Extreme Efficiency Exercises

You don’t need the 4 minute workout machine to be an efficient exerciser…

Strength training experts always seem to be highlighting the injury-preventive and performance importance of tending to small, supportive muscles that are notoriously weak, such as the shoulder’s rotator cuff, the outer butt’s gluteus medius, the small scapula muscles along the shoulder blades, and the abdominal, hip and low back region, or “core”.

But for the average working, time-crunched individual, it simply doesn’t make sense to devote an extra couple hours per week to exercising these tiny, supportive muscles. After all, the type of exercises traditionally used to strengthen these muscles have very little cardiovascular, calorie-burning or coordination benefit.

For example, a common exercise for the rotator cuff involves multiple sets and high repetitions of internal and external rotation with a piece of elastic tubing. If you have 45 minutes at the gym over lunch hour, do you really want to spend 10 minutes of that time standing relatively motionless, as a few small muscles in your arm and shoulder are firing?

Instead you’ll find your limited time better suited to large, cardiovascular intensive, multi-joint movements that incorporate the rotator cuff, but also use many of the other major muscles of your body, thus producing coordination, motor-unit recruitment, and muscular endurance, while also strengthening the rotator cuff. Two such examples would be barbell or dumbbell cleans, and bodyweight or assisted pull-ups, both of which involve multiple large muscles and a high metabolic demand, but also incorporate the smaller, stabilizing muscles of the rotator cuff.

Below, I’ll give you the top 9 exercises I’ve found to be highly effective for strengthening the common weak links in triathletes, while also producing a high heart rate and rapid development of strength and power.

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