Unpopular Opinion: 90% of Gym-Goers Are Wasting Their Time (Fix This!)

Most people in the gym are wasting their time. Not because they lack motivation—but because they’re doing the wrong things: too much rest, not enough intensity, and exercises that don’t actually move the needle. If you’re putting in the effort but not seeing results, this episode is for you.

In today’s episode, Aaron Shaw, founder of HealthSpan PhysioCoaching, dives into:

🔥 The biggest time-wasters in the gym (and how to avoid them).

🏋️‍♂️ The top exercises that actually matter for strength, muscle, and longevity.

⚡ Why 45-minute workouts can outperform 90-minute sessions when done right.

💡 How to train with intent and intensity (without spending hours in the gym).

🚀 The three most effective exercises if you’re short on time but want results.

If you want to maximize your training and get stronger, leaner, and healthier without wasting time, this episode will change the way you approach the gym.

📲 Follow Aaron Shaw for More Healthspan Coaching Tips

#StrengthTraining #GymMistakes #WorkoutEfficiency #FitnessOver40 #TimeWasting #BuildMuscle #TrainSmarter #LongevityFitness

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Transcript

Here's an unpopular opinion. 90 % of gym growers are wasting their time. Not for lack of intention, but it's not enough intensity, too much rest, doing far too many exercises that don't actually move the needle to improve your physical health. So if you're in the gym and you're spending 45 minutes, an hour, or longer than an hour in the gym, and you're not seeing big results, you're doing something wrong.

What I want to unpack in this episode is a way to make sure you are more efficient with your time and you really get results for your effort. think it's frustrating to see. It's really kind of heartbreaking to see people in the gym going through the motions and it's just that going through the motions and it's not actually getting the results you want. So I get it. Why people get burned out. They feel like it's not working for me. I try to exercise. Nothing really changes.

But if you're going to the gym and you find that you've been going to the gym for weeks or months and months and months, and you're lifting the exact same way, doing the exact same thing, you stagnated. And if you want to extend your healthspan, extend your lifespan, we need to do something that's going to move the needle. That's going to challenge your body to change and adapt. And that's what we're going to unpack today. My name is Aaron Shaw. I'm from healthspan, physio coaching. I am a full-time coach and I talk about all things related to healthspan. Healthspan is the length of time.

within our lifespan that we are healthy, active, vibrant, and getting a return on our investment for our exercises. I focus on really five pillars of healthspan. These are exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional wellbeing, and preventative care. My typical client is middle-aged or older. And if I'm also middle-aged and I can tell you that we all have our bumps and bruises and past surgeries and all sorts of aches and pains and

life changes that make it difficult to be healthy. So it does take some intention. takes purpose. takes goals. It takes a plan, discipline, habits, all of these things that I work with my clients on and I work with myself on. So I am exhibit a, and I have the same challenges that everybody else does. Busy life, trying to get motivated to do things that I know I should do, but are hard to follow through with. And certainly going to the gym and getting

All the benefits of strength training is one of those things. The benefits of strength training, the list is vast. And I would say if there's one thing that has the greatest impact on your quality of life now and your quality of life in the future, it is resistance training. is strength training. is not going for walks. It is not doing yoga. You know, it's even more than just eating a balanced diet, which all those things are great and certainly do those things, but

The biggest return on investment is going to be a consistent resistance training exercise, resistance training routine that stimulates your body consistently that says, I want to have a greater capacity. want to injury proof my body as much as possible. want to recover from injuries as quickly as possible. want to get over, you know, illnesses quicker. want to have a heightened immune system. want to have a solid metabolic system that can

burn fat and manage blood sugar. All of these things come from resistance training, but I spend a fair amount of time in the gym and I have certainly through the past many, many decades of my career. And I see people doing things well intentioned, but nothing that's really going to make a difference. My background is I'm an occupational therapist, strength and conditioning specialist. And I've spent almost 30 years in the health and fitness space, both in the rehab clinics. I've started a rehab.

practice and in the strength and conditioning space. So performance training and many of us are all of us want to live long, healthy, vibrant lives. And it is trying to do the right thing with little time, a little bit of time that we have that we need to make sure that we're doing the right things. I am a sucker for short and sweet workouts that are effective, that have results and

I kind of pride myself in being able to get in and out of the gym in around 45 minutes or so, a couple of days a week, typically three days a week, maybe four at the most. And that's it. And I see people in there that are kind of noodling around, chit chatting, picking up some weights here and there, nothing really heavy, doesn't look like they're doing anything that's really strenuous. And I think the difference between what my approach is versus what some other people's approach is, is that I don't have all day. So I have to be super concise.

