me even further into the rabbit hole of making my life all about fitness. I can't deny, I like the looks I get from the lizards when I'm in top form but I'm wondering if I'm leaving opportunities (to network or to grow an eventual business etc) on the table by religiously spending >10 hours a week in gym.

Post: #8

Why don't you change your gym routine to full body and train 3x/week. Once you get to a decent level of fitness/shape it's easy to maintain and with a reasonable diet you'll still look better than 90% of other guys.

I do one big exercise, usually compound, per body part - my typical routine is:

Wide grip pull-ups (back), incline DB press (chest), raises (shoulders), squats (legs) + if time some abs, dips or curls. I'll mix it up with a different type of exercise - like narrow grip lat pulldown instead of pullups, but overall that's my routine and I'm done in 1 hour max.

I know this doesn't cover absolutely everything (no isolated exercises) but for me it gives great results for the time invested. I look better than most friends going 5/6 times a week, doing typical bro-split type training. Other than that - a whole day wasted on food prep is insane, there must be a more time efficient way to do it!

(Disclaimer - also on low dose TRT which obviously helps, but I only started a few months back and have been in similar shape, same training plan/diet for over 5 years without it.)

Post: #9

I find it good to have a place devoted exclusively to a particular activity with no distractions. So, the gym is where I focus on the weights . I also travel there and back by public transport, so I can focus on reading during the journey. I view it as time well spent. Time in the gym is for my body, the time travelling there and back is for my mind. Then I can get back home and focus on business.

Bodyweight exercises are all well and good, but I don't get the same buzz that I get from shifting iron. I think it's also a good idea to get out of the house and out of your own head so I prefer to execise with other people around me, although I leave the socialiszing until my workout is finished.

I also enjoy going to the sauna after my workout - very relaxing and good for idea-generation.

Post: #10

(12-12-2016 05:35 AM)augen sehen Wrote:  It would definitely be one solution to go to a gym closer to home, but I was looking for more out of the box suggestions when I made the thread... gym seems to suck up most of my weekday evenings, and many times I feel too impatient or tired to cook afterwards.

Devoting one day to meal prep takes me even further into the rabbit hole of making my life all about fitness. I can't deny, I like the looks I get from the lizards when I'm in top form but I'm wondering if I'm leaving opportunities (to network or to grow an eventual business etc) on the table by religiously spending >10 hours a week in gym.

I see it as an investment of one day (actually more like half a day) sacrificed for a week of reduced stress but of course I don't fully know your circumstances, it just works for me. Can you work out at Lunch hour to open up your evenings?

Post: #11

(12-12-2016 07:13 AM)rockoman Wrote:  I also enjoy going to the sauna after my workout - very relaxing and good for idea-generation.

Interesting perspective, thanks. Sauna and relaxation time is also my favorite post-workout period. Really helps.

Post: #12

(12-12-2016 05:35 AM)augen sehen Wrote:  It would definitely be one solution to go to a gym closer to home, but I was looking for more out of the box suggestions when I made the thread... gym seems to suck up most of my weekday evenings, and many times I feel too impatient or tired to cook afterwards.

Devoting one day to meal prep takes me even further into the rabbit hole of making my life all about fitness. I can't deny, I like the looks I get from the lizards when I'm in top form but I'm wondering if I'm leaving opportunities (to network or to grow an eventual business etc) on the table by religiously spending >10 hours a week in gym.

Cut back to a maintenance schedule for now...5 times a week is if you are really trying to make some serious progress... Get to a point where you are happy with how you look and maintain it through proper dieting and 3x a week exercise.

I am trying to go in your direction at the moment. I want to ramp up before summer next year.... need to raise that SMV.

Post: #13

Agree with others.

It's a fine line. Cutting back gym for something else...just check back in a couple months and make sure "something else" isn't Netflix...it's easy to slip in to.

Post: #14

Buy dumbbell weights and workout at home... almost every machine workout has a dumbbell equivalent...

(12-11-2016 09:32 PM)augen sehen Wrote:  This came up as I was heading home from gym today - it was a reasonably short session, but still, door-to-door it was >2 hours, counting commute time, shower time etc. It's similar in the weekdays, I could be home at 7 instead of at 9pm with a short while to cook and eat, then hit the sack. Usually do gym 4x or 5x a week.

I started thinking of how much time would be saved by not going to the gym or doing some basic training at home some days. Apartment living would mean no man cave, but a couple of kettle bells could be managed.

That saved time could then be used to do other self-improvement.

Has anyone done this?? Any tips or suggestions? I think I'd go crazy if I didn't lift at all, so some lifting has to be on the menu every week.

Post: #15

I've been working out for 15 years now while traveling around the world and living in locations or had work situations that made going to the gym harder.

If I were you, I'd probably hit legs hard Wednesday evening and Saturday morning at the gym. Make your Saturday work out much longer.

For upper body, get some gymnastics rings, a pullup bar, etc and do your workout at home. Do 1 arm push-up progressions and just look up bodyweight progressions and progressions based around ring training and the chinup bar. If you are a decent sized tall man, working for a 1 arm chinup, banging out multiple sets of one arm push-ups, being able to do an iron Cross on the rings--all of these things will take you a long time to get.

You can probably do a 20-25 minute intense upper body workout on weekdays at home and just pop into the shower after. For your Wednesday leg workout you could do 1 legged squats, sprints etc at home and outside, where you focus on mobility, speed and power output. Then, Saturday morning in the gym have a long workout based on building maximal strength. That'll cut you down to just 1 day per week at the gym, and on a weekend at that.

If you're not prepping food, what are you doing with your life? The nutrition aspect is what keeps me with a great physique, but then great nutrition overflows into your energy, your health, and all other areas of life. I take the kitchen seriously so I don't have to worry so much about the gym.

