The Fastest Way to Make Fitness Progress

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You know you can put more weight on the bar or do more reps, but there’s a third way to improve your fitness: by completing your workout faster. It's a metric called density, and it amounts to being able to do more work in less time—usually by taking shorter breaks between sets.

Let me clarify: I am not talking about letting your workout turn into speedy slop. I’m simply suggesting that, if your form holds up (100 percent!) under the load you’ve chosen to lift during a particular exercise, you can improve your workout capacity (and thus your overall fitness) by increasing your density.

Unless you’re in the middle of a circuit workout, taking less of a breather between sets isn’t something that occurs to many of us—rather, we’re used to improving strength by one of two metrics: 1) either lifting progressively heavier weights (which is defined as intensity) or 2) doing more total reps or sets (and driving up volume). The problem is, you can’t add weight to the bar or heft heavier kettlebells or dumbbells every single consecutive workout—the body does not cooperate with such neat and linear progress—nor can you add reps ad infinitum. The additional metric of density gives you a third factor to tinker with, and the sweet spot of making continual progress lies in manipulating these three factors from workout to workout.

I was a notorious lollygagger between sets until my husband, David Dellanave, introduced me to this metric. The two of us encourage our clients at The Movement Minneapolis not to overlook density personal records (PRs)—they may not be as glamorous as heavier weight, but hey, they count, too!

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Here’s how you can also track and celebrate them if you are so inclined. (Or, you can just take a little less time between sets whenever possible and forget the calculations entirely.)

Intensity = Pounds lifted

Volume = Number of reps multiplied by intensity

Density = Volume divided by time

For example, if you did 30 reps of goblet squats with 35 pounds in eight minutes, your math would look like this:

Volume: 35 X 30 = 1,050

Density: 1,050/8 = 131 pounds per minute (nice work!)

Try It Yourself:

Use a simple kitchen timer or the stopwatch on your phone. Start the clock when you begin a set, and don’t stop it during your rest periods. When you’re done with all rounds of that exercise, jot down your time. (A training log comes in very handy so you can refer back to previous training sessions.)

Do this for each exercise, every workout.

Note when your density improves.

Revel in your newfound speed and improved fitness—or just leave the gym earlier because you’re done earlier!

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Jen Sinkler is a longtime fitness writer and personal trainer based in Minneapolis who talks fitness, food, happy life, and general health topics at her website, jensinkler.com, and writes for a variety of national health magazines. Earlier this year, she authored Lift Weights Faster, an e-library of over 130 conditioning workouts for fat loss, athleticism, and overall health.

Jen works with clients at The Movement Minneapolis, a facility that uses biofeedback-based training techniques. She is a certified kettlebell instructor through the RKC (Level 2) and KBA, and an Olympic lifting coach through USA Weightlifting; she also holds coaching certifications through Primal Move, Progressive Calisthenics, CrossFit and DVRT (Ultimate Sandbag).