And that's what we're to go over today. So I want to start with talking about really listening at the biggest time wasters in the gym. And we're going to work our way through some things that may sound fairly familiar to you, but we're going to get to the point where we're going to talk about how do you get more results and basically half the time. So we're going to cut to the chase. This is going to cut through the fads. There isn't really any magic behind this. It's just a matter of being efficient, being efficient with how you approach going to the gym.

to get the results that you want. And I'll even finish with really top, I'd say the top three exercises out of an infinite number you can choose from. But I'm going to give you three exercises that if you go to the gym, you're short on time and you think, Hey, I get it. I've only got 25, maybe 30 minutes. I'm going to do three exercises. I'm going to tell you what those three exercises should be. But from the top, let's start thinking about what are some common

errors in going to the gym that could, minimize your return on your investment or minimize your return on your energy. One is taking too much rest time between sets. So if you are taking three minutes or more in between sets,

there is a chance that you are resting longer than you need to. But here's a caveat.

resting three minutes or more is perfectly correct. And, and it's actually advised if you are doing high resistance strength training. So if you are lifting a resistance or a weight that is so difficult that you can only do three, four, five, maybe six repetitions, and you can't do more because it is so heavy, then you should be resting three or more minutes. So that is

That's perfectly fine in the, those cases. But what I see oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes people will do, give an example, a bicep curl and they're doing a bicep curl. do 10 repetitions, 12 repetitions, keep kind of keep plugging away until they get tired. put the weight down and then it's time to scroll on the phone for 15 minutes or even five minutes. And that is not aligned with the exercise that they're doing. So if you find that you're.

socializing or you're scrolling social media when you're, when you're on the phone and you don't have a real strategy. I'm like, well, how much time am I, how much time should I be resting? If you are doing heavy lifting, it's okay to wait to rest a certain muscle group for three or more minutes. If you're doing 10 or 12 repetitions of everything, you don't need that long of a rest. Wait 30 seconds, 60 seconds. The goal here with exercise is to

really fatigue the muscles to really, you know, burn out the muscles, if you will. And if you are rest resting so long, when you're doing 12 repetitions, it's too long. want to keep a certain load, certain, certain stress to some of these muscles. When you're doing strength training in that repetition range. Second thing people are doing, perhaps focusing on the wrong exercises.

So if you are short on time, and again, this is kind of the main point here. This is assuming that you don't have all day to be in the gym. If you are short on time, you want to focus on compound exercises. You want to focus on exercises that have multiple benefits. So this would be the difference between, let's say doing a, isolated movement, like a bicep curl, which, you know, for the most part, it'll work your bicep. It'll do some other things, depending on if you're on a machine, if you're on a machine doing a bicep curl.

All you're doing is stimulating your bicep and it is good for your bicep. It would be better if you were standing up to do it. So at least your core would have to engage a little bit. It would be even better yet. If you did a pull-up or a modified pull-up, if you need one of those machines to kind of help you up or, or one of those elastic bands that will help help you up where you're still activating your bicep, but now you're really activating your shoulders and your core.

and you're getting much more return on your investment. So instead of focusing on single movements like calf raises or ab machines, think of exercises that really activate the whole body. A big one, probably like the gold standard would be a squat where either you're putting a bar on your shoulders or you're holding onto dumbbells, which is also perfectly fine, or you're in a Smith machine that has the bar, but you can kind of rack it up for safety. Doing a squat is

A compound movement gets hips, quads, hamstrings, core, back, activates a bunch of muscles, really gets your heart rate going. And if you are short on time, skip the calf raises and bicep curls or even the leg extension machine, hit the squat. Big return on your investment. So think about compound exercises, squats, lunges. You can do forward lunges. You can do reverse lunges.

Doing push-ups, again, core is activated and chest and shoulders and tricep. These exercises are high ROI. Get a big return on your investment for a limited amount of time. So this is where people typically message me and say, yeah, but you can't really burn the triceps out doing push-ups, so I have to do a tricep extension and these other exercises. Sure, go ahead and do those if you have the time.

