Do Less, Achieve More (with 80/20 rule etc)

The above is one of my life mottos. 

I truly enjoy the process of attaining great results whilst spending less than half the time and/or effort on the tasks of what is typically required. Call me lazy or anything like that but I think trying to do more with less is especially crucial in today's highly demanding and competitive world where one needs to be good at everything - be it work, family, or health.

Granted, if we want to see results in life, it is imperative we put in the necessary hard work and hours. But eventually we will come to a point where we more work doesn't equate more result. At this juncture, we have reached what we called the point of diminishing returns. If we continue to try harder and harder, we are actually digging deeper and deeper into our reserves.

Whatever happens to being creative and thinking laterally? What about quality over quantity? And productivity?

While some may resort to unlawful means, using backdoor or cheating methods to get what they wanted quickly, this is not what I am advocating here. I embrace the idea of using certain time-saving principles and concepts (eg 80/20 rule, synergism) and apply them in day-to-day activities, and apply the same things to my own exercise routine and that of my clients'. 

After deducting the hours we spend on sleep, work and family, we are almost left with nothing much to spend on a proper exercise routine to keep us in optimum health.

Yet many seasoned exercisers and 'gurus' claim they need up to 2 to 5 hours per exercise session or tons of exercises to have a productive workout. Nothing is further from the truth (unless you are on some pharmaceutical aid or have superman and woman as parents)! This is not only unproductive but counterproductive that can create more harm than good. It is quite common for such athletes to fall sick, feel perpetually tired and aches, and / or see no result as a result of over training, causing the immune system to be weakened or crashed. In fact, the more advanced exerciser you are, the less the duration of exercise should be, due to the greater level of exercise intensity involved.

Fact: depending on your goals: you just need to invest anywhere from 2.5 to 3 hours of weekly exercise (split up over 3 to 4 days) with cleverly-designed program to have excellent, health promoting benefits.

Here, we will share with you some of the proven strategies and suggestions which will give you a complete workout in an hour or less:

• Have your workout plan ready before you hit the gym. It can be written on a piece of paper or recorded on your phone, to be carried with you. This saves some time trying to remember what next to do
• Warm up and get ready to do the first exercise even before you step into the gym. You can start the process by walking up stairs or a distance instead of taking the elevators. From that you save some 10-15 mins here.
• If you see someone hogging the equipment you intend to use, ask politely if you can use it when the person is resting between sets or move on to do something else. Do not sit or stand around silently waiting for the person to finish his entire exercise. One, it wastes time (you never know how many sets are the person going to do). Two, your body might be cooled by the time you get to use the equipment. Three, it is always a good idea to something different from your normal routine for unexpected results and fun. Four, someone might just cut your queue (e.g. that someone could be a friend of the current user), talk about getting pissed! 
• Some of the alternatives you can do when the equipment you want to use is in used by somebody else and does not allow sharing or you are too shy to ask:

1. If your treadmill is being used, use other cardio machine like stepper, cross trainer etc. And you can always have the option of running outside.
2. If your targeted dumbbells are taken, use a lighter one for higher reps or heavier one for lower reps. If not, use barbells.
3. If none is available, do bodyweight exercises.

• Employ time saver methods like supersets, giant sets, pre-exhaustion, circuit training etc. Your training time will be much shorter and more intense. 
• Apply 80/20 principle to exercise. But let's explain what it is first: Called the Pareto principle (also known as the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity), 80/20 rule states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
•  To illustrate more, here are some interesting statistics according to Wikipedia:
• 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) consume 80 percent of your time and resource)
• 20 percent of the code has 80 percent of the errors in software engineering .
• The richest 20% of the world's population controlling 82.7% of the world's income
• 20% of their efforts produce 80% of their income
• 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population
• 80% of a company's complaints come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company's profits come from 20% of its customers.)

This video provides an visual explanation of what it is:

Back to exercise...

• Ditch or do less isolation exercises, bang your bucks on compound exercises. Using the 80/20 principle, it can be said that

80% of the results are attained from 20% of the compound exercises, so it make sense to focus on them and save massive time!

• Compound exercises = exercises that involve more than one muscle group and joint (eg pressing movements for shoulders, chest and arms, squats for thighs, hamstrings, calves, hip and core) See pic below (source: Strength Training Anatomy Workout) ;  

• Isolation exercise = exercise that involve one muscle and/or joint (eg lateral raises work the shoulders only; leg extensions for thighs only). See pic below (source: Women's Strength Training Anatomy Workouts).

Want to learn more about weight training techniques, here are some of the best resources which I highly recommend (with lots of pictures and guides):

For female: Women's Strength Training Anatomy Workouts

 For male: Strength Training Anatomy Workout II

• Do all your resistance exercises slowly and do the reps until you cannot do another (failure). When you train in this manner, all you need is just 1-2 sets per exercise. This will dramatically cut down your training time. Who says you must train 3-5 sets per exercise?
• For cardio, stop doing the long duration (above 5km), low-intensity runs that can take up to hours each to complete (unless you are a competing athlete). Instead, perform high intensity interval training or HIIT (I have been one of the earliest advocates of this style of training long before it has gained traction and increased in popularity in recent years). The benefits are countless (1,2,3,4,5): 

1. Save tons of time 
2. Enjoyable 
3. Faster weight loss 
4. Faster improvements in cardio 
5. Great improvements in health
6. We will cover in details about HIIT in a future article.

There you are, some ideas to get more from all your workouts. If you can implement just some of the strategies, you can free up many hours of your precious time! Don't just train, train smart!

Here is a list of the good books covering the 80/20 concept, which may not focus on health exclusively per se, but I guaranteed they will change some aspects of your life for the better. 

 My personal favorites are:

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less

80/20 Your Life! How To Get More Done With Less Effort And Change Your Life In The Process!

 Need help in your own fitness program or organize a talk for your company, contact us at [email protected].

References

1. Alahmadi MA. High-intensity interval training & obesity. JNov physiother. 2014;4:1000211.
2. Bartlett J.O., Close G.L., Maclaren D.P.M., Gregson W., Drust B., Morton J.P. (2011) High-intensity interval running is perceived to be more enjoyable than moderate-intensity continuous exercise: implications for exercise prescription. Journal of Sports Sciences 29, 547-553
3. Gilllen J.B., Percival M.E., Skelly S.E., Martin B.J., Tan R.B., Tarnopolsky M.A., Gibala M.J. (2010) Three minutes of all-out intermittent exercise per week increases skeletal muscle oxidative capacity and improves cardiometabolic health. PLoS ONE 9, e111489.
4. Hazell T.J., MacPherson R.E.K., Gravelle B.M.R., Llemon P.W.R. (2010). 10 or 30-s sprint interval training bouts enhance both aerobic and anerobic performance. European Journal of Applied Physiology 110, 153-160
5. Kessler H.S., Sisson S.B., Short K.R. (2012) The potential for high-intensity interval training to reduce cardiometabolic disease risk. Sports Medicine 42, 489-509