The Importance of Workout Intensity

I’ve never been someone for spending too much time in the gym. I think there’s an overreliance on intra-workout rest and being “optimal” and hitting “every angle of the muscle”. My workouts nowadays consist of 30-45 minutes working as intensely as I can, taking less than a minute between sets.

This doesn’t mean that I slack off on the weight I’m using to make it easier, it usually just results in the weight tapering off towards the end of my workout and a reduction in the number of exercises I do.

To combat the tapering off of weight used due to fatigue, I frontload my strength work at the start of the session. For example, on a back day I always start with heavy barbell rows and pull-ups and move towards exercises such as dumbbell reverse flies (a lot better than the machine!!) or some form of lat-focused pull down. I use these later exercises to get the final amount out of the muscle after heavily fatiguing them at the start of the session.

I’ve tried a lot of different styles of training throughout the years and varied my workouts consistently but no matter the goal I find this works the best. For example, if you’re an athlete focused on explosive training – get the big work done first (cleans, jumps, heavy squats, etc.) but always keep the intensity high.

You see a lot of people leaving the gym not sweating because they spend 2 hours in there with a lot of rest time, cut the length of the session down and just put in some hard work for a shorter time and the results will come.

Taking Examples from Professionals

Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates

I’ve a couple of examples of people who would be good to focus on from their physical results. I understand that some of these examples are of people who performance-enhancing drugs but this doesn’t take away from the hard work these individuals have put in and the results of their training philosophies, if you took PEDs all year round and sat on the couch, you’d look like someone who sits on the couch.

In the bodybuilding world there are two examples of this who come to mind, Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates.

1 Mike Mentzer - Source: Wikipedia

2 Dorian Yates - Source: Muscle and Fitness

Both of these individuals had styles pertaining to that of what I described above. The commonalities between their styles of training were lower reps (6-8 rep range) with heavier weights for 45mins - 1hour a day four times a week. These sessions involved low set numbers per muscle group but training to, or close to, failure every time. For example, a leg session might include four sets targeting quads, but it could be two sets of heavy squats and two sets of leg extensions before moving onto hamstrings, calves, or glutes.

I definitely agree with the training to failure and only having the need for potentially two sets of an exercise. A lot of the time I find myself training biceps, for example, and after 2 sets I feel I’ve gotten the most I can out of the exercise and then move on.

While I think only training four times a week is low (from an overall health perspective) I agree with the rest of their philosophy and think training for over 1.5 hours (at the most) is futile.

You can definitely train more than once a day; I played rugby at an international level, and we often did 2+ sessions a day but one would be a gym session and then an on-pitch session later. Nowadays I sometimes do a gym session in the morning and a run in the evening. Or people who train for triathlons/iron mans do a cycle and then a swim. But it’s not continuous exercise in the same domain. Especially from a muscle-building point-of-view I think 45 mins – 1 hour is ideal.

Tom Haviland

Another example of someone who adopts a shorter training time is Tom Haviland. Despite not showing his face in recent years, Tom has recently risen to large fame after mentions on The Joe Rogan Experience and other social media videos, I’ve been following Tom for a few years now and love the way he trains.

3 Source: Tom Haviland

From following Tom, he completes a ruck (walk while carrying weights) for 90 minutes every morning while carrying 90lbs (~40kg). He has an exceptionally large frame at 6’8 and currently weighing almost 140kg (but has weighed close to 160kg in the past) and has showed some freakish displays of strength on his Instagram account.

A lot of Tom’s sessions involve strength work and exercises that might be more applicable to experienced lifters, so I won’t delve into the specific exercises that he carries out, but he completes two weights sessions every day alongside his morning ruck.

These weight sessions usually only involve about four exercises in the morning with a larger focus on heavy weight in the morning followed by a “higher frequency” evening session which is more intense. However, he states that the evening sessions only take him about 25 minutes to complete, often consisting of one set of each exercise. In total, with the low exercise number in the morning and the short duration of the evening session I can’t imagine his exercise routine is longer than 1.5 hours per day.

Tom is more of a unique example in terms of the way he lifts and how freakish he is but his principles for lifting certainly align with what I’ve spoken about previously.

To conclude

I won’t summarise too much of what I’ve said to avoid repeating myself, but the value in completing high intensity workouts can’t be understated. Again, I think it’s something that might be lost in the “fitness sphere” as I think some people think to improve themselves, they need to fit in as much as they can.

As the old adage goes:

Less is More.

Like always, if anyone has any questions, I’m happy to answer.

Jack.