And if you have all day to exercise and a bunch of motivation, you could spend hours in the gym. That is perfectly fine. Knock yourself out. So that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you are a busy person and you have too many other obligations and maybe you don't even have the motivation to be in the gym for two hours, I don't have the motivation to do that. Then picking fewer exercises, making sure you get the big bang for the buck. That's key.

The third thing that I see is people are overloading cardio as opposed to strength training. This is the treadmill trap. And I think about this every single time I travel and go to a hotel gym and there are four, five, six, eight, 10 treadmills lined up or ellipticals or some sort of cardio machine. And they have, you know, a paltry supply of dumbbells. It is easier and

And easier to understand really kind of hopping on a treadmill, going for a brisk walk, doing a light jog. Most people I see are kind of doing the brisk walk kind of thing or on a stationary bike and then the brisk walk or a bike where there's kind of the seated bike cycling, kind of the recumbent bike and they're chit chatting and they're talking and that's okay. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. That would be considered probably, you know, maybe zone two, maybe some, maybe getting some,

you know, the metabolic benefit of burning some fat, but it is not hitting what really will again, move the needle for our overall physical health and our physical capacity. What we need is resistance training, or if you are a cardio cardiac lover, and I say this literally today where I just got off my stationary bike. So I'm a cardiac lover, long time cyclists and always will be. So

There's certainly no hate when I say like hop on a treadmill or stationary bike, but if you were going to, if that is going to be your, one of your primary modes of exercise, you have to integrate high intensity interval training. You have to do that. If you are unsure what high intensity interval training is or what it really feels like, then you've probably never done it because I can tell you, I don't know any other word to say other than it really sucks.

doing high intensity interval training is very uncomfortable. It's typically for short, shorter period of time, but it is the best way to improve your VO2. the volume of oxygen that we can, your body can utilize at any one time. So to increase your VO2, which is a great marker of healthspan and longevity, we have to dig deep. And so if you're going to be on a treadmill, let's say,

and you're doing your walk, you're doing your jog and you're breaking a sweat, you're kind of warmed up. The challenge would be this. If again, this is assuming you are just committed to being a tread person who like does almost all of your work on a, on a, exercise on a treadmill. The challenge is this crank up that resistance that are that speed of the treadmill to a point that you can only sustain that pace for four minutes.

a steady pace for four minutes. So that doesn't mean go out and sprint for 30 seconds and then like turn down the dial because you can't take any more. But set it at a pace that the first minute, not too bad. The second minute, feeling it pretty good. Third minute is getting uncomfortable. And the fourth minute sucks. The fourth minute, you are sucking wind, but you're doing it at a steady, consistent, hard pace. After that fourth minute,

shut it down, go back down to a walking pace for four more, for four minutes. You can get away with doing a lot of treadmill work if you integrate that type of interval training to boost your VO2. But again, the point here is if you are going to the gym for 45 minutes and you kind of noodle on the treadmill or do a little bike and chit chat and scrolling social media or kind of just watching TV, you are either you have all the time in the world, which more power to you if you do.

Or that's just a big warmup and then you're going to go do something that's actually productive. But if you think that that alone is going to really extend your healthspan, you're mistaken.

The fourth point I want to make is doing not choosing the right resistance, not choosing the right intensity with the exercises you're doing with strength training. just as I explained the, you know, four minutes of high intensity where, again, if you, if you've really run a race, if you're a runner, if you've run a five K or 10 K or half marathon or something, or if you've lifted really heavy things, you know, what, you know what this

level of challenges, what this discomfort is. And oftentimes in the gym, see people putting weights away, putting the weights down after they've done a set. And frankly, they look pretty comfortable. You know, they're again, gazing up at the TV while doing a bicep curl or a shoulder press. And then it seems that they just sort of counted out and they get to number 10, they just sort of set the weight down. And it looks like they're fairly comfortable. They're probably not stimulating.

