This past Friday I had plans to go out pretty early after work. I could have pushed my training to the following day, but I train on Saturday and run for an hour also. That's just too much work for one day.

With only about 40 minutes to spare on Friday here was my plan. Superset 5 working sets of bench with pullups. With my dynamic warm-up taking 10-15 minutes, that was out. I hung bands from my pullup bar and started with an empty bar on the bench. After about 5 rounds I was at my bench weight and the bands were off the pullup bar.

From most of the research I have done I find 3 minutes to be the sweet spot with rest intervals between sets. As I was doing supersets I decided to split the difference by taking a minute and a half between bench and pullups. Yes, they are both upper body, but one is predominately a push and the other a pull. This is where I don't let perfection become the enemy of good enough.

On to the actual work and the reason for this post. Using a minimalist approach to training and being short on time I ended up far more focused during training than I can remember in a long time. Each set had to count. The first few sets were around an RPE of 8 and by the 4th and 5th sets I was at a 9-10 RPE.

The entire workout took less than 30 minutes. I felt worked and pumped, two excellent indicators of a good session in my book.

Having such a good experience I decided to try it again on Saturday. I paired belt squats with ghr crunches for 5 sets. Like the day before, I also warmed up on the equipment. The workout was a good as the day's before.

What I'm taking away from all of this is, remove the fluff from my training. However, instead of just two exercises, I am going to try four. Two supersets, same rest intervals. The goal won't be to rush through training, but I want each second to be purposeful. Stay focused, bang out quality reps, and recover.

I'll give this a go for a month and report back. Stay tuned.