If you're running short on time, but you don't want to shortchange your results, I'm going
to show you what you have to do by trading and workout length for workout intensity to keep the
gains coming in your chest. Guys, we're talking about just 20 minutes to get the job done.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Look, we've all been there short on time,
but still long on desire to not miss yet another workout. But what do you do?
Do you skip it yet again or do you find a way to get the job done? Today, I'm going
to show you and introduce a all-new series here an abbreviated way to train to not compromise the
games that you're after. We're starting right away with chests. If you only had 20 minutes,
could you get the job done? I'm going to take you inside my head to show you the training
strategies that I use to adapt to the short time frame to make sure we keep the gains coming.
Now, I think we should start with two important caveats. The first is going to be,
don't make a habit out of this. I'm giving you a game plan here to allow you to get the job done
without much sacrifice. But if you make a habit of doing this every single time you train, I would
suggest finding time to actually dedicate more time to training so you're not always in a pinch.
Consistency with your workouts and consistency of effort in those workouts is and always will be the
fastest way to get to where you want to be. And that brings me to my second important caveat
here for this video and that is one exercise you will not find in this workout is the Barbell
Bench Press. And no, not because I don't like it. I just named it my number one exercise of
all of our chest exercises. It's the fact that I primarily use this one for building strength.
Using this technique, these short, condensed, 20-minute workouts are not conducive to maximizing
strength. Whether it be the warmup progressions themselves that take a lot of time for some
people, or whether it be the fact that your rest times in between sets are generally going to
be three minutes on the low end of the five minutes. You simply are going to run out of
time before you can even complete, let's say, a five by five. Not to mention, as you'll see here,
we're going to have to drop the weight as we move through this workout. Simply changing plates can
take more time than you have available to you and doing with dumbbells is going to be that
much faster. So, the focus of this video is going beyond hypertrophy and how to continue
to build muscle in those time crunch limited situations. This is how we get it done.
And so the journey into my brain begins here with our first exercise combination,
how we start our workout. And it's with the Cable Crossover directly into the Dumbbell Static Press.
Now, this is a chest focused workout. Yes. I'm going to get into more complexity as we
go down the line here if you guys like this series, so make sure you let me know below.
Because we know that complexity gets increased as we increase the number of muscle groups that are
participating in the workout. Less time we've got more stuff to cover. But it's a little bit easier
when we focus right here. And I use the first exercise that Cable Crossover as a pre-exhaust for
the second. You see, we know that when it comes to chest workouts, the chest oftentimes likes to play
that third fiddle to both the shoulders and the triceps. We don't want that to happen. We have
a limited amount of time, and we want to drive as much tension into the chest as possible. So,
we can do that with this exercise. Now, one of the limitations, this exercise is if you go to heavy,
it becomes a bit of a core challenge. But we don't have to go heavy here. We can lighten up the load
and use this to really, really focus on letting the chest initiate every single contraction.
We know when we head into the second part of this combination, the Static Bench Press, we re going
to get the help we need from the shoulders and the triceps. But right here, pre-exhaust the
chest by using just an exercise that allows you to do this. Fight for every single repetition here,
take it to failure. we know. When we head into the second part of this combination, the static bench
press, we're going to get the help we need from the shoulders and the triceps. But right here,
pre-exhaust the chest by using just an exercise that allows you to do this fight for every
single repetition here, take it to failure. From there we go right into that second half of
the combination here, the Dumbbell Static Press, which is something I got from that one-legged
monster, Casey Mitchell and it's a great way to intensify the traditional Dumbbell Bench Press.
And remember, if we're trading in that time, we have to up the intensity, this for sure will do
the job. And the best part about this is I don't have to necessarily go right into light weights
because I had the pre-exhaust before this. I can still use relatively heavy weights,
but make sure that I'm accommodating for those by lowering the repetitions
but still keeping the tension high. The Static Press does that because as you
can see here, I'm maintaining that high tension position on every single rep. Whether I'm pressing
or holding there's still a lot of tension here. And the slow speed of every repetition is actually
pretty forgiving on those rusty shoulders, the guys that need a lot of warm up, because the slow
pace allows you to focus one side at a time. Not to mention the pre-exhaust before this did have a
bit of a warmup effect on getting ready to do this second half. And so, it takes 60 rest after that
combination with the goal being to perform three of them to form failure, the first half with a
10 to 12 reps range on the crossover and about five repetitions each on the Static Press.
That would bring us to a combination that leads to 6:15 of total elapsed workout time by the time
this is done. Now, a note on that rest it s 60 seconds. I understand, guys, it's a compromise.
Ideally, I'd like to get at least 90 seconds to 120. But the way we account for that,
if we don't focus so much on maintaining the weight that we started with.
You can see here in the second set of Static Press, I'm okay with dropping the weight down.
