3 great fitness hacks for a quick and effective workout

It has been a long month with five Saturdays and an extended weekend bang in the middle of it all. Workouts may have taken a back seat with plans to spend time with family and friends, and to go out. Every minute of a vacation counts as much as every minute in the gym and this is where the best gym hacks come into play.

Over the course of this longer-than-usual month, I have used three tricks to make my workouts better to squeeze something meaningful out of every rep. The muscle groups involved are the entire lower body, the biceps, and the back and shoulders, focusing more on growth and strength over cardio.

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The leg-press formula that works everything: Having had the access to a leg press machine for an extended period has made me realise how its usefulness extends far beyond that of the conventional press. Just by changing the placement of your feet, you could do an entire workout comprising different exercises, using just one machine.

Consider the leg press platform as a tool of change and curiosity. Try these four foot placements with a comfortable load and see how the lower body reacts. The first would be to target the glutes by placing the heels central but the toes touching the upper lips of the pressing platform. Without getting off the machine, change the placement to the heels touching the bottom edge of the platform to target the quads.

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The third exercise would be to angle the toes away like you would in a sumo squat with a slightly wider stance, and in the centre of the platform, to target the adductors. The last one, and the most exciting, would be to place the toes on the bottom edge with the heel—unsupported—to push the weight away using only your calves. These are called leg press calf raises as shown in the video below.

I tend to do five reps on each of these placements for three sets. In just a few minutes, you have now worked your entire lower body with an option to scale and overload according to your strength.

Run-the-rack biceps workout: In case you haven’t heard the term run-the-rack, it basically means going through as many weights of dumbbells as you can with a single exercise. You could choose to go from light-to-heavy or vice versa, depending on the exercise and your level of fitness. In the case of bicep curls, my preference is to always do sitting one-armed concentration curls with a suggestion on the positioning of the arm.

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“The way to alter the exercise to get this to work in your favor is to reposition the arm directly in your groin. You can see how the forearm now becomes much more perpendicular to the force of gravity and you can feel the impact this has on your biceps on every rep,” says Athlean-X founder Jeff Cavaliere in a video titled Concentration Curls Aren't Working for You (here’s why).

You could choose any other biceps exercise as well. Once the choice is made, decide the formula—doing a particular number of reps (I do ten) works better when working your way up the weights. Doing as many reps as possible on each weight works better when you are working your way down the weights. The former works better for me because biceps have always been a weakness and having a set goal makes sure that form is not sacrificed.

My last workout was done with dumbbells of 3kg, 5kg, 7.5kg and 10kg, with ten reps on each arm with no breaks. Then switch arms, and repeat. One set is enough, but if you are feeling adventurous, feel free to do another one.

Derick Ansah’s shoulders-and-back dumbbell workout: The Ghanaian fitness trainer’s 1.8 million followers on Instagram are never disappointed and that is because of his smart routines. And out of many of those, my favourite is his shoulders-and-back dumbbell workout. It consists of four exercises which you can do for a set amount of time or reps, with the caveat that they need to be done one after the other.

I used just 5kg dumbbells and was absolutely torched. The workout starts with circular raises, and ends with a rowing motion, so make sure to start with very light weights before you work your way up. His third exercise is especially brutal, as it forces you to do a sitting high pull and a front chest press. This is a follow along, so enjoy the burn.

Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator, podcaster and writer.

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