Don’t Have Time To Train? Sure You Do! by Jerry Brainum 12/21

People can offer all sorts of excuses for not exercising regularly. The most common excuse is time, as in "I don't have enough time to exercise." While many people do live busy lives, the notion that they cannot spare any time for exercise is usually not true. The simple truth is that if you want to train, you will find the time. I recall once having a conversation with Bill Pearl, a former Mr.America (1953) and four-time winner of the Mr.Universe contest (1953, 1961, 1967, 1971). I asked him why he chooses to train at 4 a.m, and he told me that if he didn't he wouldn't be able to train at all because running his popular gym kept him busy all day. Pearl may or may not have liked getting up that early to train, but he did it because he had to and made the time. Several recent American presidents have set aside time each to exercise, and if the president can do this, anyone can. And by the way, golf doesn't qualify as exercise.

Many people avoid training because they think it takes hours of training every day to build a great physique. But that is simply not true. Having worked for bodybuilding magazines for many years and having interviewed countless champion bodybuilders, I can tell you that many of them lie about the extent of their training. I've been told about 6-hour training sessions done six times a week. I've even heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about his 5-hour a day training sessions during his bodybuilding heyday. But I've trained with Arnold many times at the original Gold's gym in Venice. He never trained at any time for more than two hours each workout, although prior to a contest he would often train twice a day, so you can say that on those days he trained four hours a day--but each session never lasted more than two hours.

This notion that you need to train for hours to develop any amount of muscle discourages people from training who just cannot put in that much time. When I first began training I read the bodybuilding magazines and tried to follow the routines of the champions listed in those publications. Little did I know at the time that the routines listed were mostly fake, but I followed them to the letter. I recall one such routine that I used when I was 14. This routine involved training 6 times a week and the extreme volume of the routine took me 8 hours to complete! You read that right: I trained for 8 hours a day and often had to be forced out of the gym at closing time as I begged to be allowed . . .