their body in a way to have physiological change. So what this means is that they are under loading, not pushing hard enough to stimulate physiological changes in their muscles and tendons and nervous system. So without getting too deep into the overall number of sets or reps that somebody should be doing, because it's different if somebody is brand new to strength training or resistance training, or if they're on a hypertrophy phase trying to kind of

build a little bit of size to their muscles or if they are trying to just purely gain strength or gain power for that matter, those are all have different dosing. But generally speaking, when you are, let's use a shoulder press as the example, when you are doing a shoulder press, so you're standing up, lifting dumbbell up overhead, great exercise to do if your goal is to do, let's say 10 repetitions.

very standard. So you're do 10 repetitions. you're gonna pick a way that the first repetition, probably not a big deal. The fifth repetition, kind of challenging. The eighth repetition, now you're up and like, this is pretty damn hard. By repetition 10, if that was your plan to do 10 repetitions, that 10th repetition, even the ninth repetition really sucks. Like it is just super hard.

Your form is still good. So never, ever sacrifice form to finish, you know, the motion of a, of an exercise, but that last repetition should be very hard, very uncomfortable, kind of hating it. And then having the sensation that you could probably do one more repetition, maybe even two more repetitions, but you know that the, your form may start to fade a little bit. You want to cut it before your form fades.

but have that sensation like, man, I'm not sure if I could do another one or two. And so once you're at that point, you are telling your body, whatever capacity I have now, I need more. Whatever durability I have now, I need more. Whatever strength and integrity I have in my tendons, I need a little bit more. You have to cross over into that discomfort zone in order to get those changes to happen. So.

Be clear when you are doing resistance training that the last rep of whatever it is needs to be really hard. So whether you're planning on doing five repetitions, which would be strength training, like straight up legitimate strength training, that last repetition should be really hard, successful in completing it, but be very hard. If your goal is to build a little bit more hypertrophy, let's say, and you're going to do 10 or 12 repetitions. Great. That's your plan.

If that's part of your training phase that you're in, do 10 or 12 repetitions. But that 10th repetition or 12th repetition needs to be equally very, very hard. If it is not too bad, then you're not really changing anything. And so you're, you may be maintaining, which is perfectly fine to do as long as you're doing it with that intention, with that plan to maintain what you have, then that's fine.

but don't be under the illusion that if you put down the weight and feel like, yeah, that wasn't too bad. I could probably could have done five or six more if I really wanted to. Well, that's fine. You're not actually getting any stronger. You're not really changing anything. You're utilizing what you have, but you're not changing anything. So let's talk about shift here into how to get more results in less time. And as I said before, this is kind of my forte. My coaching clients are,

probably like you listeners don't have all day. And certainly even if I have time or if they have time, you know, it's hard to be motivated to do big massive sessions in the gym. there are, there's a certainly a cross section of people that can spend hours and hours and hours in the gym. And there's a, the culture and the community of that, which is awesome. And depending upon a, an athlete's

training regime, you could argue why that would be a wise thing to do because of very specific dosing plans and rest periods and fueling, nutrition and hydration plans that yeah, there are certain elite level, high level athletes that takes this kind of like a job basically. There's a time and place for that. This specifically, I'm talking to mere mortals who are working, busy, family.

Probably a moderate amount of stress in life. and if you're like me, I struggle to be motivated and I managed to stay consistent in doing things because I compress time to get results that are kind of out of proportion to the amount of time I put into things. And if that piques interests this parts for you. So what we need to focus on again is first thing, high yield movements, high yield exercises.

When you go into the gym in your mind, first and foremost, think squats, deadlifts, think shoulder presses, think rows. So whether that's like a bend over row or using like a cable machine to do a row and heavy carries. as if, so heavy carry would be like, like a farmer's carry. imagine you're carrying two super heavy suitcases and whatever heavy is to you.

But you want to pick in this case, you know, if you were doing a farmer's carry, again, you're going to pick a weight that is you can pick up and you can hold these dumbbells, for example. And I do this in the gym fairly frequently and I will pick up these dumbbells that there's no way on earth. could ever curl absolutely not ever, ever like do a proper bicep curl, but I can pick them up and just sort of hold them by my side. And I slowly walk around the room in the gym.

And I go right back and I put the weights down. And by the time I put the weights down, I'm huffing and puffing and my forearms are working hard and my, my breathing, my respiration is increased. My heart rate has increased and literally all I've done, I'll air quote, all I've done is done a carry, but it is great. Returning your investment activates every part of your body. In to do these heavy carries, it will activate every part of your body.

