12 months ago, I cut my time spent exercising in half, and the craziest thing happened.

I went from 208 lbs to 191 lbs.

My body fat went from 17% to sub 11%.

And when I did some calculations, I realized I hardly lost even a pound of muscle.

Which is unheard of when cutting that much weight, but my strength numbers actually confirmed the same.

When I first began my numbers looked like this:

I deadlifted 385x5, squatted 345x7, and benched 205x6.

Nothing crazy, but nothing to blink an eye at either. 

Honestly I expected to barely maintain or even to see a slight decrease in strength (as is actually expected when moving into a calorie deficit over several months)

So I was actually shocked when I compared those to what I did a week ago at the time of writing this 6 months later:

I deadlifted 435x4, squatted 365x7, and benched 215x7.

Reps AND weights have been up across the board on all my major lifts.

Again, unheard of with that big of a drop in body weight and in a consistent calorie deficit.

So it really made me start to question my long held beliefs of working out, and what was actually needed to see transformational results.

Especially for a business owner/new dad/busy individual like the rest of the world out there that doesn’t get paid to spend hours working out each day.

And what I found with myself, and with other clients as I started to experiment with the same principles, is that…

1. You can actually get some seriously good results when you’re strapped on time and only have 2-3 hours a week to spend working out each week
2. I’m starting to believe the results might actually be better for a lot of people, especially those that have higher amounts of stress in their lives
3. This style of training forces you to make the most of your time and make your workouts count

Based on what I’ve learned over the past 12+ months, here are the key things I would prioritize if you only have 2-3 hours each week to commit to exercise:

1: Strength>Conditioning

It’s easy to get addicted to HIIT style training or cardio because it burns calories quickly, leaves you feeling out of breath, and makes you ‘feel’ like you really accomplished something. But while HIIT isn’t useless, strength is king when it comes to maximizing your results when short on time.

Prioritizing getting stronger will give you more long-term benefit than conditioning when it comes to improving metabolism, improving long-term health/longevity, and improving body composition (AKA actually looking jacked and avoiding being soft or skinny).

2: Intensity>Volume

When you’re short on time, you don’t need to superset a dozen exercises and try and fit as much into your training session as possible, instead you need to make each session count by prioritizing intensity. If you are abiding to principle 1 of prioritizing strength over conditioning, this would mean lifting heavy weights and progressing each week.

Focusing on heavier weights and higher intensity over lighter weights at more volume will stimulate muscle growth more effectively.

3: Compound Movements>Isolation Exercises

You don’t need 3 different curl variations when you can accomplish the same thing with some heavy weighted chin ups. Compound exercises allow you to recruit more muscles at once, while also being able to move heavier weight than isolation exercises, making muscle growth more efficient.

When short on time, prioritize compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, pullups/chinups, bench press, shoulder press, and rows.

4: Move More>Train More

Even if you can’t make it to the gym as much as you want, you can always get creative with finding ways to move more throughout the day. This could be taking an extra walk or two, parking further away, doing some bodyweight squats every hour, or installing a pullup bar above your bathroom to knockout a few reps each time you pass it.

Formal exercise isn’t the only way to burn calories, find ways to be more active throughout the day to accomplish a similar thing.

What do you focus on when you only have a limited amount of time to train?