2860: Short Daily Workouts vs. Full Body 3x a Week: Which One Actually Gets You More Results?

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness, Health, and Entertainment Podcast. This is Mind Pump, today's episode. We're comparing short daily workouts to full body workouts two or three days a week. So work out a little bit every day, or go to the gym and spend an hour doing a full body workout two or three days a week. What's better for who we break it all down? Now because of this episode, we have a sale. Buy any Maps 15 style workout program. Get any other Maps 15 style workout program for free. It's buy one, get one free. Right now go to maps15bogo.com. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Legion. So Legion makes supplements for muscle gain, for fat loss, for longevity, and health. It's one of the highest rated supplement companies on the internet. Why? It's super high quality. The products taste good, they work good. The third party tested, so what it says on the bottle is in the bottle. And you know the supplement industry is notorious for lying to you. Legion is a company that we work with and trust. Go check them out, go to buylegion.com.com. forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and you can buy one, get one 50% off if you're a new customer. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it, enjoy the rest of the show. In recent years there's been a bit of a debate, so this has been popularized recently. Short daily workouts instead of like two or three full body workouts. Which one is better? Which one gives better results? What are the pros and cons of each? Short daily workouts or longer two to three day a week full body workouts? That's what we're talking about in today's episode. Let's get to it. Each has their benefits. Yeah, I feel like I can make a strong case for each of these. And looking back at the last three, four years, these are the two things that I bounced back and forth between. Yep, so. Toggle between the two. I don't think there's necessarily a wrong way here. I think it's really understanding who you are, what works best for you. And maybe where you're at now is not where you'll be at in a year or two or where you were just say a year or two ago. And so understanding the context I think is important because they do have their own pros and cons. They do, and it's one piece of context we need to paint here is that the short daily workouts would equate to roughly the same total volume as the two or three day a week full body workouts. So essentially all things are equal here. So same total sets, same similar exercises. The difference is instead of going to the gym for 45 minutes to an hour, two days a week or three days a week, you're doing a little bit every day. Let's say 20 minutes a day. And so that's the comparison. And so we're gonna talk about which one's better. And a lot of this in my opinion rests on kind of human behavior. Like you said, Adam, who you are, what we've seen in application. And I do wanna add that the short daily workouts has become more of a recent thing that people are really starting to figure out as especially as home gyms become more popular, people are finding that this works really well for them. And we've written a lot of programs around this philosophy. It's taken out a lot of objectives too, about getting to the gym or committing to this certain amount of time throughout your day and you really have to carve time out to acquire. And now it's like, if you have a 15 minute availability anytime during the day, makes that much more achievable. Any idea, as you're bringing this up right now, Mike, you know, we have seen quite the increase of at home gyms. Do you have any idea, Doug, what the increase of that is? That exploded COVID. It must have been, yeah. It was during COVID that really took off. Right, and I think it's sustained, right? I mean, there was obviously a wave or a percentage of people that came back to the gyms, but I think a large portion of people found a new love. I mean, I'm one of those people, pre COVID. Yeah, you're a gym guy for sure. If you'd listened to the podcast far enough back, I used to debate these guys that, oh man, I'm gonna go to the gym guy all day long, just motivates me to be around other people, the music. If I drove all the way there, and so I advocated for a gym over at home, then COVID hit. I was forced to train at home. Then I had my son too around the same time and having a newborn at the house, you know, kind of forced my hand a little bit. And then I learned to love it. Yeah. And so, and I've kind of never looked back. Yeah, so it's gotten so much better too. That too. I was just gonna say that. So people who worked out at home used to be no equipment or like a couple pieces of garbage or something like that. Right? Like a guy master bench with those sand filled weights. Yeah, but now what we see is a lot of people are getting actual weights at home. So it says up here in 2022, so there was a big surge, but it's sustained growth, COVID and then after. So in 2022, US wholesale sales for home gym products were approximately 50% higher. Wow. In 2019 and the percentage of US households participating in home workouts increased from 24% in 2019 to 33% in 2022. Wow. Yeah, and the commercial gyms are getting more expensive as well. In the sense that people who go to gyms now want more of that country club feel, you got the real low cost gym. Yeah. And then you get the high end and the middle seems to be. Yeah, there's no real middle. Yeah. And the number one reason is convenience is what most people. And maybe what the middle has become has become the at home. That's right. Yeah, the at home people are probably the people that, because you can do things too, like companies like PRX that we work for where you can actually set it up to where you're making payments on it. Just like a