And so you're getting a lot of return on your investments. You're getting, these are what we call high yield movements.

The second thing I would add here would be training with intent and intensity, which I touched on. this is leaving the gym, feeling like you've really pushed yourself like really like you're feeling kind of pooped out. You're feeling like, man, I kind of kicked my own butt, right? So if you leave the gym and when you sit in the car and you think, man, that was kind of brutal, sweet. You just.

asked your body to adapt. If on the other hand, you sit in the car, don't think anything about it. It feels the same as when you first sat in the car to go to the gym. You probably didn't ask your body to do much of anything. So we want to think about our rate of perceived exertion, our RPE. And if you could do some check ins during your session, that would be a great way to remind yourself like, is this hard enough?

Am I, or is it too hard perhaps? But to go back to the idea of what those last two repetitions should feel like when you are doing any sort of resistance training, that really hard effort on a scale of zero to 10, if zero is you're laying in bed when you first wake up, you feel no effort whatsoever. 10 out of 10 on the other hand is you're kind of borderline going to hurt yourself, which we don't want your intensity, your RPE, your rate of perceived exertion.

on those last at least the last couple of repetitions should be about an eight, at least a seven, but a seven to an eight out of 10. Very, very hard, very hard. In fact, if you are at all self-conscious about making weird faces and grunting and groaning, that's where you want to be. You want to be at that point where your world just shuts down and you're just trying to push that weight or pull that weight for like one or two repetitions.

And then when you're done, you're like, holy crap, that was super hard. That's the sweet spot. So think seven to eight out of 10, as far as your rate of perceived exertion, if it's less than that, you may not be lifting heavy enough. may not be lifting heavy enough to actually stimulate change. And if you're, if you're in the gym and you're taking time and you're doing things that are not stimulating physiological change, that's okay. But don't call it working out. You can call it social time. could, it could be a.

a mental break for you, which again, a hundred percent support that. It's just going to go to the gym to get away from the office or get away from the family. It's your special time and you're going to just go move some weight around and do some stuff. Maybe break a little sweat with no real, you know, scheme of what you're doing. And it just feels emotionally good for you. Awesome. Do that. That's perfectly great. But if that is how you approach the gym and how you approach exercise, do not expect to get the results that you could otherwise be getting.

The fourth thing that you can do to again, compress time, if you will, would be to have a clear plan before you walk into the gym. So stop wandering around aimlessly and just sort of looking around and scooping around like what's the next machine that's open or what am I going to do today? And maybe I'll do upper body day or I'll do a push day or a pull day. You want to walk into the gym with you are on a mission and this is where having

either a personal trainer or having a coach can come in handy. If you're not really sure how to, how to create a plan on your own, you can, you know, hire, hire somebody basically to create the plan for you, but it is super empowering to walk into the gym and I will program myself. So it's really, it's nice to have not to decide, you don't have to think, walk into the gym and think like, what am going to do today? Because I don't have time to screw around. don't have time to wander around and

When I go to the gym, I can pop up on my phone because I've already documented what my plan is for the day. And it's just, it's no decision. Just hit the next thing, hit the next thing, hit the next thing. And I can hit it all with my plan, tick all the boxes, make sure my RPE is on point. My rest is appropriate for what I'm doing and I'm done. So if you happen to be the type of person who's exercising when you're in the gym and you're kind of just being opportunistic on what's around or what's available.

Again, is it the end of the world? No. mean, you get, everybody gets an A just for going to the gym and trying to do stuff. But let's assume that you're not getting the results that you want or you're spending, or maybe you are getting the results that you want, but it's just taking a hell of a lot of time. And you're thinking, man, I just, don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't have time. So maybe you skip a session here or there because it takes so long. Do not skip sessions, compress your time, go in with a plan, be focused.

knock through the couple of exercises and be done. So a typical, typical day for most of my coaching clients will be in myself would be to have two main exercises in a workout and a couple, two to four other exercises that would be kind of what we would call accessory. So they, they really kind of support the two primary exercises. For example,

I this was probably two or three days ago now, but I went to the gym and my pull, the exercise I was focusing on most for my upper body, if you will, was pull-ups. So I did pull-ups and then when I was resting from doing pull-ups, I did deadlifts. So those are my two main focus, the two main things I was focusing on. So I could, and that's called a superset. So I could do

My pull ups rests from, as I'm resting from my pull ups, could pick up the bar, do a deadlift while my hamstrings and glutes are resting. I can go back and do some pull ups. And those are the two main exercises of my workout. And then once I was done with it, with all those sets, of course, I've just spent probably 50 % of my energy at least on those just two exercises. Hit the main muscle groups.

