Modern life is busy and sometimes you don’t have time to do a full 1-1.5 hour workout. That doesn’t mean you need to skip your training, though. You can make excellent progress in short amounts of time, and by being a little crafty with your daily non-exercise activity.
General Health Goal:
No stress is needed here! If you only have time for a 15-20 minute workout, do some high or moderate intensity interval training. You can mix cardio and resistance training together to get an awesome full body session in. This is where training styles like circuits or CrossFit can be an excellent option for you.
Strength Goal:
Many people think more is better when it comes to strength training, but that’s not necessarily true, especially if you’re fairly new to the gym and a recreational lifter. Focus on big compound moves that use a lot of the body like squats or pull-ups. You don’t have to do many exercises each session. Anywhere from 1-4 exercises, at 3-5 sets each should do the trick, and keep rest periods short at around 1 minute. Lastly make sure you are challenging yourself. Weights should feel pretty heavy, and increase week to week.
Cardio Goal:
Sprints are your friend here. You can crank out a handful of max effort sprints followed by longer rests and get awesome cardio gains. Also, shorter long steady state training is very good for you. Anywhere from 15-30 minutes at an intensity that has you breathing heavily but still have the ability to talk will improve your cardiovascular fitness level.
Different goals will require higher levels of time commitment but not every day or every goal requires hours of training. When you don’t have much time, don’t worry. You can still make progress towards your goals!