membership. So it's like a gym membership and then now you have all this equipment at home. And so I think that this has a lot to do with it. Even this conversation that we're gonna have right now about short workouts versus the full body. From day one, we've advocated for full body routines for most people. And I think it is for the most part, but typically one of the better strategies. But because of how popular at home gyms come, it makes it more realistic to go inside your garage and just do two movements. That become, we're working out daily short workouts if you had to go to the gym all the time would be a major inconvenience. Yeah, we'll get to that, right? That's definitely one of the deciding factors. But let's talk a little bit about the pros of these short daily workouts and the things that we've observed. So over time, it appears just from our experience that the short daily workouts lead to more workouts on average. Okay, so what I mean by that is, let's say your routine is two or three full body workouts in the gym. Let's just say it's two. So for most people, two days a week, full body, you can progress that for a long time and get pretty darn good results. And most people are looking to look fit and strong. They don't wanna look like bodybuilders. And it works really well, combine it with daily activity like walking and you've got yourself a nice routine. But if you're doing two full body workouts a week and you miss one, half of your training volume is gone in that week. And that happens, that's life, right? So most people miss a workout here and there. Most consistent people miss a workout here and there. Most people miss more than a workout here or there. And when you miss one workout, you miss quite a bit. If you're doing a little bit every day, what it tends to look like in our experiences, you'll miss one or two of them, but it's not a full, half your volume is gone. It's one fifth or one sixth or one seventh of your volume because only one of those short workouts. So over time, what it generally looks like is, over the course of a year, I got more workout. More volume in there. More volume and more consistent workout than if I did. By the way, this was one of the reasons why full body workouts are even better than a traditional body part split for a lot of people. Body part splits, you miss a workout, you miss working out your legs for a whole week. Full body, you at least hit your legs. So always the one that you're trying to avoid. Right, so with the short daily workouts, again, just when we follow people, because now we have programs that are like this, that are written this way, when we're following our customers and our trainers with their clients, what we see is over the course of six months or a year, overall they're working out more. Because when they miss a workout, they're not missing a lot, they're just missing a little bit. Yeah, well, it really hits that main factor of consistency being so important. And I think too, if we were gonna stack benefits too of beginner versus advanced lifter, I mean, you can make an argument, obviously this is great for advanced lifters as well, but for a beginner to get on track, to gain momentum and really stack these wins, I think is 15 is great. Yeah, well, what it does is, this is a great strategy for developing a consistent behavior. Yeah, have it stacking. Yeah, because if you practice a little bit of something every single day, momentum builds, it builds into your lifestyle, and what you tend to see is it's an easier behavior build, versus the two workouts that I gotta go to the week, which isn't bad, but when it's every day, just like anything else, like if I had to practice any skill for a long period of time, once or twice a week versus a little bit every day, you'll notice the every day. You'll get better every day. And you tend to become more consistent, so it's better for behavior modification. Yeah, I would say that this leans better for the person who has the at-home gym, because I find it much easier to go and just get two little workouts in there. Of course. I think that's part of what leads to that consistency, is like you're more likely to be consistent, because you just gotta go in your garage real quick. It's always there, right? Knock out two exercises real quick, and then you're done, I think. And then that's so good for, to the point I think Justin was trying to make with the beginner, because it's like, we're always trying to build good habits. I mean, if you're trying to learn a language, learn a new skill, we have plenty of research to support what the consistency, like short bouts of it consistently, versus trying to cram it all in one or two or three days in the week. And so, that those consistent every single day, doing a couple things, I think would be much better for the person who's trying to get into the habit of working out. It is, it's obviously, no, here's this, the big one. It's easier for time constraints. Yeah. You know, carving 20 minutes out of your day, a day out every day, is easier than carving an hour, two or three days a week. It just is. If you're a busy parent, if you have a busy life, you know this, you know, I could find 20 minutes a day, no problem. Oh, you want me to take a whole hour, a couple days out of my week? I got to schedule that and plan it. So for people with busyness issues or time constraints, the short daily workouts tend to be superior. Yeah, well, especially if you're factoring in the drive time to go to a gym too. Because you don't have to factoring just the 20 minutes of the working out, you also got to factor in the gym time, whereas if, again, I'm at home doing these short workouts, it's pretty much 20 minutes. The time it takes you to walk from your living room over to your garage or wherever you have your setup, I mean, you're in and out of there within 20, 25 minutes. That's right. It also