Got those are nice compound movements, which I spoke about a few minutes ago. And then from that point on it's like, okay, how can I support those? Are there other things I can kind of do that will stimulate those same muscles to continue to adapt? But aren't quite as challenging as, the pull ups and the dead lifts. So of course I could do, I can't remember exactly what I did down that I say this, but since something that would be similar to doing a pull up would be a row.

So can do a bent row of the dumbbell. And another thing you could do for hips would be some form of lunges or glute bridges after doing those two primary exercises. So there are ways to, get the most return on your investment of the time that you have by exercise selection, making sure you're hitting like the compound high value exercises first.

You still got fuel in the tank after doing those do a few other accessory ones, which will help support getting you a little bit more kind of the icing on top, if you will, then you're good to go. But let's go over three exercises. If I, if I had to kind of painted myself into a corner by doing this, but if I had to say to somebody who said, Hey, I don't have much time. I'm only going to do three or four exercises at the gym. What would they be? So

first thing I'd want to do is really stimulate the lower body. So when I think of return on the investment, I think of what are some big muscles that we could activate fatigue, challenge, load up that once we, I know that once we really stimulate those muscles, then we get a big physiological adaptation. get big metabolic change and a great carryover for

all sorts of performance and again, healthspan, longevity, functional performance. So I would think of doing this is for somebody who's new to training perhaps. I would get a trap bar and that is a bar that you the not just typically like one in most gyms unless you go to like a really like a true proper like typically not a big box gym, but most gyms will have a trap bar.

And it is a bar that is basically looks like a, has like a diamond in the middle of it with a weights would go on the end as opposed to just a flat straight bar. But I would get a trap bar, load up some weight on it. So it's sitting on the floor and you step inside this bar where this little diamond is in the middle and pick it up using either a deadlift or a squat technique. like, because this is a podcast, I can't really kind of fine tune and demonstrate what this looks like, but

It is, it is picking up a heavy weight up and down. It's like a squatting motion. is a full body power workout, core stability, functional strength. mean, anything that is going from like a seated type position to a standing position with resistance is great. is activates pretty much every muscle in your body to some extent. If it's heavy enough, which we talked about, if there's enough intensity, enough resistance. So

The first exercise I would say is do a trap bar squat. The second exercise for your three exercises, cause you don't have much time, I would say do a pull-up and there's, I would say the vast majority of people can't do a pull-up, but so I would do a pull-up motion. So a lot of gyms have the pull-up assist machine. So I would use that or I would use, say some thick,

exercise bands that you can kind of strap around the pull-up bar and it's kind of step your foot in or your knee and to kind of help give you a little bit of a boost. And the reason why people kind of shy away from doing this. this, I say that just cause I've asked a lot of people, lot of my clients about doing that, even people who exercise and lift weights pretty frequently stay away from this sort of pull-up concept because it's really hard and not too many people can do it. And nothing's worse than, than

kind of starting from scratch and grabbing onto a bar and you're kind of dangling from the bar. And if somebody's like, Hey, try to do a pull-up. And you realize I can't even bend my elbows. Like I'm just like hanging on a bar here, like a monkey bar, like a kid. It's very, very hard, which is why it's super beneficial once you can, once you have the capacity to, actually do a pull-up or even part of a pull-up, but leverage the technology that we have.

if you want to call like an elastic band technology, but leverage the tools that can help you be successful in doing this to enable you to go from a hanging position to a pull up to get your chin up over a bar. So use a machine that can help you do that. Use a band that can help you do that. Great, great effective exercise. And when I do, a lot of pull ups or if I could really do a nice pull up session, not only am I lats, my

You know, muscles in my, my back really activated. My biceps is my biceps are activated. My forearms are activated in my abs. know when I've done a really good pull-up workout because my abs are feeling it the next day. So it's a full body engagement pretty much, or at least an upper body engagement. The third exercise would be keeping it simple. mentioned this a farmer's carry. So this is super simple, super low tech.

