OPTIMZIE YOUR TRAINING FOR MAXIMAL GAINS IN MINIMAL TIME – UNDERSTANDING FIRST PRINCIPLES

Time is a limited resource that you can't get back. This makes it even more valuable than money. So why not budget your time so that you can make the most out of it?

First published: November 18, 2018
By: Andy Xiong


To function optimally, you need about 8 hours of sleep a night.

And if you’re in school or work full-time, that’s another 8 hours a day for 5 days a week.

Throw in the time it takes you to prepare for your day in the morning, your commute, and the time you spend doing other physiological activities and you may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, I really don’t have much time for myself!”

I’m sure you’ve felt this way before. I know I have. An hour long commute to a 9 to 5 summer job, then another hour back to train at the gym; throw in eating and sleeping and it was all I had time for.

And if you’re like me, you probably aren’t the most productive with your time either. I had to make sacrifices. Either I sleep less, or cut the amount of time I spent at the gym. But of course, being the silly gym rat I was, I chose to work fewer hours. Well, that is until I almost lost my job!

Fortunately for you, you probably don’t spend 2 hours at the gym per training session. And the less time you spend grinding in the gym, the more time you have for YOU.

However, with mobility work, activation drills, strength training, bodybuilding accessories, foam rolling, and stretching, the amount of time you spend at the gym can add up...

So how do you optimize your training in such a way that you have more time to do the other things that you enjoy? Simple: Approach your training goals using first principles.

Make sure you have read my blog post on methods versus principles before proceeding, as much of what follows builds on the previous post. The post can be accessed here.

Think like Elon Musk – think using first principles

Elon Musk has taken multiple industries by storm, building at least three multibillion dollar companies in three different fields. Many individuals cannot even build one. What’s his secret to success? Some might say his resources, but it is also how he uses those resources.

You see, Elon Musk approaches problems differently. He uses what is known as a first principles approach to problem solving. This means breaking down a bigger problem until you find the fundamental problem. Then he can use all his resources – money and, more importantly, time – to tackle the one problem that would provide the most bang-for-buck in terms of results.

Most people don’t tackle their problems this way. Instead, they break a bigger problem into multiple smaller ones, and then tackle them either one by one or simultaneously. Aside from having to focus your attention on more and more problems, there are two other reasons why this approach is inferior.

Since first principles thinking breaks things down to their basic building blocks, you can oftentimes deduce whether something is even worth pursuing in the first place. If the cost to tackle the problem outweighs solving the problem, it may be wiser to not tackle it in the first place. This can save you a ton of time and resources. That’s because if you cannot fix a fundamental problem, or even tackle the fundamentals, you likely won’t have a solid foundation to build a solution off of.

More importantly, approaching anything with first principles in mind allows you to take a bird’s eye view of the issue at hand. You get to take a look at the bigger picture. And since you ignore the minute details, this can allow you to come up with rather innovative solutions – as evidenced by SpaceX's attempt to reduce space travel expenses by building reusable rockets, or The Boring Company's solution to congestion by digging more and more layers of network tunnels underground.

But now that you have a basic understanding of first principles, how can you apply it to your training?

How to Optimize Your Time and Energy using First Principles

Understanding first principles will help you manage your time in many ways, especially in fitness. This is because the fitness industry is full of noise, and whatever you generally are focused on is oftentimes unnecessary clutter.

Building muscle, stretching, mobility, strength training, dieting – all of these have fundamental truths behind all the marketing and noise too. And if you can figure out what those truths are, you will be able to spend a lot less time and a lot less energy on what is unnecessary.

This means more time for you.

Here is a practical example in the field of hypertrophy and bodybuilding.

You should understand by now that the principle of muscle growth is consistent and progressive overload. You should also understand that if you adhere to this principle, any method (or, more specifically, any training program) will work. So why spend hours at the gym performing the levels of volume you would find in German Volume Training when you can stress the muscle just as much in less time and with less volume?

Your muscles don’t know that 10x10 is twice the volume that 5x10 produces.  Your muscles only respond to the stress it goes through, and 10 sets of 10 does not produce twice as much stress as repping out 5 sets of 10 even though whatever formula for volume you use says so. It doesn’t know that 20+ reps are for endurance, 8 to 12 reps is the ideal rep range for muscle growth, nor does it understand that your set of 3 reps is for strength. These are just observations that try to explain the relationship between different rep ranges and muscle growth – these aren’t truths. The truth is, if the muscle is stressed enough to stimulate growth, it WILL grow – regardless of the rep range.

And oftentimes, your muscles are stressed the most on the first set, with diminishing returns as the sets continue and as the muscle fatigues. So what does this mean? If you can stimulate growth in 1 to 2 sets, you can finish your bodybuilding accessories in a fraction of the time it currently takes you. Instead of 5x10 or 4x12 or whatever your set and rep scheme you use for your bodybuilding accessories, try taking 2 sets to failure and calling it a day. If you applied the principle of isolating and stressing the muscle (and not just going through the motions) properly, I promise you that you will still make gains, while also shaving down the amount of time you spend at the gym by a LOT.

Don’t think you that could build muscle with such low volume? Give it a go for 2-3 weeks.

Takeaways

-          First principles thinking requires you to break down and understand the fundamental truth or principle

-          If you understand the principle, you can make any method work

-          Doing more or spending more time is unnecessary and a bad use of resources when you can tackle the fundamentals instead