tends to be better for overall stress. So I know at the beginning of the episode, I said, both styles have the same volume. Okay, we have to control that in order to make a fair comparison. But here's the deal. There is a stress accumulation when a workout gets longer that you don't get from short workouts with strength training. So for recovery and for people who have high stress lives, even if the volume is the same, it tends to damage the body less. It tends to cause less stress on the body when you're doing the short workouts. And if you've ever experienced both, you know this. By the way, this is not new. We've known this with strength training for a long time. High level strength athletes use this to their advantage where they'll do workouts that are all day long, but they're doing a little bit here and then weight a lot and then do a little bit again and weight a lot, rather than cramming it all in in one, two hour blast, it just results in less damage on the body. So if you're somebody that's like, man, I'm stressed. I have my sleep is like, okay, maybe I got a busy life. I got all these little kids. What do I do? Cause I know exercise is a stress on the body. Is there a way to make up for that? Well, the short daily workouts tend to be less stressful. Yeah, a lot of times it's really elusive for people. They don't really pinpoint specific stresses in their lives. Like they have a lot of accumulated stress, but it's not as obvious to them. And so to reduce and then kind of do a shorter workout schedule. Like sometimes that's what really presents itself as like, oh, wow, I feel so much in more energetic now going into the next workout. And I feel the effects of that recovery. I would also make the argument that we lack enough physical stress daily. Like we tend to have a lot of mental stress, like instead of overwhelmed. So throwing a little bit daily is probably good. Yeah, yes. I mean, I've, this is one of the things that I've connected the dots personally from toggling between different types of workout modalities and routines like this and working out one of the things I noticed is, and I've brought this up many times. If I don't get a workout in and or 10,000 steps in, it disrupts how well I'm restless. My body needs that. Some, I need to exert some sort of energy daily. And, and simply just going for a walk is not enough. Having at least getting a couple of lifts in there with the walking tends to make a bigger difference than just me moving around and walking. And so, and I think there's a lot of people that have sedentary jobs. This doesn't maybe apply to the, you know, carpenter or the plumber or somebody who's, you know, lay in tile all day long, where they're probably exhausted physically. But for a lot of people, especially where we live, there's a lot. Feels good to move daily. Yes. And so it doesn't need to be so crazy intense that it has to be an hour long, but some sort of, A little bit. Yeah. Physical stressful activity like that, I think plays a big role in how well that you sleep at night. Yeah. When you look at the benefits of activity, so you have the health benefits, I should say, because with strength training, like we're trying to build muscle, that has its own health benefits. Outside of that daily movement, just cause you're moving has benefits and the short daily workouts are probably better for that. Now, you know, here's some of the cons. And you've been mentioning this since the beginning, Adam, is that it probably does require easy gym access. It doesn't make sense from a time saving perspective. If you're going to go do a 20 minute workout, but you have to drive to the gym, do the workout and then drive home. When you add that all up, all those drives, you're better off going to the gym a couple of days. There's a lot of empty time you just burn. Yes, but if you have a home gym, if you got dumbbells and adjustable bench, or if you're really great, you got a squat rack with barbell, adjustable bench and dumbbells, now you just go in your garage, you're going to your room or your backyard, wherever you have it set up, super convenient. So I think these daily workouts definitely lend themselves well or much better to having a home gym. Yeah, it's tough to justify going to the gym and working out when your drive is longer than your workout. Yeah. That's just, that's it. Or even if it's as long, I was like, what am I doing? Right, right, that's what I mean. And this, I think this is what led me to think I was more of a go into the gym guy was because my workouts were long at that time. They were hour, hour and a half long, I'm training all the time. I was in the thick of competing. And so I just like, you know, being in my house for an hour, hour and a half every day in the gym, like I needed the external motivation and stuff like that. And so, and so to me, it made a lot more sense. You have to drive 15, 20 minutes there, I'm going to spend a solid hour, hour and a half there. But when my work, when I reduced the amount of volume that I was training, like, and I'm only doing things to exercise a day, like man, that makes way more sense to be doing that out in my garage and going to a gym. Here's another con. Some people just find these kind of workouts less enjoyable. You'll talk to some people and they'll say, you know, I don't really get into the workout until I'm like 20 minutes in. And then you're telling me I need to stop. Like that's when I start to feel good. And I start to get into the groove and I'm feeling good, I get a little bit of a sweat. And I totally get that. Like that's a fair point. That's a fair point. Like I know what that feels like. I like, like when I'm getting into my workout, it's true. It's about 15 to 20 minutes in. It's when I really start to enjoy what I'm doing and you're going to tell me I'm done. This is, okay, so I'm going to argue that because I agreed