It is basically pick up a heavy dumbbell in each hand, a really heavy dumbbell in each hand and walk. See if you can walk for 30 seconds, no more than a minute. If you can kind of pick up two dumbbells and walk around for a minute or two and chitchat with people, it's not heavy enough. You want to pick something up that is really, really heavy. And there is, as a little side note, there is, there has been research that shows that people who have

higher grip strength tend to live longer. The caveat with that is the people who tend to have higher grip strength is really kind of an indicator of an active life. It's an indicator of somebody who's doing something that is strength training. Whether it's functional because they live on a farm or they do a bunch of gardening or you do a bunch of manual labor so their hands stay strong, then great.

but it's not because somebody is sitting on the couch watching Netflix with a little hand exercise or squeezing just for the sake of having strong, strong grip. People live longer with a strong grip because that, that indicates that they've lived an act, they're living an active life. So doing these farmers carries along with the other exercise, but this, these farmer care farmers carries really will test your hand strength. And for a lot of people who first started out doing it,

The limiting factor is the grip strength. Not even so much like, you know, they could keep the, you know, continue to walk for another 30 seconds or another minute with effort, but their hands just won't even tell, you know, the hands won't tell you like my hands get pooped out. My forearms get pooped out. That's fine. That's where you start though. So find a way that you can walk for 30 seconds, maybe a minute, not more than a minute, just holding onto a dumbbell on each hand. Just walk around the gym. So you've got trap bar squats.

pull-ups and loaded carries. Those three exercises out of an infinite that you can choose from. if, you know, if you ask me again tomorrow, I could pick three other ones that I think are super high value, but those three exercises, if you say, Hey, I've only got 30 minutes in the gym. I got to be in, I got to be out. They're there three exercises. You can even start off with doing like a five minute walk on the treadmill. So it's a win win, right? Walk on the treadmill, do a little spin on the bike, do something to kind of get warmed up, hit those three exercises.

and you're going to be getting a good return on your investment. The punchline is if you're spending 90 minutes in the gym, you had better be seeing massive results. 90 minutes in the gym to me is insanity unless you are part of a select group that your focus is on true athletic performance. If that's the case, carry on. Definitely do it.

If you are just going to the gym to be healthy and to be healthier, then chances are those 90 minutes could probably be compressed to a shorter amount of time.

Train with intent, push yourself, choose exercises that really matter. Go in with a plan, know exactly what you're gonna do before you get into the gym and stop wasting time. Do things that move the needle. It's gonna be a much more rewarding experience for you and a chance of succeeding over the long term is much higher when you can get more return on your investment in less time. I love exercising or I love...

I say I love the results of exercising and my, the riddle that I'm always trying to sort of figure out for myself is how little can I train to get the results I want. And I've managed to kind of get it down to a science for me. I'm a very measurable kind of person. And this is what I do full time. So I can kind of get what works for me, but get what works for you. If you don't know really even where to start, totally get that.

you can check out my website. do have a free download, a free three week strength training Kickstarter program that is perfect for somebody who just wants, I guess that, that brainless sense of, just want to go to the gym, follow a couple of directions, do the thing and get out. If you, if that, if you don't know where to start, check out my website link is below their links associated with this podcast. And it's a free three week, three week program that works for you. Awesome. If not, there's a bunch of other resources online.

Do a Google hit AI, most importantly, most importantly, be efficient with your time. The more efficient you are, the more likely you are to stick with a program. And that's what the real win is. It is doing something consistently by far is going to be better off for you than going crazy gangbusters, doing long 90 minute workouts. And then two months later, you think, I just can't do this anymore. I'm too beat up. I'm too tired. I'm waiting. I feel like I'm wasting my time. That's, that's a problem. That's a fail.

So with that, I appreciate your time, appreciate your effort. If you're watching this on YouTube, you may notice I got a different scenery behind me. I'm just sort of lounging in a different room today, which is, you may have also heard my dog, Eddie, who's here watching and chaperoning me, but appreciate your time and effort and listening to me, your effort and your exercise, your exercise, your effort in your own health and your time with listening. If you have any questions about anything healthspan related exercise, nutrition, sleep,

emotional well-being or preventative care, please drop me a line. And as always, take care of yourself.