Mini Workouts (#78)

Mini Workouts for Mega Gains

Mini workouts are something Westside Barbell popularized for their powerlifters and athletes. I’m a huge fan of these. I wanted to share a few ways and examples of mini workouts you could add to your training to prevent injury, strengthen weak points, and raise your general fitness. The goal of mini workouts should be to fit in accessory work on weaknesses. They allow you to hit problem areas more often and you won’t need to spend 2 hours at a time in the gym or do 20+ sets per exercise per day.

Mini workouts should be centered around improving a specific weakness, short (under 15 minutes usually), and relatively high volume. It’s best to fit in mini workouts either on off days or if you play a sport you could do them before or after practice. They can also be used to raise general physical preparation (GPP) or your ability to tolerate greater workloads.

Some problem areas I find mini workouts to be helpful with include: shoulders, hips, neck, knees, low back / core. You could also do bodyweight miniworkouts just to get a full body movement session in or to improve joint mobility.

Mini Workout Methods

1.) Time Domain Goal

Set a timer and just work. I like doing this at the end of workouts or before a kickboxing training session. I’ll set a 5-10 min timer and just hit as many reps or sets as possible of 1-3 exercises. typically i’ll mix in band exercises, calisthenics, or structural balance exercises. You could also break this up and for example do 5 minutes of calves and 5 minutes of grip training.

I will often use this method with core exercises as well. I’ll pick 3 exercises and jsut hit sets of 10-15 reps on them with 30-60 seconds of rest until my 5-10 minute timer goes off.

The key here is to just work hard for that time domain. If you need a more objective outcome, you could try escalating density training. Set a 5 min timer for example and hit as many pushups as possible in that time. Next week. try to beat your reps.

2.) Rep Goal

Perform 100 reps of an exercise, 50 reps of 3 exericses, or 2 sets of 50 of 1-3 exercises. Do these reps with as little rest as possible (depends on the exercise). This should be high repetitions but remember to keep the total time of the session under 15 minutes. If you’re in better shape you could even push the rep count to 150, 200, or 300. Something like banded leg curls can be done for a set of 200-300 pretty easily within 10 minutes.

I’ll often just do 100 reps of abs as a mini workout and mix up the exercises. Sometimes I’ll just do exercises at random until I hit 100 reps. Variety is good here, again if you want structure feel free to make this more structuted by alternating exercises every 3 weeks or having a progression.

Another option is to go for distance with a sled. Drag a sled for a 0.25 mile or 0.5 mile.

In summary, mini workouts are a great way to raise volume and frequency without beating your body up, Add them into your off days to improve weaknesses, enhance mobility, or to strengthen past injuries/limitations. If you’re really feeling beat from training, just take a walk or rest a bit, that’s also acceptable.

Stay strong,