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

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0:36Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

0:43Adam Schafer: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 by 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.

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2:04I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

2:10Adam Schafer: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.

2:32Sal Di Stefano: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 bounce back and forth between. Yep. 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 your current life. 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.

3:06Adam Schafer: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. OK, so essentially all things are equal here. OK, 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 going to talk about like which one's better. And a lot of this, in my opinion, rests on kind of human behavior.

3:46Adam Schafer:Like you said, Adam, who you are, what we've seen in application. And I do want to add that the short daily workouts has become more of a recent thing that people are really starting to figure out, 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 to, you know, about getting to the gym or, you know, committing to this certain amount of time throughout your day. You really have to carve time out to acquire. And now it's like, you know, if you have a 15-minute availability, any time during the day makes that much more achievable.

4:28Sal Di Stefano:Any idea, as you're bringing this up right now, Mike, you know, we have seen quite the increase of at-home gyms. Yep. Any idea, Doug, what the increase of that is? That exploded COVID. It must have been, yeah.

4:44Adam Schafer:It was during COVID that really took off.

4:46Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, 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 were a gym guy. If you'd listened to the podcast far enough back, I used to debate these guys that, oh, man, I'm going to 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.

5:27Sal Di Stefano: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 going to, I was just going to say that.

5:41Adam Schafer: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 the Thighmaster. Yeah, it was like a 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, sustained growth, you know, COVID and then after. So in 2022, U.S. wholesale sales for home gym products were approximately 50 % higher than in 2019. And the percentage of U.S. households participating in home workouts increased from 24 % in 2019 to 33 % in 2022.

6:20Adam Schafer:Wow. Yeah, and 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, 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 –

6:39Sal Di Stefano:And maybe what the middle has become is become the at-home.

6:42Adam Schafer:That's right, yeah.

6:42Sal Di Stefano: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. 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, even this conversation that we're going to have right now about short workouts versus the full body. I mean, from day one, we've advocated for full body routines for most people. And I think it is for the most part, 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 where 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

7:32Adam Schafer:that's definitely one of the 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 want to look like bodybuilders and it works really well.

8:08Adam Schafer: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 experience is you'll miss one or two of them, but it's not a full, you know, half your volume is gone.

8:44Adam Schafer:It's one fifth or one sixth or one seventh of your volume because it's 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, 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 it's always the one that you you're trying to avoid right so with the short daily workouts again just when we 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 uh 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 So it just really hits that main factor of consistency being so important.

9:40And I think, too, like if we were going to stack benefits, too, of like beginner versus advanced lifter, I mean, you could 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 15 is great.

9:57Adam Schafer:Yeah, well, what it does is this is a great strategy for developing a consistent behavior.

10:04Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, habit stacking. Yeah, because if you do,

10:06Adam Schafer:if you practice a little bit of something every single day, momentum builds, it's built into your lifestyle and what you tend to see is it's an easier behavior build versus the two workouts that I got to 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.

10:36Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. I mean, 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 got to go in your garage real quick. It's always there, ready. Knock out two exercises real quick. That's right. And then you're done, I think. And then that's so good 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.

11:18Sal Di Stefano:And so 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.

11:27Adam Schafer: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. Yeah. If you're a busy parent, if you have a busy life, you know this. You know, I can 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.

12:04Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, well, especially if you're factoring in the drive time to go to a gym, too. Because you don't have to factor in 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.

12:23Adam Schafer: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. Um, and if you've ever experienced both, you know, this, uh, by the way, this is not new.

13:01Adam Schafer:We've known this with strength training for a long time. Um, uh, 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, uh, here and then wait a lot and then do a little bit again and wait a lot rather than cramming it all in and 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? You know, because I know exercise is a stress on the body. Is there a way to, to make up for that?

13:35Adam Schafer: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 it's, 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 uh presents itself as like oh wow i feel so much and more energetic now going into the next workout and i feel the the effects of that recovery i would also make the argument

14:06Sal Di Stefano:that we lack enough uh physical stress daily like we tend to have a lot of mental uh stress like and stuff, overwhelmed.

14:16Adam Schafer:So throwing a little bit daily is probably good. Yeah.

14:18Sal Di Stefano:Yes. I mean, 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 notice 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. I need to exert some sort of energy daily. 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.

14:59Sal Di Stefano:This doesn't maybe apply to the carpenter or the plumber or somebody who's laying tile all day long where they're probably exhausted physically. But for a lot of people, especially where we live, uh there's a lot good to move daily yes and so it doesn't need to be so crazy intense 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 uh that you sleep at night yeah when you look at the benefits of

15:26Adam Schafer: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 because you're moving has benefits and the short daily workouts uh are probably better for that But 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. Like, 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.

15:56Adam Schafer:When you add that all up, all those drives, you're better off going to the gym a couple days a week. There's a lot of empty time you just burned. Yes, but if you have a home gym, if you got dumbbells and an adjustable bench, or if you're really great and you got a squat rack with barbell, adjustable bench and dumbbells, now you just go in your garage or go in your room or your backyard or wherever you have it set up. Super convenient. Yeah. So I think these daily workouts definitely lend themselves well or much better to having a home gym.

16:21Sal Di Stefano: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 – Or even if it's as long. Let's say, what am I doing? Right, right. That's what I mean. And I think this is what led me to think I was more of a going-to-the-gym guy was because my workouts were long at that time. They were an hour, hour and a half long. I'm training all the time. I was in the thick of competing. And so I was like 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 to me, it made a lot more sense.

16:55Sal Di Stefano:I 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 reduce the amount of volume that i was training like and i'm only doing things two exercises a day like man that makes way more sense to be doing that out of my