Most people could spend half as much time in the gym as they do now and would get better results.

A few well-chosen exercises, performed with proper technique, for a few hard sets, will always beat a dozen variations of the same movement, performed with sloppy form and half-hearted intensity.

In addition to improving the quality of your workouts, you can finish them even faster without compromising your gains by making better use of your rest periods, being flexible about exercise order, and planning ahead so you spend less time waiting for equipment or moving between stations.

1. Cut redundant exercises

One of the easiest ways to save time in the gym is to prune redundant exercises from your program.

A good rule of thumb is that if you have more than two to three different exercises for the same muscle group every week, you should delete the rest.

Don’t include exercises in your program simply because they exist. If you get bored with your current selection and want to try something new, you can always swap exercises later. Your chest won’t shrink because you stop doing one particular fly variation, provided you’re using the proper volume and intensity (explained below).

If you’re doing flat and incline barbell bench presses, machine chest presses, close-grip bench presses, dumbbell bench presses, and cable flyes every week, I’d cut the last three.

The flat bench press trains your chest, shoulders, and triceps, while the incline bench press emphasizes your upper chest. The chest press machine makes it easier to reach failure on all of the same muscles without a spotter. Every exercise serves a purpose.

Now, it’s true that some exercises preferentially train certain portions of muscles more than others, and that including a few different variations of the same movement can ensure you train the entire muscle more thoroughly.12

For example, many pressing exercises like the bench press, incline bench press, and triceps pressdown don’t fully train the long head of the triceps.34 Thus, it’s prudent to include at least a few sets of an exercise that does like the cable triceps overhead press.

But you don’t need to "blast" your triceps from every conceivable angle using a dozen different exercises each week. One additional exercise for the long head does the trick.

Time saved: Typically 30–60 minutes per week, often several hours.

2. Do fewer sets (less volume)

How many hard sets you need to do per muscle group per week depends on your goals, preferences, and how hard you train. And by "hard set," I mean a set taken close to failure—the point where you can’t move the weight with proper form despite pushing as hard as you can.

Research shows you can maintain muscle with considerably less training than it took to build it.5 These weekly ranges are useful starting points for different goals:

Hard sets per muscle per week Goal
3–5 Maintaining muscle, including while dieting to lose fat.
5–10 Making progress with less time commitment. An 80/20 approach.
10–20 Maximizing muscle growth. Usually only sustainable for 2–3 muscle groups at a time.

These ranges refer to sets per muscle group, not per exercise. A set of bench press, for example, trains your chest, front delts, and triceps.

Not every muscle is trained equally with each set, which is why it’s best to count fractional sets: one full set for a muscle doing most of the work (chest for bench press) and half a set for the supporting muscle groups (triceps and front delts).

In other words, one exercise often counts toward your weekly sets for several muscles.

If you’re doing more than 20 sets for a single muscle group per week, do less. Most research shows that there’s little if any benefit of doing more than this.67

And even if doing a few extra sets per week helps you grow muscle a little faster, you’ll end up in the same place by going at a slower, steadier pace.

That is, doing more sets doesn’t increase the absolute amount of muscle mass you can build in your lifetime—it only helps you achieve your genetic potential a bit faster. And with a higher risk of injury, burnout, and more time in the gym each week.

Cut unnecessary warm-up sets, too. You generally need only 2–3 before your first working set, and no more than one before most subsequent exercises.

Personally, I don’t warm up again unless the exercise is relatively new to me or trains muscles the first exercise didn’t work.

Time saved: Typically 30–60 minutes per week, often several hours.

3. Train harder

Take most of your sets to within 0–2 reps of failure (0–2 reps in reserve, or RIR).8

To estimate your RIR, ask yourself the following after a hard set: If I absolutely had to, how many more reps could I get? The answer should usually be "one, maybe two."

If you’re stopping your sets earlier than that, you could be making meaningfully faster progress with less time in the gym.

The reason is simple: Mechanical tension is what makes muscles grow, and the best way to increase mechanical tension is to take your sets very close to (or to) failure in a moderate rep range.9

In general, you should take your sets of compound exercises like the squat, bench press, and deadlift to 1–2 reps in reserve, and take your sets of isolation and machine exercises to 0–1 reps in reserve. That is, all the way to failure or just one rep shy of it.

Time saved: This technique generally doesn’t reduce the amount of time you spend in the gym, but it makes the time you do spend in the gym more productive. You get more muscle building per unit of time.

4. Use rest-pause training

Rest-pause training is a resistance training technique that involves doing a hard set (typically to failure), resting briefly, doing another set to near failure with the same weight, resting briefly again, and repeating this process either until you can no longer achieve a certain number of repetitions or for a predetermined number of sets.

Research shows that rest-pause training can build muscle and strength in less time than traditional sets.10

The reason this method works is because it allows you to perform more repetitions close to or at failure in a single workout, which forces your muscle fibers to produce significantly more tension. And as you just learned, more tension = more muscle growth over time. In other words, you’re squeezing more quality, high-tension repetitions into every set.

There are many different styles of rest-pause training to choose from, but I prefer an adapted version of Doggcrapp, a rest-pause method developed by bodybuilder Dante Trudel. It works like this:

Do one hard set of 8–10 reps to failure followed by three mini-sets to failure, with roughly 25–30 seconds rest between each. Then you move on to the next exercise. Generally, your reps for each set will look like this: 8–3–2–1.

Two points about making Doggcrapp training work for you:

  1. Only do it on exercises where it’s safe to take the exercise to failure. This excludes most compound barbell exercises like the squat, bench press, and deadlift. It’s generally better suited for machine exercises like the chest press machine, hack squat, pulldown, or isolation exercises like dumbbell curls, cable side raises, and so on.
  2. Make sure you take all of your sets to true failure. This style of training is not a shortcut—it’s hard.