with that. In fact, that was my original challenge. Was I, especially being a pump guy, you know, and you don't get as much of a pump doing two exercises. And so I think a lot of it is mindset. I think we have a, It's a mindset. If you're a bodybuilder type of you identified like that and you love the pump and you love the sweat and you know, a lot of that is mind, you've attached that feeling. Once I saw the results I got from the just two exercises and yeah, I didn't have the pump, but I didn't get drenched in sweat and so by that, but I saw the results from just that little bit of volume. I was, my mindset shift. And now I love that. And now it's like, wow, I could go in, not even get a crazy hard sweat and get an incredible workout that elicits incredible results. And so even though this is technically a con, it's the only a con I think at first for somebody. If you've learned to attach how good your workout feels to how exhausted, sweaty, pumped you are, then this becomes a con. As soon as you realize how effective this could be for you, that con can switch into a pro. That's a good point. The workout that works the best for you with your schedule and results tends to be the one that you enjoy the most. Nonetheless, there's a lot of fitness fanatics out there that are like, I just love it. I just love, you know, the feeling I get going, doing a 45 minute hour jam, which, you know, it's actually one of the pros of a full body workout, right? Full body workout, you go to the gym, you're training the whole body. And there's something that feels good about that, about training everything, my legs, my chest, my back, my shoulders, my arms, a little bit of core. And for some people, and look, I'm not gonna knock the enjoyment factor because the enjoyment factor is an important factor. Well, wouldn't you say that's what drives you to go to the gym? You go to the gym. I love it. So I think that's- I love the feeling of it. And you can't knock that because when you look at consistency, if somebody likes what they're doing, they're far more likely to be consistent than when they don't. So if that's you and you know yourself, then you may want full body. But back to what Adam said, for a lot of people, if the other style works better for you in terms of results, and then you have more time on your hands, it's not a hard switch. It's not a hard-much switch. I mean, I can argue the other side too, because I remember how much I enjoyed going to the gym for an hour and a half and plugging in. I mean, I used to call it my church. It was a time where I could kind of, everything else just dissolved. I wasn't thinking about any stress with work, or what was going on at home. It was like my music, my workout. It was very meditative for me. So in some people, I know that can be very cathartic. I know that is for you. I know that is something you enjoy like that. And some people are like, I want to get a house. Right. And be gone for an hour and a half. And 20 minutes is not enough. That's right. I need more of a break. And a lot of people, that's the people that, some people are like this. I know people that work from home, right? And they're home all the time. And actually going to the gym, it feels good to get some away from that. That's right. And going, working out in their home is just like, oh my God, it's hard, because I'm always home. I want to be somewhere away. Then that makes sense. I can make that argument for that. Although like I said, like you said, I think sometimes a lot, because I believe I was this person too, you're attached to the results that thing gave you. And so you start to identify as like, oh, this is my thing. Where it's like, sometimes getting out of that. And like, well, maybe this would be more beneficially. And then you see the results from it's like, oh, okay, I can shift that mindset. Totally. It also takes daily, less daily commitment. And for some people, that's better. For some people, they'd rather have less days that they're working out and just have a couple days, well, this is the time I'm working out. And you got to know if this is you. You got to ask yourself, like, which one feels better to me? Which one do I feel like I'm going to be more committed to or more consistent with? Sometimes I'm like a bit scatterbrained. And it's like, I want to devote my entire focus, you know? And you can select like, okay, it's three days a week. This is my main day of intense like output. And yeah, I think it just kind of depends on your goal too. And like what you're after, but even if you enjoy it. I mean, for me, even like you're talking about the pump, like for me, it was always like the intensity and feeling like I really have just like, my body like was tired and I was like, I felt that, you know, from that full body workout versus, I had to do a major shift with my mind with the shorter workouts. It's these workouts are better suited for gym workout. Now you can do it in your garage. Well, yeah, I think of when we were trainers inside gyms, most people that we did assessments on, and you asked them how many days a week could you commit to the gym? Almost everybody said two, two to three. That's right. Yeah, sometimes even one. So this is more likely that person, right? So if you're already telling yourself, I can only commit to one to three workouts in a week. That's obviously a, you know, little bit every day is not you. You're the person who, okay, well, we need to probably do a full body. And then that makes a lot of sense, especially when you think three days is stretching it. If you think three days of committing to lifting weights is already stretching your commitment towards weight training, you're way better off that way. Cause then if you miss a day or two, at least you still got one full body workout in. And so, yeah, knowing yourself and are you that person who has to go to the gym and can only