Broadly speaking, there are four ways to increase the difficulty of your workouts to drive forward progress.
These are:
1) Increase the intensity (by adding weight),
2) Increase the frequency (by training more often),
3) Increase the volume (by doing more sets and/or reps),
4) Increase the density (by doing the same amount of work in less time).
Options one and three are most commonly used. Option two is used less often, and generally only as part of a specialisation routine of some description (e.g. the infamous Smolov squat routine).
And option four?
Seldom if ever tried, in my experience.
Why?
The following:
* You can’t be a smartphone zombie scrolling on your phone between sets because you’ll unwittingly lose many minutes – thereby never achieving the work rate you are truly capable of,
* You can’t listen to music or talk to others for the same reason,
* You’ll (at least in the first instance) have to take quite a bit of weight off the bar, which is quite the hit to the ego if you are not prepared for it,
* You have to to concentrate on the task at hand from the moment you set foot in the weightroom until the last rep of your last set, lest you take too little rest between sets, get sloppy, and hurt yourself,
* You won’t get the dopamine hit from adding weight, sets, or reps nearly as often versus other approaches, and when it does occur the gains are marginal, so it’s very easy to trick yourself into thinking whatever you’re doing “isn’t working”.
There are more reasons why I basically never see people run density-based programmes, but those are the main ones.
In any case, this state of affairs is a crying shame as increasing the density of your sessions brings profound benefits – and not just in terms of aesthetic and performance gains.
The practical advantages of not spending as much time in the gym are legion. (For example, before I canned my gym membership altogether, I was in and out in under 45 minutes, meaning on Saturdays Jess could bumble around town with the kids while I trained and then I’d meet them afterwards; a great way to show the kids what a healthy relationship with exercise looks like, which is far more effective than merely telling them).
That said…
Obviously dialling up the density of your training is not a panacea for lacklustre results.
In fact, you can rapidly find yourself going backwards if you don’t set your programme and sessions up right. Which is why I recommend purchasing a copy of the May 2025 issue of The Phil Tyreman Letter, reading it, and then acting upon what you learn.
A copy is £50, but before you purchase, hark unto what you will find inside:
* The most impactful yet woefully underlooked training variable of them all (absent proper attention here, your efforts will be forever stymied),
* How cycling a pushbike around a disused World War Two airfield made my 56 year old mother’s bench press go up,
* What is, I believe, the most valuable characteristic you can develop through proper training (it is not any of the “athletic” functions you may be thinking of),
* Four ways “black hole” dense workouts can potentially have a positive impact on what I can only describe as a spiritual level (relax, this has nothing to do with my religious fundamentalism),
* Why the gym-goers of the mid-20th century radiated health while those of today (even those who train hard) mostly do not,
* The exact programme that, as of this writing, I have just finished using to grow what Jess called my “little boy pecs” (she was very pleased with the results),
* How many cardio sessions I recommend most people do alongside demanding muscle-building workouts to build the gas tank they need for best results,
* A flexible, adaptable training programme for building muscle and repping strength – with dogmatic instructions on how to dial up the difficulty for those who need something more advanced,
And…
* A mystery article penned by the Venerable Jess herself.
If you would like one, visit my secure checkout here:
https://cmtyreman.thrivecart.com/the-phil-tyreman-letter-may-2025
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman