Minimum Effective Dose: How I Train for Strength, Muscle, and Conditioning in One Hour a Day

For years, I trained a lot. Doing a strength session and a cardio session on the same day wasn't uncommon. I worked hard and got results I'm proud of, but if I was being honest with myself, I knew I was putting in a ton of effort without always being efficient.

For whatever reason, I've always had this belief that more is better. More sets. More days. More time in the gym. It's why my training would balloon to six days a week and two-hour workouts until I burned myself out.

When Lainey got pregnant with our first, I knew my margins were about to shrink. Now that Eleanor is here, that's absolutely true. I have less time to train, which I'm happy to trade because I enjoy being a dad. But I still wanted to feel athletic and get great workouts.

So I started asking a different question: what's the least I can train and still make progress in strength, muscle, and conditioning?

The more I looked into it, the more I kept coming back to the law of diminishing returns. The first chunk of effort gets you a lot. The next chunk gets you less. Eventually you're working way harder for very little additional benefit.

Grades are a good example. Getting from a C to a B doesn't usually take much. Going from an A to an A+ can take a huge amount of extra work for a pretty small payoff. The effort still matters, but at some point it stops being worth the tradeoff.

Being a dad has forced me to own that I don't need to optimize everything. I just need to find the minimum amount of training that reliably moves me forward. Once I know I'm making progress, I'd rather spend the rest of my time with my family or growing my business.

What I'm after now is simple: I want to be fit. Strong, muscular, and conditioned. Not elite at any one thing, just good enough across all three that I feel confident and capable.

That means accepting I probably won't maximize any single quality. And that's fine. I've got other priorities these days. I'd rather be well-rounded than chase perfection in one area.

So that's what my training looks like now. I've dialed in the minimum effective dose that builds strength, muscle, and conditioning, and I give myself about an hour a day to get after it.

The funny thing is, the constraints have helped. I'm getting stronger, building muscle, and feeling better than I have in a long time. Doing less has let me bring more focus and intensity to each session, and that's turned out to be a pretty good trade.