Devlin Brown at the water cooler: You don’t have to live at the gym to gain muscle and strength

Everyone keeps saying you must lift weights to reap the benefits. Unlike gym bunnies, I have a busy life and I can’t spend hours in the gym. Besides, I am really not interested in walking around with muscles. How do you find the time, or do you prioritise gym over work, family and friends?

The bad news is that if you don’t have muscles, you won’t be walking around. That much is obvious, but we do understand what you mean. You don’t want to be “buff” or “swole” or whatever word people use to describe highly muscular people nowadays.

Do I train more than you? By the sounds of it, yes. Do I train more than my friends? No. Every one of my friends spends more time in the gym than I do. The difference is that my sessions are blocked out in my calendar and outside a crisis, that’s me unavailable — my automated calendar booking system won’t even let you look at that hour slot. Do I train for the full hour? Never.

The number-one excuse people give for not going to the gym or doing resistance exercise is time. In my life I have gone through gym partners faster than the government of national unity goes through crises because, as night follows day, they always decide they don’t have the time. Neither do I, which is why I have locked that hour in my calendar and adjusted my day to start earlier. It’s not easy, but it’s an investment I choose to make. 

The good news is that you need far less time than you think you do. You see, the “I don’t have time” mantra is a response to a commonly held belief that you need at least 60-90 minutes a day five or more times a week. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can quite literally get stronger and bigger muscles doing a fraction of the work, in a fraction of the time.

Before you think this is an infomercial selling another fad, let me reassure you that you’re about to read the findings from a study that was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal last month.

According to the study, you need one hour a week split into two 30-minute sessions. One set per exercise, and it makes little difference whether you train to failure or leave one or two reps in the bank, so to speak. As long as you are putting in effort.

The study followed 42 trained individuals — that’s important as “newbies” can gain muscle just by looking at dumbbells. They were split into two groups, one training to failure and the other stopping just short. After two months they were assessed and they all were stronger and had bigger and more powerful muscles.

Their routine? Front lat pull-down, seated cable row, shoulder press, chest press, cable triceps pushdown, supinated dumbbell biceps curl, smith machine squats, leg press and leg extension.

The participants were typical gym goers — this represented a huge reduction in volume and frequency of training. They were used to multiple sets for an hour or more, multiple times a week. Imagine their surprise at the results?

The authors told The Washington Post that they expected the same kind of results in different demographics and age groups. Of course, you can do more and possibly get even better results, but the point is that if your goal is to enjoy the health and wellness benefits of added strength and muscle gain, without pushing to the extremes of physical performance or aesthetics, you can do far less than you think.

I prefer training a few more times in a week, but let’s say you wanted to mimic this study. There are 168 hours in a week, and if you sleep eight hours a night, you are awake for 112 of them. Finding one hour, which is less than 1% of your week, and splitting it into two sessions may be all you need to at least maintain, but quite likely gain, muscle and strength.

There is a caveat, of course. You need to be consistent and your diet needs to be clean, with enough protein. This study was really about finding the minimum effective dose, so to speak. So while you are likely to do better with more, this knowledge should calm your mind: You absolutely don’t need to become a gym bunny.