commit one or two or three days to the week that well, then this is the way. Totally. From an adaptation perspective, probably better for strength stamina because strength stamina is built with workouts that challenge your stamina. And a short workout that last 20 minutes doesn't challenge it much. But an hour workout will challenge it more. And so both of them are strength training, both of them build muscle. When you cut fatigue out, probably a little better for strength, but some people want some strength stamina as well. And the singular longer workout is a little bit better suited for strength stamina. Here's some of the cons. It's for a lot of people, it's hard to become consistent week in and week out because it's a couple of days a week versus a little bit every single day. We said this earlier, missing one workout takes a lot away versus a short daily workout where you miss one, it doesn't take a lot away at all. And then it is more stressful in the body. All things being equal, if you have an issue with being overstressed and you were doing the same total volume, the short daily workouts seem to be better. Yeah, this is harder to be consistent because I think everybody can relate to, oh, today's my gym day or my hour workout of MAPS anabolic or whatever full body routine you're running and you just are not feeling it. I'm just, man, and an hour full body routine. It'll take some out of you. When you don't feel like working out feels like a major commitment, a two workout or two exercises does not. You're fine. And so that was one of the things that I really appreciated about the shorter workouts is when I have those moments where I'm like, man, I know today's the day I'm committing to go to the gym and boy, a full body. And then a lot of times what happens is people are all or nothing. They go, well, if I can't do, if I just can't see myself in the floor, I'm gonna do nothing at all. Versus if I only had to do an exercise or two, much easier to, yeah, I can make this happen. I can get through a quick exercise or two, that's it. Totally. Now I'm gonna share my experience, my personal experience with the shorter workouts because had I not experienced this, I think I would have been more like, well, that's better for kind of beginners and time constraints, but I prefer to do the longer workouts. Well, we wrote and we have a lot of programs like this. They're called our MAPS 15 style workouts. So 15 for 15 minutes, so 15 to 20 minutes a day. And when we created the first ones, I experimented with the short workouts. So what it looked like for me was like two lifts a day. And the reason why I'm communicating this is because there's probably an advanced lifter or somebody who's a fanatic who's like, that's not for me. I'm not gonna get results on that. I need to be in the gym for an hour and a half. What was weird was at the age of 45, I followed this protocol and without even, this wasn't even a goal. I was just testing it out and see what happened. And I thought, well, let's see, if I don't lose muscle, that'll be a huge win. I hit a PR in dead lifts, which is one of my best lifts at 45 years old. I broke my old PR, not even trying to hit a PR in dead lifts. I just got so strong following this, which showed me the viability. Like this is an effective way of working out, even if you're advanced. If you've listened to the podcast long enough, you heard this unfold in real time because it started with me and my son being born and doing this. And I remember coming back to you guys and reporting like, dude, I'm tripping out right now on how little I'm lifting right now and the results and the strength and everything I'm coming. And I remember you kept commenting on it and you're like, you know what, I haven't done that. I'm gonna try and do it. And then I remember you applying it and doing that and then hitting a PR and being like, this is crazy how much I've reduced volume and just doing two lifts a day, seeing PRs from that. And so yeah, even for the advanced, in fact, I'd make the argument that if you were, if you are the person who's very consistent and you train five, six days a week, hour long workouts all the time and you haven't done something like this. Oh, you'll get gains. Yes, I think you absolutely will see that. Cause I think if you are, like I think our audience is, is already in that group of people that are already into working out tend to lean towards more of a fitness addict or person that loves to work out, scaling the volume down would probably be a good idea and just dealing with like a two workout or two lifts a day type of deal. Now what we have is we have a whole series of these style of workout programs, a whole series. We have the original maps 15, we have maps 15 performance. This is more of an athletic bend. We have one called muscle mommy. This is geared towards women and the muscle groups and type of body type that they're looking to develop. We have strong, which is a strong man inspired type training. We have symmetry. So lots of unilateral training to help balance out the body. We have a 40 plus version, which is great for people over 40 with their considerations. And then we have a power lift version with the focuses bench, deadlifting, squat. So those are all the 15 style versions we have. And what we're going to do is we're coming, we're doing a, what's called a Bogo sale. So if you buy any one of those maps 15 style workout programs, you can get any other maps 15 style workout program for free, your choice. So buy one, get one free. If it's happening right now, go to maps15bogo.com. You can also find us on Instagram, it's mine pump media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to mine pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at minepumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mine pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is mine pump.