How I Prioritize My Fitness in 60 Minutes a Day

Why capping my training at an hour made it better, not worse, and how I fit strength, muscle, and conditioning into 60 focused minutes a day.

I give myself an hour to train daily, and that limit has done more for my training than any amount of extra time ever did. I'd love to have some sharp scientific reason that an hour is the perfect amount of time to train, but the truth is it's mostly just what fits my life and feels reasonable. It's a round number that I could fairly negotiate with Lainey. I'm lucky to have a wife who's willing to help protect it. She's also smart enough to know I'll drive her crazy if I don't get it.

That hour has turned out to be plenty, and the constraint forced me to focus on what works and cut the stuff that only gives marginal returns. No more 20-minute warmups. No extra sets just because. No adding random exercises so I can tell myself I trained for 90 minutes. Having less time made me get honest about what's effective.

My week is built around three full-body training days, two upper-body accessory days, and two Zone 2 cardio sessions. Here's what a typical full-body day looks like. I've got a timer in the garage, and it starts the second I begin the daily mobility drill.

  • Warmup: 8-10 minutes
  • Strength: 15-20 minutes
  • Hypertrophy: 15-25 minutes
  • Conditioning: 10 minutes

Most days I'm aiming to finish right around the one-hour mark.

Sixty minutes is the goal, but it's a goal I try not to be OCD about. If a workout runs five minutes long, I finish it. If I get everything done five minutes early, I'm outta there. The goal is completing the prescribed work, not staring at a clock.

I'm here to work, but I'm not rushing. There's enough rest built into the program to get the intended stimulus from each section. What the hour really does is keep me focused. Phone away. No wandering around the garage. No junk volume. There's room for the things that support my goals, and not much for the things that don't.

So that's my hour. Lainey helps protect it, and I'm not going to waste it. Besides, my two-month-old, Eleanor, has made it extremely clear that she needs her old man to have dad strength, not a dad bod.