Time saved: About 5 minutes per exercise, typically around 20–30 minutes per workout.

5. Use supersets strategically

Alternate between two or more exercises that train muscle groups that don’t interfere with one another, resting 30–60 seconds between sets. In this way, you’re resting one muscle while training the other.

For example, do a set of barbell curls, rest a minute, do a set of triceps extensions, rest another minute, and repeat until you’ve finished all your sets.

Here are a few more examples:

  • Chest press machine and chest-supported rows.
  • Leg extensions and leg curls.
  • Calf raises and cable side raises.
  • Cable crunches and weighted hyperextensions.
  • Dumbbell shrugs and lat pulldowns.

A review study conducted by researchers at the University of Granada found that supersets produced similar muscle and strength gains to traditional sets while shortening workouts.11

Personally, I like to rotate between three or more exercises if I can, depending on how busy the gym is and what I’m training. I also recommend trying to program your workouts so you can minimize how far you have to walk between stations in your gym.

For instance, alternate cable curls with cable lateral raises and swap the handle between sets. You’ll spend less time walking between stations and can keep using the same cable.

Time saved: About 3 minutes per pair of exercises. Usually 10–20 minutes per workout.

6. Don’t rest longer than you need to

If you’re new to resistance training, you generally shouldn’t need more than 1–2 minutes rest between sets.

After six months or more of consistent training, you’ll generally need at least 2–3 minutes rest between sets of your hardest compound exercises, such as squats, bench presses, and deadlifts, and 1–2 minutes between sets of isolation exercises.

The reason for this is that as you become stronger, each set generates more fatigue and necessitates longer rest periods.

In general, you want to rest long enough that you can exert your maximum effort on each set, but no more. Some people rush from set to set and underperform because they don’t allow themselves sufficient rest.12 More commonly, though, people spend 5+ minutes between sets scrolling social media, picking their next song, messaging friends, or otherwise bleeding the clock dry.

If this is you, start timing your rest periods. You may be surprised how much time you can get back by simply focusing on your workout.

Time saved: 10–20 minutes, typically.

7. Program your workouts to minimize setup time and avoid rush hour

If you’re doing the leg press and leg press calf raise in the same workout, program the calf raises immediately after the leg presses so you can use the same machine (and probably a similar amount of weight).

If the barbell bench press and lat pulldown machine are right next to each other, and you’re doing both in the same workout, then program them back to back so you don’t have to walk as far between exercises (particularly helpful if you’re supersetting them).

Additionally, try to adjust your program so you aren’t competing with everyone else for the same equipment. For example, in most gyms, most people like to train bench on Monday (hence its nickname, "international bench day"). If you find yourself always waiting for a bench on Mondays, do machine chest press or incline barbell bench press on Monday and bench press on another day.

If your schedule allows, train when your gym is less busy, which is usually midmorning or midafternoon in most gyms. Personally, I like training a little after midday.

Time saved: ~5–10 minutes, or more if you avoid rush hour.

8. Be flexible about exercise order

Do your most important, challenging exercises first and second in your workouts, but be flexible about the exact order you do the rest.13

Say you’re doing an upper body workout that looks like this:

  1. Bench press
  2. Chest-supported row
  3. Incline dumbbell press
  4. Close-grip lat pulldown
  5. Barbell curls
  6. Cable overhead triceps extensions
  7. Cable lateral raises.

If the benches are all taken (it’s a Monday…), do your chest-supported rows first and bench press second instead of waiting for the bench to become free. Avoid doing incline dumbbell presses first, since they fatigue the same muscles. As a rule of thumb, do no more than one exercise for mostly noncompeting muscles before the exercise you typically do first.

After bench and rows, be more flexible. If incline benches and pulldown machines are occupied, do lateral raises or triceps extensions and come back. The exact order matters less once you’ve completed your first two exercises.

Time saved: ~5–10 minutes

Three bonus ways to save time

1. Stop wasting time on your phone

This alone could save you dozens of hours per year of wasted time (and thousands if you apply it to the other 23 hours of the day).

Use your phone to track your sets, reps, weight, and rest periods and listen to music. Respond to the occasional urgent text message. Otherwise, focus on your workout and avoid social media.

Research from scientists at the Federal University of Paraiba also found that social media can reduce the quality of your workouts, too.14

Choose your music before training, too (here’s my playlist). If you’re constantly searching for the perfect song or fiddling with your headphones, try working out without it.

2. Ask how many sets people have left—and ask to work in

If you’re perpetually annoyed at people hogging equipment, here’s what to do: First, ask them how many sets they have left. If it’s more than two, and it’s an exercise that makes changing the weight easy (like a plate-loaded lat pulldown), ask them if you can work in.

You’ll be surprised how many people graciously surrender the equipment on the spot. Many aren’t following a workout plan and don’t particularly care which equipment they use; knowing someone is waiting can be enough of a nudge to move on. And if that doesn’t work, most folks will let you work in.

Don’t be shy. In almost 30 years of lifting, I’ve had exactly one person get mad at me for politely asking if I can work in.

3. Reserve your next station just before you finish

Let’s say you’re doing bench press first followed by the lat pulldown machine, and you often find yourself waiting to use the latter.

Before your last set of bench press, go ahead and drape your towel over the lat pulldown seat or leave your things next to it, finish your set of bench press and quickly unrack the weights, and then immediately start your set of lat pulldowns.

Of course, don’t "reserve" equipment for longer than necessary or hog multiple stations while people are waiting.

Scientific References +