Remember, your muscles don't understand numbers, they don't read they just feel,
and they feel tension. If you can keep the tension high by forgetting about the number of reps and
instead of making each one of those reps count, that is how you're going to continue to ensure
the intensity is high enough to drive the gains you're looking for in this workout.
And that brings us right into our second exercise of this workout. Again, the clock is ticking,
we go right there to the Incline Dumbbell Bench Press. Now for you guys there training at the gym,
you're still on the same bench you were just using. Just prop it up here, all importantly
to that 30-degree angle, not the 60 degree. If you don't understand why you might want to check out
my chest exercises, ranked video, where we tell you about the all-important difference. But for
here, I simply grab this set of dumbbells that's still on the heavier side for me,
accounting for the mounting fatigue here. I'm not trying to just sacrifice and go all
the way down to lightweights where I'm turning this into simply a metabolic burnout workout.
You want to push and drive muscular growth, you're going to have to push yourself hard. Here,
I m going into the Dumbbell Incline Bench Press. I love this, number as a perfect complement to
the fact that we did a flat bench exercise first and we have to hit the upper chest. You can see
this does a tremendous job taking the dumbbells from more of a low position to a high position.
The key here is, again, pushing myself all the way to failure, whatever that is, raging for
about 10 reps per set. But accepting the fact that if I don't get it, it's really all about pushing
yourself every set to the end point to that failure until you can't get another good form rep.
And again, three sets to form failure here with the rest time being 60 seconds once again in
between sets. Accepting the fact that you have to drop that weight down further and further, that s
okay, remember tension. So, the idea being if it took me 35 to 40 seconds to do each one of those
sets when we account for the rest time and the three individual sets here, we've now got a total
elapsed workout time of 11:15. Times ticking, but we're looking pretty good right now.
Which brings us to our third exercise, which is actually another combination of a Bodyweight
Dip right into a Band Assisted Dip. Three sets again to form failure of that combination. So,
as you can see here, I grab the band and I walk my way over to the dip station. I hang it on the dip
handle, and I get ready to do my Bodyweight Dips. Now, my advice here is, I'm already fatigued.
If you can do 12 or less dips bodyweight, then just stick with the bodyweight. If you're doing
15, 16, 20 of these and I would start with weight and drop down to a bodyweight. But
for me and for most people, we're probably going to be able to start with bodyweight
only and then drop down to the assisted dip. The key here is we're doing three of these in a
drop step fashion instead of doing more sets of dips and having to rest more in between sets.
Even if we're doing just 60, there's more inter set rest periods, which is just simply going to
add more and more time to your workout. We don't have time. So I go right from this exercise,
taking it to form failure. I simply take that dip band put it up on both handles, push down,
place my knees inside and there you go, I've got an Assisted Dip without much rest in between.
I'm not looking for a whole hell of a lot of reps in the second half here, but once again,
trying to push myself to and through failure, upping the intensity. Yet another technique
with this drop set to just push myself beyond what I'm comfortable with.
This is how we're going to drive these gains when time isn't on our side. Once again, push until I
can't do any more. I take my one-minute rest in between sets. Again, a 60 second total there,
about 30 seconds on each half there. Now we're up to 17:15 for our total elapsed workout time. We
still got time left. We got one more thing we can do. In that case, I switched to my last exercise,
which is the High to Low Banded Crossover. And for this, the workout has already conveniently
brought me to my knees with how brutal it's been. I'm in the perfect position to do this exercise.
I'm going from that high to low position, getting more of that lower chest. But more importantly,
the all-important adduction that we haven't touched since the first exercise when we did
the cable crossover as a pre-exhaust. And here my goal is simply just to seesaw back and forth
between my left arm and my right arm. This takes about 30 seconds or so for me to just burn out
completely. I turn right into the second set, there's no rest. The rest of my right arm is
when I'm working my left arm and the rest of my left arm is when I'm working my right arm.
But the fact is, when we seesaw back and forth there about 30 seconds per side
for three total sets, we've got three additional minutes of work added to the 17:15 for a total
elapsed workout time of 20:15. Now look, don't hold me to the exact time, it might take you
19:45 or 20:45. The fact is it's a damn fast workout an it's going to get you to the gains
you're looking for without compromise. And so just like that, in the nick of time
we get the work done. No, it wasn't easy, but you guys know a life lesson here anything worth
having doesn't come easy and you can't get something for nothing. If you want to go fast,
you're going to have to go hard. Trade in some of that workout length for
intensity and this is how you get it done. If you felt a little helpful and you want me to
cover more muscle groups, make sure you leave your thumbs up below. If you want to cover more splits,
do the same thing. If you're looking for programs guys, where we put the science
into every selection we make, you can find them over at athleanx.com. In the meantime,
if you haven't already done so, make sure you subscribe and turn on your notifications,
so you never miss a new video when we put out. All right guys see you soon.