Post: #16

You can get a good home workout with either just body weight exercises (look up calisthenics videos to see how you can be creative with classics like push-ups and many others in order to increase resistance when the basic moves allow you too many reps) or body weight and a few dumbbells and perhaps a pull up bar.

I'd been going to the gym pretty consistently for over 20 years but after a shoulder injury at the beginning of this year forced me to go easy for several months - which made me switch to body weight and dumbbells - I grew so fond of home exercise that I haven't been back to the gym in months. At 40 now my joints will almost certainly appreciate it in the future, already since my mid 30s I was having a lot more small but nagging joint issues than when I was younger. About the only part of me that seems less prone to injury now than when I was younger is my back.

If you're trying to add a lot of muscle I wouldn't recommend that approach if you have time and desire to go to the gym instead, but for maintenance, light gains (potentially even pretty good gains for beginners in particular) and most certainly as an alternative to not doing any strength exercise at all, calisthenics with or without some extra weights is an excellent choice.

Post: #17

Ok.

The gym is like a savings account with a very good interest rate. The younger you start making deposits (progress) the more you will have when you are older. You can have something very rare and special in your older years if you start young.

Conversely, if you start as an older man, you will have to work WAY harder to catch up to the guy who has been putting in steady work since he was in school. You may never catch up.

The nice part is that you can make progress just fine on 3 days a week, for a couple hours at a time. Nothing special, keep adding weight to the bar every so often. Over 25 years a 225 lb deadlift can turn into a 600 lb deadlift at a snail's pace, and you can be that brutally strong old guy who is still ass fucking college students because he doesn't look like a steaming pile of slime.

Post: #18

I find that gym time helps me make the most of the rest of the time, so that there is not necessarily a conflict between gym time and doing other things. I train 4-5 times a week but only do about 12-16 sets each time, however I make sure I do them damned good. I never train to exhaustion, or even tiredness, rather I leave the gym while I still have that 'I could bite the ass off a bear' feeling That way I find that the gym builds up energy for my other activities rather than draining me.

Post: #19

It seems that OP doesn't want to invest a lot of time in going to the gym. Which makes a lot of sense to me.

You have a few options, most of them outlined above:
- Limit the time spent in the gym.
- Toughing it out and keep doing what you are doing.
- Saving time by doing other things more efficient.
- Force yourself to feel better based of comments by other members how they experience their gym time.
- Quit altogether.

If you have a full time job, going to the gym 5 times a week is a huge investment. Ask yourself if you really want to invest in something that you don't enjoy.

I would also look into why you go to the gym. If it is to get girls (assuming you don't have many), you are investing wayyy too much of your available time. If you are not overweight, going to the gym 5 times a week with little free time besides that is an absolute waste.

If you would have been a "location independent" guy with a lot of time on his hands to experiment, or someone who really enjoys going to the gym, it would be a different story. But if you are not, and your main reason is to be good looking enough to get girls, then you are wasting your time.

Looks matter, but social skills matter way more.

I might elaborate more in a future post, but it comes down to this:

The benefits of having a "beach body" or better are limited to
A) Wanting a LTR with a girl who has a beach body or better
B) Wanting lots of volume in ONS from club game

The former is more likely to want to date someone with the same passion for working out as her, although they might call it bullshit like discipline or something else. The latter, improving the rate of ONS's from club game, is only feasible if you go out 2-3 nights until closing time a week and have ok results. Not a lack of a results, not superb results, but a ONS every 3 to 4 nights. Then you might be able to improve with a great physique, but with more or less nights per ONS don't even think about it.

But since you are not passionate about going to the gym, this is probably not for you - even if you did go out 2-3 nights until closing time a week.

Post: #20

Hi asdfk,

broadly agree.

The OP must decide what his overall goals are, and in particular why he is going to the gym.

Yes, the most important muscle for getting girls is your tongue muscle. There are plenty of muscled gym rats who can hardly open their mouths.

Once, you have them in the sack though they are wowed by muscle -it's primeval.

Post: #21

Priorities in life change. Stay healthy shouldn't change. When you make it twice or three times a week to the gym, to some basic stuff you can be done in one hour, 1.5 when you include shower and everything. Sometimes I'm short with time and do some main lifts. Then I'm out after 45 minutes. All in all I notice that so regular sport / gym helps me to focus on other things, let me stay in shape and is good for me. So I will never quit it.

As a student I had more time, work now and have a more "serious" responsibility in life I can't put that much focus on the gym any more or I want. The question is, whats your main goal. I now still benefit from the more intensive time I spent in the gym. Its always more easy to keep a level then to reach the next step. So when you have a decent shape and be fit it don't take that much effort to keep that. I know some older guys that regret that they did quit and got down by life. One day you wake up and are 50 and complete out of shape. Shouldn't be your destination.

Post: #22

I suggest one day on, one day off. It's easy. If that doesn't give you enough time to work on other pursuits, try one day on, two days off. Just make sure you give it all you got on the on days.

Post: #23

Years ago when I started at the gym I was in the same boat.

3 days a week is still good enough to workout and get in decent shape.

If you are planning on giving up on the gym, you probably do not like working out.

For me lifting weights has done so much for me, mentally and physically.

Post: #24

A dip station, a pullup bar, and a kettlebell or T handle should be enough if you don't want to spend so much time at the gym.

Hit one lift hard a day six days a week and you'll be fine. Pound dips for 20 minutes, take a shower, and go about your day.

If you want to progress just get some regular plate weights and a dipping belt. It's like $40 on amazon and no time taken out of your day to get it.

Post: #25

Unless you need to bulk up, 2-3 times a week is good enough. Work on other goals like your career and hobbies.